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The Ned M'Keown Stories

by William Carleton · English · Gutenberg #16012 · 528,576 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Ned M'Keown Stories

Author: William Carleton

Illustrator: M. L. Flanery


        
Release date: June 7, 2005 [eBook #16012]
                Most recently updated: December 9, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16012

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NED M'KEOWN STORIES ***




Produced by David Widger





THE WORKS

OF

WILLIAM CARLETON.

VOLUME III.


[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage]


TRAITS AND STORIES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY


CONTENTS:

     Ned M'Keown.

     The Three Tasks.

     Shane Fadh's Wedding.

     Larry M'Farland's Wake.

     The Battle Of The Factions.



1881.



TRAITS AND STORIES

OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY.





INTRODUCTION.

It will naturally be expected, upon a new issue of works which may be
said to treat exclusively of a people who form such an important and
interesting portion of the empire as the Irish peasantry do, that the
author should endeavor to prepare the minds of his readers--especially
those of the English and Scotch--for understanding more clearly their
general character, habits of thought, and modes of feeling, as they
exist and are depicted in the subsequent volume. This is a task which
the author undertakes more for the sake of his country than himself; and
he rejoices that the demand for the present edition puts it in his power
to aid in removing many absurd prejudices which have existed for time
immemorial against his countrymen.

It is well known that the character of an Irishman has been hitherto
uniformly associated with the idea of something unusually ridiculous,
and that scarcely anything in the shape of language was supposed to
proceed from his lips, but an absurd congeries of brogue and blunder.
The habit of looking upon him in a ludicrous light has been so strongly
impressed upon the English mind, that no opportunity has ever been
omitted of throwing him into an attitude of gross and overcharged
caricature, from which you might as correctly estimate his intellectual
strength and moral proportions, as you would the size of a man from his
evening shadow. From the immortal bard of Avon down to the writers
of the present day, neither play nor farce has ever been presented to
Englishmen, in which, when an irishman is introduced, he is not drawn as
a broad, grotesque blunderer, every sentence he speaks involving a
bull, and every act the result of headlong folly, or cool but unstudied
effrontery. I do not remember an instance in which he acts upon the
stage any other part than that of the buffoon of the piece uttering
language which, wherever it may have been found, was at all events
never heard in Ireland, unless upon the boards of a theatre. As for the
Captain O'Cutters, O'Blunders, and Dennis Bulgrudderies, of the English
stage, they never had existence except in the imagination of those who
were as ignorant of the Irish people as they were of their language and
feelings. Even Sheridan himself was forced to pander to this erroneous
estimate and distorted conception of our character; for, after all, Sir
Lucius O'Trigger was his Irishman but not Ireland's Irishman. I know
that several of my readers may remind me of Sir Boyle Roche, whose bulls
have become not only notorious, but proverbial. It is well known now,
however, and was when he made them, that they were studied bulls,
resorted to principally for the purpose of putting the government and
opposition sides of the Irish House of Commons into good humor with each
other, which they never failed to do--thereby, on more occasions than
one, probably, preventing the effusion of blood, and the loss of life,
among men who frequently decided even their political differences by the
sword or pistol.

That the Irish either were or are a people remarkable for making bulls
or blunders, is an imputation utterly unfounded, and in every sense
untrue. The source of this error on the part of our neighbors is,
however, readily traced. The language of our people has been for
centuries, and is up to the present day, in a transition state. The
English tongue is gradually superseding the Irish. In my own native
place, for instance, there is not by any means so much Irish spoken now,
as there was about twenty or five-and-twenty years ago. This fact, then,
will easily account for the ridicule which is, and I fear ever will be,
unjustly heaped upon those who are found to use a language which they do
not properly understand. In the early periods of communication between
the countries, when they stood in a hostile relation to each other, and
even long afterwards, it was not surprising that “the wild Irishman” who
expressed himself with difficulty, and often impressed the idiom of his
own language upon one with which he was not familiar, should incur,
in the opinion of those who were strongly prejudiced against him, the
character of making the bulls and blunders attributed to him. Such
was the fact, and such the origin of this national slander upon his
intellect,--a slander which, like every other, originates from the
prejudice of those who were unacquainted with the quickness and
clearness of thought that in general characterizes the language of our
people. At this moment there is no man acquainted with the inhabitants
of the two countries, who does not know, that where the English
is vernacular in Ireland, it is spoken with far more purity, and
grammatical precision than is to be heard beyond the Channel. Those,
then, who are in the habit of defending what are termed our bulls, or of
apologizing for them, do us injustice; and Miss Edgeworth herself, when
writing an essay upon the subject, wrote an essay upon that which does
not, and never did exist. These observations, then, easily account for
the view of us which has always been taken in the dramatic portion of
English literature. There the Irishman was drawn in every instance
as the object of ridicule, and consequently of contempt; for it is
incontrovertibly true, that the man whom you laugh at you will soon
despise.

In every point of view this was wrong, but principally in a political
one. At that time England and Englishmen knew very little of Ireland,
and, consequently, the principal opportunities afforded them of
appreciating our character were found on the stage. Of course, it was
very natural that the erroneous estimate of us which they formed there
should influence them everywhere else. We cannot sympathize with, and
laugh at, the same object at the same time; and if the Irishman found
himself undeservedly the object of coarse and unjust ridicule, it was
not very unnatural that he should requite it with a prejudice against
the principles and feelings of Englishmen, quite as strong as that which
was entertained against himself. Had this ridicule been confined to
the stage, or directed at us in the presence of those who had other and
better opportunities of knowing us, it would have been comparatively
harmless. But this was not the case. It passed from the stage into the
recesses of private life, wrought itself into the feelings until it
became a prejudice, and the Irishman was consequently looked upon, and
treated, as being made up of absurdity and cunning,--a compound of knave
and fool, fit only to be punished for his knavery, or laughed at for
his folly. So far, therefore, that portion of English literature
which attempted to describe the language and habits of Irishmen, was
unconsciously creating an unfriendly feeling between the two countries,
a feeling which, I am happy to say, is fast disappearing, and which
only requires that we should have a full and fair acquaintance with each
other in order to be removed for ever.

At present, indeed, their mutual positions, civil, commercial, and
political, are very different from what they were half a century ago,
or even at a more recent period. The progress of science, and the
astonishing improvements in steam and machinery, have so completely
removed the obstructions which impeded their intercourse, that the
two nations can now scarcely be considered as divided. As a natural
consequence, their knowledge of each other has improved; and, as will
always happen with generous people, they begin to see that the one was
neither knave or fool, nor the other a churl or a boor. Thus has
mutual respect arisen from mutual intercourse, and those who hitherto
approached each other with distrust are beginning to perceive, that in
spite of political or religious prejudices, no matter how stimulated,
the truthful experience of life will in the event create nothing but
good-will and confidence between the countries.

Other causes, however, led to this;--causes which in every state of
society exercise a quick and powerful influence over the minds of
men:--I allude to literature.

When the Irishman was made to stand forth as the butt of ridicule to his
neighbors, the first that undertook his vindication was Maria Edgeworth.
During her day, the works of no writer made a more forcible impression
upon the circles of fashionable life in England, if we except the
touching and inimitable Melodies of my countryman, Thomas Moore. After
a lapse of some years, these two were followed by many others, who
stood forth as lofty and powerful exponents of the national heart and
intellect. Who can forget the melancholy but indignant reclamations
of John Banim,--the dark and touching power of Gerald Griffin,--or the
unrivalled wit and irresistible drollery of Samuel Lover? Nor can I omit
remarking, that amidst the array of great talents to which I allude,
the genius of our female writers bore off, by the free award of public
opinion, some of the brightest wreaths of Irish literature. It would be
difficult indeed, in any country, to name three women who have done
more in setting right the character of Ireland and her people, whilst
exhibiting at the same time the manifestations of high genius, than Miss
Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and Mrs. Hall. About the female creations ol
the last-named lady, especially, there is a touching charm, blending
the graceful and the pensive, which reminds us of a very general but
peculiar style of Irish beauty, where the lineaments of the face combine
at once both the melancholy and the mirthful in such a manner, that
their harmony constitutes the unchangeable but ever-varying tenderness
of the expression.

That national works like these, at once so healthful and so true,
produced by those who knew the country, and exhibiting Irishmen not
as the blundering buffoons of the English stage, but as men capable
of thinking clearly and feeling deeply--that such works, I say, should
enable a generous people, as the English undoubtedly are, to divest
themselves of the prejudices which they had so long entertained against
us, is both natural and gratifying. Those who achieved this great
object, or aided in achieving it, have unquestionably rendered services
of a most important nature to both the countries, as well as to
literature in general.

Yet, whilst the highly gifted individuals whom I have named succeeded
in making their countrymen respected, there was one circumstance which,
nothwithstanding every exhibition of their genius and love of country,
still remained as a reproach against our character as a nation.
For nearly a century we were completely at the mercy of our British
neighbors, who probably amused themselves at our expense with the
greater license, and a more assured sense of impunity, inasmuch as
they knew that we were utterly destitute of a national literature.
Unfortunately the fact could not be disputed. For the last half century,
to come down as far as we can, Ireland, to use a plain metaphor, instead
of producing her native intellect for home consumption, was forced to
subsist upon the scanty supplies which could be procured from the sister
kingdom. This was a reproach which added great strength to the general
prejudice against us.

A nation may produce one man or ten men of eminence, but if they cannot
succeed in impressing their mind upon the spirit and intellect of their
own country, so as to create in her a taste for literature or science,
no matter how highly they may be appreciated by strangers, they have not
reached the exalted purposes of genius. To make this more plain I shall
extend the metaphor a little farther. During some of the years of Irish
famine, such were the unhappy circumstances of the country, that she was
exporting provisions of every description in most prodigal abundance,
which the generosity of England was sending back again for our support.
So was it with literature, our men and women of genius uniformly carried
their talents to the English market, whilst we labored at home under all
the dark privations of a literary famine.

In truth, until within the last ten or twelve years, an Irish author
never thought of publishing in his own country, and the consequence was
that our literary men followed the example of our great landlords; they
became absentees, and drained the country of its intellectual wealth
precisely as the others exhausted it of its rents.

Thus did Ireland stand in the singular anomaly of adding some of her
most distinguished names to the literature of Great Britain, whilst she
herself remained incapable of presenting anything to the world beyond a
school-book or a pamphlet; and even of the latter it is well-known that
if the subject of it were considered important, and its author a man
of any talent or station in society, it was certain to be published in
London.

Precisely in this state was the country when the two first volumes of
the “Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry” were given to the public
by the house of Messrs. Gurry and Co., of Sackville Street. Before they
appeared, their author, in consequence of their originating from an
Irish press, entertained no expectation that they would be read, or
excite any interest whatever in either England or Scotland. He was not,
however, without a strong confidence that notwithstanding the wild
and uncleared state of his own country at the time, so far as native
literature was concerned, his two little pioneers would work their
way with at least moderate success. He felt conscious that everything
depicted in them was true, and that by those who were acquainted with
the manners, and language, and feelings of the people, they would sooner
or later be recognized as faithful delineations of Irish life. In
this confidence the event justified him; for not only were his volumes
stamped with an immediate popularity at home, where they could be best
appreciated, but awarded a very gratifying position in the literature
of the day by the unanimous and not less generous verdict of the English
and Scotch critics.

Thus it was that the publication of two unpretending volumes, written by
a peasant's son, established an important and gratifying fact--that
our native country, if without a literature at the time, was at least
capable of appreciating, and willing to foster the humble exertions
of such as endeavored to create one. Nor was this all; for so far as
resident authors were concerned, it was now clearly established that
an Irish writer could be successful at home without the necessity of
appearing under the name and sanction of the great London or Edinburgh
booksellers.

The rapid sale and success of the first series encouraged the author to
bring out a second, which he did, but with a different bookseller. The
spirit of publishing was now beginning to extend, and the talent of the
country to put itself in motion. The popularity of the second effort
surpassed that of the first, and the author had the gratification of
knowing that the generosity of public feeling and opinion accorded him
a still higher position than before, as did the critics of the day,
without a dissentient voice. Still, as in the case of his first effort,
he saw with honest pride that his own country and his countrymen placed
the highest value upon his works, because they best understood them.

About this time the literary taste of the metropolis began to feel the
first symptoms of life. As yet, however, they were very faint. Two or
three periodicals were attempted, and though of very considerable merit,
and conducted by able men, none of them, I believe, reached a year's
growth. The “Dublin Literary Gazette,” the “National Magazine,” the
“Dublin Monthly Magazine,” and the “Dublin University Review,” all
perished in their infancy--not, however, because they were unworthy of
success, but because Ireland was not then what she is now fast becoming,
a reading, and consequently a thinking, country. To every one of these
the author contributed, and he has the satisfaction of being able to say
that there has been no publication projected purely for the advancement
of literature in his own country, to which he has not given the aid of
his pen, such as it was, and this whether he received remuneration or
not. Indeed, the consciousness that the success of his works had been
the humble means of inciting others to similar exertion in their own
country, and of thus giving the first impulse to our literature, is one
which has on his part created an enthusiastic interest in it which will
only die with him.

Notwithstanding the failure of the periodicals just mentioned, it
was clear that the intellect of the country was beginning to feel its
strength and put forth its power. A national spirit that rose above the
narrow distinctions of creed and party began to form itself, and in the
first impulses of its early enthusiasm a periodical was established,
which it is only necessary to name--the “Dublin University Magazine”--a
work unsurpassed by any magazine of the day; and which, moreover,
without ever departing from its principles, has been as a bond of union
for literary men of every class, who have from time to time enriched its
pages by their contributions. It has been, and is, a neutral spot in a
country where party feeling runs so high, on which the Roman Catholic
Priest and the Protestant Parson, the Whig, the Tory, and the Radical,
divested of their respective prejudices, can meet in an amicable spirit.
I mention these things with great satisfaction, for it is surely a
gratification to know that literature, in a country which has been so
much distracted as Ireland, is progressing in a spirit of noble candor
and generosity, which is ere long likely to produce a most salutary
effect among the educated classes of all parties, and consequently among
those whom they influence. The number, ability, and importance of the
works which have issued from the Dublin press within the last eight or
ten years, if they could be enumerated here, would exhibit the rapid
progress of the national mind, and satisfy the reader that Ireland in
a few years will be able to sustain a native literature as lofty and
generous, and beneficial to herself, as any other country in the world
can boast of.

This hasty sketch of its progress I felt myself called upon to give,
in order that our neighbors may know what we have done, and learn to
respect us accordingly; and, if the truth must be told, from a principle
of honest pride, arising from the position which our country holds, and
is likely to hold, as an intellectual nation.

Having disposed of this topic, I come now to one of not less importance
as being connected with the other,--the condition and character of the
peasantry of Ireland.

It maybe necessary, however, before entering upon this topic, to give
my readers some satisfactory assurance that the subject is one which
I ought well to understand, not only from my humble position in early
life, and my uninterrupted intercourse with the people as one of
themselves, until I had reached the age of twenty-two years, but from
the fact of having bestowed upon it my undivided and most earnest
attention ever since I left the dark mountains and green vales of my
native Tyrone, and began to examine human life and manners as a citizen
of the world. As it is admitted, also, that there exists no people whose
character is so anomalous as that of the Irish, and consequently so
difficult to be understood, especially by strangers, it becomes a
still more appropriate duty on my part to give to the public, proofs
sufficiently valid, that I come to a subject of such difficulty with
unusual advantages on my side, and that, consequently, my exhibitions of
Irish peasant life, in its most comprehensive sense, may be relied on
as truthful and authentic. For this purpose, it will be necessary that
I should give a brief sketch of my own youth, early station in society,
and general education, as the son of an honest, humble peasant.

My father, indeed, was a very humble man, but, in consequence of his
unaffected piety and stainless integrity of principle, he was held in
high esteem by all who knew him, no matter what their rank in life might
be. When the state of education in Ireland during his youth and that of
my mother is considered, it will not be a matter of surprise that what
they did receive was very limited. It would be difficult, however, if
not impossible, to find two persons in their lowly station so highly
and singularly gifted. My father possessed a memory not merely great or
surprising, but absolutely astonishing. He could repeat nearly the whole
of the Old and New Testament by heart, and was, besides, a living index
to almost every chapter and verse you might wish to find in it. In all
other respects, too, his memory was equally amazing. My native place
is a spot rife with old legends, tales, traditions, customs, and
superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls of
my own humble roof, they met me in every direction. It was at home,
however, and from my father's lips in particular, that they were
perpetually sounding in my ears. In fact, his memory was a perfect
storehouse, and a rich one, of all that the social antiquary, the man of
letters, the poet, or the musician, would consider valuable. As a teller
of old tales, legends, and historical anecdotes he was unrivalled, and
his stock of them was inexhaustible. He spoke the Irish and English
languages with nearly equal fluency. With all kinds of charms, old
ranns, or poems, old prophecies, religious superstitions, tales of
pilgrims, miracles, and pilgrimages, anecdotes of blessed priests
and friars, revelations from ghosts and fairies, was he thoroughly
acquainted. And so strongly were all these impressed upon my mind, by
frequent repetition on his part, and the indescribable delight they
gave me on mine, that I have hardly ever since heard, during a tolerably
enlarged intercourse with Irish society, both educated and uneducated,
with the antiquary, the scholar, or the humble senachie--any single
tradition, usage, or legend, that, as far as I can at present recollect,
was perfectly new to me or unheard before, in some similar or cognate
dress. This is certainly saying much; but I believe I may assert with
confidence that I could produce, in attestation of its truth, the
dairies of Petrie, Sir W. Betham, Ferguson, and O'Donovan, the most
distinguished antiquaries, both of social usages and otherwise, that
ever Ireland produced. What rendered this, besides, of such peculiar
advantage to me in after life, as a literary man, was, that I heard them
as often in the Irish language as in the English, if not oftener, in
circumstance which enabled me in my writings to transfer the genius, the
idiomatic peculiarity and conversational spirit of the one language
into the other, precisely as the people themselves do in their dialogue,
whenever the heart or imagination happens to be moved by the darker or
better passions.

Having thus stated faithfully, without adding or diminishing, a portion,
and a portion only, of what I owe to one parent, I cannot overlook the
debt of gratitude which is due to the memory of the other.

My mother, whose name was Kelly--Mary Kelly--possessed the sweetest and
most exquisite of human voices. In her early life, I have often been
told by those who had heard her sing, that any previous intimation of
her presence at a wake, dance, or other festive occasion, was sure to
attract crowds of persons, many from a distance of several miles, in
order to hear from her lips the touching old airs of their country. No
sooner was it known that she would attend any such meeting, than the
fact spread throughout the neighborhood like wild-fire, and the people
flocked from all parts to hear her, just as the fashionable world
do now, when the name of some eminent songstress is announced in the
papers; with this difference, that upon such occasions the voice of the
one falls only upon the ear, whilst that of the other sinks deeply into
the heart. She was not so well acquainted with the English tongue as my
father, although she spoke it with sufficient ease for all the purposes
of life; and for this reason, among others, she generally gave the old
Irish versions of the songs in question, rather than the English ones.
This, however, as I said, was not her sole motive. In the first place,
she had several old songs, which at that time,--I believe, too, I may
add at this,--had never been translated; and I very much fear that some
valuable ones, both as to words and airs, have perished with her. Her
family were all imbued with a poetical spirit, and some of her immediate
ancestors composed in the Irish tongue several fine old songs, in the
same manner as Carolan did; that is, some in praise of a patron or a
friend, and others to celebrate rustic beauties, that have long since
been sleeping in the dust. For this reason she had many old compositions
that were almost peculiar to our family, which I am afraid could not now
be procured at all, and are consequently lost. I think her uncle, and
I believe her grandfather, were the authors of several Irish poems and
songs, because I know that some of them she sang, and others she only
recited.

Independently of this, she had a prejudice against singing the Irish
airs to English words; an old custom of the country was thereby invaded,
and an association disturbed which habit had rendered dear to her. I
remember on one occasion, when she was asked to sing the English version
of that touching melody, “The Red-haired Man's Wife,” she replied,
“I will sing it for you; but the English words and the air are like a
quarrelling man and wife: the Irish melts into the tune, but the English
doesn't,” an expression scarcely less remarkable for its beauty than its
truth. She spoke the words in Irish.

This gift of singing with such sweetness and power the old sacred songs
and airs of Ireland, was not the only one for which she was remarkable.
Perhaps there never lived a human being capable of giving the Irish cry,
or Keene, with such exquisite effect, or of pouring into its wild notes
a spirit of such irresistible pathos and sorrow. I have often been
present when she has “raised the keene” over the corpse of some relative
or neighbor, and my readers may judge of the melancholy charm which
accompanied this expression of her sympathy, when I assure them that
the general clamor of violent grief was gradually diminished, from
admiration, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard
but her own--wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty. This pause, it
is true, was never long, for however great the admiration might be which
she excited, the hearts of those who heard her soon melted, and even
strangers were often forced to confess her influence by the tears which
she caused them to shed for those whose deaths could, otherwise, in no
other way have affected them. I am the youngest, I believe, of fourteen
children, and of course could never have heard her until age and the
struggles of life had robbed her voice of its sweetness. I heard enough,
however, from her blessed lips, to set my heart to an almost painful
perception of that spirit which steeps these fine old songs in a
tenderness which no other music possesses. Many a time, of a winter
night, when seated at her spinning-wheel, singing the _Trougha_, or
_Shuil agra_, or some other old “song of sorrow,” have I, then little
more than a child, gone over to her, and with a broken voice and eyes
charged with tears, whispered, “Mother dear, don't sing that song, it
makes me sorrowful;” she then usually stopped, and sung some one which I
liked better because it affected me less. At this day I am in possession
of Irish airs, which none of our best antiquaries in Irish music have
heard, except through me, and of which neither they nor I myself know
the names.

Such, gentle reader, were my humble parents, under whose untaught, but
natural genius, setting all other advantages aside, it is not to be
wondered at that my heart should have been so completely moulded into
that spirit and, those feelings which characterize my country and her
children.

These, however, were my domestic advantages; but I now come to others,
which arose from my position in life as the son of a man who was one
of the people. My father, at the farthest point to which my memory goes
back, lived in a townland called Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, and
county of Tyrone; and I only remember living there in a cottage. From
that the family removed to a place called Tonagh, or, more familiarly,
Towney, about an English mile from Prillisk. It was here I first went to
school to a Connaught-man named Pat Frayne, who, however, remained there
only for a very short period in the neighborhood. Such was the neglected
state of education at that time, that for a year or two afterwards there
was no school sufficiently near to which I could be sent. At length it
was ascertained that a master, another Connaught-man by the way, named
O'Beirne, had opened a school--a hedge-school of course--at Pindramore.
To this I was sent, along with my brother John, the youngest of the
family next to myself. I continued with him for about a year and a
half, when who should return to our neighborhood but Pat Frayne, the
redoubtable prototype of Mat Kavanagh in “The Hedge School.” O'Beirne,
it is true, was an excellent specimen of the hedge-schoolmaster, but
nothing at all to be compared to Frayne. About the period I write of,
there was no other description of school to which any one could be sent,
and the consequence was, that rich and poor (I speak of the peasantry),
Protestant and Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist, boys and girls,
were all congregated under the same roof, to the amount of from a
hundred to a hundred and fifty, or two hundred. In this school I
remained for about a year or two, when our family removed to a place
called Nurchasy, the property of the Rev. Dr. Story, of Corick. Of
us, however, he neither could nor did know anything, for we were
under-tenants, our immediate landlord being no less a person than Hugh
Traynor, then so famous for the distillation, sub rosa, of exquisite
mountain dew, and to whom the reader will find allusions made in that
capacity more than once in the following volume. Nurchasy was within
about half a mile of Findramore, to which school, under O'Beirne, I was
again sent. Here I continued, until a classical teacher came to a place
called Tulnavert, now the property of John Birney, Esq., of Lisburn,
to whom I had the pleasure of dedicating the two first volumes of my
“Traits and Stories.” This tyrannical blockhead, whose name I do not
choose to mention, instead of being allowed to teach classics, ought to
have been put into a strait-waistcoat or the stocks, and either whipped
once in every twenty-four hours, or kept in a madhouse until the day of
his death. He had been a student in Maynooth, where he became deranged,
and was, of course, sent home to his friends, with whom he recovered
sufficiently to become cruel and hypocritical, to an extent which I have
never yet seen equalled. Whenever the son of a rich man committed an
offence, he would grind his teeth and growl like a tiger, but in no
single instance had he the moral courage or sense of justice to correct
him. On the contrary, he uniformly “nursed his wrath to keep it warm,”
 until the son of a poor man transgressed, and on his unfortunate body
he was sure to wreak signal vengeance for the stupidity or misconduct of
the wealthy blockhead. This was his system, and my readers may form some
opinion of the low ebb at which knowledge and moral feeling were at the
time, when I assure them, that not one of the humbler boys durst make a
complaint against the scoundrel at home, unless under the certainty of
being well flogged for their pains. A hedge-schoolmaster was then held
in such respect and veneration, that no matter how cruel or profligate
he might be, his person and character, unless in some extraordinary case
of cruelty, resulting in death or mutilation, were looked upon as free
from all moral or legal responsibility. This certainly was not the fault
of the people, but of those laws, which, by making education a crime,
generated ignorance, and then punished it for violating them.

For the present it is enough to say, that a most interesting child,
a niece of my own, lost her life by the severity of Pat Frayne, the
Connaught-man. In a fit of passion he caught the poor girl by the ear,
which he nearly plucked out of her head. The violence of the act broke
some of the internal muscles or tendons,--suppuration and subsequently
inflammation, first of the adjoining Parts and afterwards of the brain,
took place, and the fine intelligent little creature was laid in
a premature grave, because the ignorance of the people justified a
pedantic hedge-schoolmaster in the exercise of irresponsible cruelty.
Frayne was never prosecuted, neither was the classical despot, who by
the way sits for the picture of the fellow in whose school, and at whose
hands, the Poor Scholar receives the tyrannical and heartless treatment
mentioned in that tale. Many a time the cruelty exercised towards that
unhappy boy, whose name was Qum, has wrung my heart and brought the
involuntary tears to my eyes,--tears which I was forced to conceal,
being very well assured from experience, that any sympathy of mine, if
noticed, would be certain to procure me or any other friend of his, an
ample participation in his punishment. He was, in truth, the scape-goat
of the school, and it makes my blood boil, even whilst I write, to think
how the poor friendless lad, far removed from either father or mother,
was kicked, and cuffed, and beaten on the naked head, with a kind of
stick between a horse-rod and a cudgel, until his poor face got pale,
and he was forced to totter over to a seat in order to prevent himself
from fainting or falling in consequence of severe pain.

At length, however, the inhuman villain began to find, when it was too
late, that his ferocity, in spite of the terror which it occasioned, was
soon likely to empty his school. He now became as fawning and slavish as
he had before been insolent and savage; but the wealthy farmers of the
neighborhood, having now full cognizance of his conduct, made common
cause with the poorer men whose children were so shamefully treated, and
the result was, that in about six weeks they forced him to leave that
part of the country for want of scholars, having been literally groaned
out of it by the curses and indignation of all who knew him.

Here then was I once more at a loss for a school, and I must add, in no
disposition at all to renew my acquaintance with literature. Our family
had again removed from Nurchasy, to a place up nearer the mountains,
called Springtown, on the northern side of the parish. I was now
about fourteen, and began to feel a keen relish for all the sports and
amusements of the country, into which I entered with a spirit of youth
and enthusiasm rarely equalled. For about two years I attended no
school, but it was during this period that I received, notwithstanding,
the best part of my education. Our farm in Springtown was about sixteen
or eighteen acres, and I occasionally assisted the family in working at
it, but never regularly, for I was not called upon to do so, nor would I
have been permitted even had I wished it. It was about six months after
our removal to Springtown, that an incident in my early life occurred
which gave rise to one of the most popular tales perhaps, with the
exception of “The Miser,” that I have written--that is “The Poor
Scholar.” There being now no classical school within eighteen or twenty
miles of Springtown, it was suggested to our family by a nephew of the
parish priest, then a young man of six or eight and twenty, that, under
the circumstances, it would be a prudent step on their part to prepare
an outfit, and send me up to Munster as a poor scholar, to complete my
education. Pat Frayne, who by the way had been a poor scholar himself,
had advised the same thing before, and as the name does not involve
disgrace I felt no reluctance in going, especially as the priest's
nephew, who proposed it, had made up his mind on accompanying me for
a similar purpose. Indeed, the poor scholars who go to Munster are
indebted for nothing but their bed and board, which they receive
kindly and hospitably from the parents of the scholars. The masters are
generally paid their full terms by these pitiable beings, but this rule,
like all others, of course, has its exceptions. At all events, my
outfit was got ready, and on a beautiful morning in the month of May
I separated from my family to go in quest of education. There was no
collection, however, in my case, as mentioned in the tale; as my own
family supplied the funds supposed to be necessary. I have been present,
however, at more than one collection made for similar purposes, and
heard a good-natured sermon not very much differing from that given in
the story.

The priest's nephew, on the day we were to start, suddenly changed his
mind, and I consequently had to undertake the journey alone, which I
did with a heavy heart. The farther I got from home, the more my spirits
sank, or in the beautiful image of Goldsmith,

     “I dragged at each remove a lengthening chain.”

I travelled as far as the town of Granard, and during the journey, it
is scarcely necessary to say, that the almost parental tenderness
and hospitality which I received on my way could not be adequately
described. The reader will find an attempt at it in the story. The
parting from home and my adventures on the road are real.

Having reached Granard my courage began to fail, and my family at home,
now that I had departed from them, began also to feel something like
remorse for having permitted one so young and inexperienced as I then
was, to go abroad alone upon the world. My mother's sorrow, especially,
was deep, and her cry was, “Oh, why did I let my boy go? maybe I will
never see him again!”

At this time, as the reader may be aware from my parental education,
there was not a being alive more thoroughly imbued with superstition;
and, whether for good or ill, at all events that superstition returned
me to my family. On reaching Granard, I felt, of course, fatigued,
and soon went to bed, where I slept soundly. It was not, however, a
dreamless sleep: I thought I was going along a strange path to some
particular place, and that a mad bull met me on the road, and pursued
me with such speed and fury that I awoke in a state of singular terror.
That was sufficient; my mind had been already wavering, and the
dream determined me. The next morning after breakfast I bent my steps
homewards, and, as it happened, my return took a weighty load of bitter
grief from the heart of my mother and family. The house I stopped at
in Granard was a kind of small inn, kept by a man whose name was Peter
Grehan. Such were the incidents which gave rise to the tale of “The Poor
Scholar.”

I was now growing up fast, and began to feel a boyish ambition of
associating with, those who were older and bigger than myself. Although
miserably deficient in education--for I had been well beaten but never
taught--yet I was looked upon as a prodigy of knowledge; and I can
assure the reader that I took very good care not to dispel that
agreeable delusion. Indeed, at this time, I was as great a young
literary coxcomb as ever lived, my vanity being high and inflated
exactly in proportion to my ignorance, which was also of the purest
water. This vanity, however, resulted as much from my position and
circumstances as from any strong disposition to be vain on my part.
It was generated by the ignorance of the people, and their extreme
veneration for any thing in the shape of superior knowledge. In fact,
they insisted that I knew every earthly subject, because I had been a
couple of years at Latin, and was designed for a priest. It was useless
to undeceive men who would not be convinced, so I accordingly gave them,
as they say, “the length of their tether;” nay, to such, purpose did I
ply them with proofs of it, that my conversation soon became as fine a
specimen of pedantic bombast as ever was uttered. Not a word under
six feet could come out of my lips, even of English; but as the best
English, after all, is but commonplace, I peppered them with vile
Latin, and an occasional verse in Greek, from St. John's Gospel, which
I translated for them into a wrong meaning, with an air of lofty
superiority that made them turn up their eyes with wonder. I was then,
however, but one of a class which still exists, and will continue to do
so until a better informed generation shall prevent those who compose it
from swaggering about in all the pompous pride of young impostors,
who boast of knowing “the seven languages.” The reader will find an
illustration of this in the sketch of “Denis O'Shaughnessy going to
Maynooth.”

In the meantime, I was unconsciously but rapidly preparing myself for
a position in Irish literature, which I little dreamt I should ever
occupy. I now mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until
indulgence in them became the predominant passion of mv youth. Throwing
the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description
of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I
attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry-making in the neighborhood,
and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs, and reels, that I
was soon without a rival in the parish.

This kind of life, though very delightful to a boy of my years, was not,
however, quite satisfactory, as it afforded me no ultimate prospect, and
the death of my father had occasioned the circumstances of the family
to decline. I heard, about this time, that a distant relative of mine,
a highly respectable priest, had opened a classical school near
Glasslough, in the county of Monaghan. To him I accordingly went,
mentioned our affinity, and had my claims allowed. I attended his school
with intermission for about two years, at the expiration of which period
I once more returned to our family, who were then very much reduced.

I was now about nineteen, strong, active, and could leap two-and-twenty
feet on a dead level; but though thoroughly acquainted with Irish life
among my own class, I was as ignorant of the world as a child. Ever
since my boyhood, in consequence of the legends which I had heard from
my father, about the far-famed Lough-derg, or St. Patrick's Purgatory, I
felt my imagination fired with a romantic curiosity to perform a station
at that celebrated place. I accordingly did so, and the description of
that most penal performance, some years afterwards, not only constituted
my debut in literature, but was also the means of preventing me from
being a pleasant, strong-bodied parish priest at this day; indeed, it
was the cause of changing the whole destiny of my subsequent life.

“The Loughderg Pilgrim” is given in the present edition, and may be
relied on, not so much as an ordinary narrative, as a perfect transcript
of what takes place during the stations which are held there in the
summer months.

Having returned from this, I knew not exactly how to dispose of myself.
On one thing I was determined--never to enter the Church;--but this
resolution I kept faithfully to myself. I had nothing for it now but to
forget my sacerdotal prospects, which, as I have said, had already been
renounced, or to sink down as many others like me had done, into a mere
tiller of the earth,--a character in Ireland far more unpopular than
that which the Scotch call “a sticket minister!”

It was about this period, that chance first threw the inimitable
Adventures of the renowned Gil Bias across my path. During my whole
life I had been an insatiable reader of such sixpenny romances and
history-books as the hedge-schools afforded. Many a time have I given
up my meals rather than lose one minute from the interest excited by
the story I was perusing. Having read _Gil Bias_, however, I felt an
irrepressible passion for adventure, which nothing could divert; in
fact, I was as much the creature of the impulse it excited, as the ship
is of the helmsman, or the steam-engine of the principle that guides it.

Stimulated by this romantic love of adventure, I left my native place,
and directed my steps to the parish of Killanny, in the county of Louth,
the Catholic clergyman of which was a nephew of our own Parish Priest,
brother to him who proposed going to Munster with me, and an old
school-fellow of my own, though probably twenty years my senior. This
man's residence was within a quarter or half a mile's distance of the
celebrated Wild-goose Lodge, in which, some six months before, a
whole family, consisting of, I believe, eight persons, men, women, and
children, had been, from motives of personal vengeance, consumed to
ashes. I stopped with him for a fortnight, and succeeded in procuring
a tuition in the house of a wealthy farmer named Piers Murphy, near
Corcreagh. This, however, was a tame life, and a hard one, so I resolved
once more to give up a miserable salary and my board, for the fortunate
chances which an ardent temperament and a strong imagination perpetually
suggested to me as likely to be evolved out of the vicissitudes of life.
Urged on, therefore, by a spirit of romance, I resolved to precipitate
myself on the Irish Metropolis, which I accordingly entered with two
shillings and ninepence in my pocket; an utter stranger, of course
friendless; ignorant of the world, without aim or object, but not
without a certain strong feeling of vague and shapeless ambition, for
the truth was I had not yet begun to think, and, consequently, looked
upon life less as a reality than a vision.

Thus have I, as a faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader
from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along
those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of
the peasant alone, until I enter upon the highways of the world, and
strike into one of its greatest and most crowded thoroughfares--the
Metropolis. Whether this brief sketch of my early and humble life, my
education, my sports, my hopes and struggles, be calculated to excite
any particular interest, I know not; I can only assure my reader that
the details, so far as they go, are scrupulously correct and authentic,
and that they never would have been obtruded upon him, were it not from
an anxiety to satisfy him that in undertaking to describe the Irish
peasantry as they are, I approach the difficult task with advantages of
knowing them, which perhaps few Irish writers ever possessed; and this
is the only merit which I claim.

A few words now upon the moral and physical condition of the people may
not be unsuitable before I close, especially for the sake of those who
may wish to acquire a knowledge of their general character, previous to
their perusal of the following volume. This task, it is true, is not
one of such difficulty now as it was some years ago. Much light has
been thrown on the Irish character, not only by the great names I have
already enumerated, but by some equally high which I have omitted. On
this subject it would be impossible to overlook the names of
Lever, Maxwell, or Otway, or to forget the mellow hearth-light and
chimney-corner tone, the happy dialogue and legendary truth which
characterize the exquisite fairy legends of Crofton Croker. Much of the
difficulty of the task, I say, has been removed by these writers,
but there remains enough still behind to justify me in giving a short
dissertation upon the habits and feelings of my countrymen.

Of those whose physical state has been and is so deplorably wretched, it
may not be supposed that the tone of morals can be either high or pure;
and yet if we consider the circumstance in which he has been for such
a lengthened period placed, it is undeniable that the Irishman is a
remarkably moral man. Let us suppose, for instance, that in England
and Scotland the great body of the people had for a couple or three
centuries never received an adequate or proper education: in that case,
let us ask what the moral aspect of society in either country would be
to-day? But this is not merely the thing to be considered. The Irishman
was not only not educated, but actually punished for attempting to
acquire knowledge in the first place, and in the second, punished also
for the ignorance created by its absence. In other words, the penal
laws rendered education criminal, and then caused the unhappy people to
suffer for the crimes which proper knowledge would have prevented them
from, committing. It was just like depriving a man of his sight, and
afterwards causing him to be punished for stumbling. It is beyond
all question, that from the time of the wars of Elizabeth and the
introduction of the Reformation, until very recently, there was no fixed
system of wholesome education in the country. The people, possessed
of strong political and religious prejudices, were left in a state of
physical destitution and moral ignorance, such as were calculated to
produce ten times the amount of crime which was committed. Is it any
wonder, then, that in such a condition, social errors and dangerous
theories should be generated, and that neglect, and poverty, and
ignorance combined should give to the country a character for turbulence
and outrage? The same causes will produce the same effects in any
country, and were it not that the standard of personal and domestic
comfort was so low in Ireland, there is no doubt that the historian
would have a much darker catalogue of crime to record than he has. The
Irishman, in fact, was mute and patient under circumstances which would
have driven the better fed and more comfortable Englishman into open
outrage and contempt of all authority. God forbid that I for a moment
should become the apologist of crime, much less the crimes of my
countrymen! but it is beyond all question that the principles upon which
the country was governed have been such as to leave down to the present
day many of their evil consequences behind them. The penal code, to be
sure, is now abolished, but so are not many of its political effects
among the people. Its consequences have not yet departed from the
country, nor has the hereditary hatred of the laws, which unconsciously
descended from father to son, ceased to regulate their conduct and
opinions. Thousands of them are ignorant that ever such a thing as a
penal code existed; yet the feeling against law survives, although the
source from which it has been transmitted may be forgotten. This will
easily account for much of the political violence and crime which
moments of great excitement produce among us; nor need we feel surprised
that this state of things should be continued, to the manifest injury
of the people themselves, by the baneful effects of agitation.

The period, therefore, for putting the character of our country fairly
upon, its trial has not yet arrived; although we are willing to take the
Irishman as we find him; nor would we shrink even at the present moment
from comparing him with any of his neighbors. His political sins and
their consequences were left him as an heirloom, and result from a state
of things which he himself did not occasion. Setting these aside, where
is the man to be found in any country who has carried with him through
all his privations and penalties so many of the best virtues of our
nature? In other countries the man who commits a great crime is always
a great criminal, and the whole heart is hardened and debased, but it
is not so in Ireland. The agrarian and political outrage is often
perpetrated by men who possess the best virtues of humanity, and whose
hearts as individuals actually abhor the crime. The moral standard here
is no doubt dreadfully erroneous, and until a correct and Christian one,
emanating from a better system of education, shall be substituted for
it, it will, with a people who so think and feel, be impossible utterly
to prevent the occurrence of these great evils. We must wait for thirty
or forty years, that is, until the rising or perhaps the subsequent
generation shall be educated out of these wild and destructive
prejudices, before we can fully estimate the degree of excellence to
which our national character may arrive. In my own youth, and I am
now only forty-four years, I do not remember a single school under the
immediate superintendence of either priest or parson, and that in a
parish the extent of which is, I dare say, ten miles by eight. The
instruction of the children was altogether a matter in which no clergy
of any creed took an interest. This was left altogether to hedge
schoolmasters, a class of men who, with few exceptions, bestowed such an
education upon the people as is sufficient almost, in the absence of all
other causes, to account for much of the agrarian violence and erroneous
principles which regulate their movements and feelings on that and
similar subjects. For further information on this matter the reader is
referred to the “Hedge School.”

With respect to these darker shades of the Irish character, I feel that,
consistently with that love of truth and impartiality which has guided,
and I trust ever shall guide, my pen, I could not pass them over without
further notice. I know that it is a very questionable defence to say
that some, if not principally all, of their crimes originate in agrarian
or political vengeance. Indeed, I believe that, so far from this
circumstance being looked upon as a defence, it ought to be considered
as an aggravation of the guilt; inasmuch as it is, beyond all doubt, at
least a far more manly thing to inflict an injury upon an enemy face to
face, and under the influence of immediate resentment, than to crouch
like a cowardly assassin behind a hedge and coolly murder him without
one moment's preparation, or any means whatsoever of defence. This is a
description of crime which no man with one generous drop of blood in his
veins can think of without shame and indignation. Unhappily, however,
for the security of human life, every crime of the kind results more
from the dark tyranny of these secret confederacies, by which the lower
classes are organized, than from any natural appetite for shedding
blood. Individually, the Irish loathe murder as much as any people in
the world; but in the circumstances before us, it often happens that the
Irishman is not a free agent--very far from it: on the contrary, he
is frequently made the instrument of a system, to which he must become
either an obedient slave or a victim.

Even here, however, although nothing can or ought to be said to palliate
the cowardly and unmanly crime of assassination, yet something can
certainly be advanced to account for the state of feeling by which,
from time to time, and by frequent occurrence, it came to be so
habitual among the people, that by familiarity it became stripped of its
criminality and horror.

Now it is idle, and it would be dishonest, to deny the fact, that the
lower Irish, until a comparatively recent period, were treated with
apathy and gross neglect by the only class to whom they could or ought
to look up for sympathy or protection. The conferring of the elective
franchise upon the forty-shilling freeholders, or in other words upon
paupers, added to the absence of proper education, or the means
of acquiring it, generated, by the fraudulent subdivision of small
holdings, by bribery, perjury, and corruption, a state of moral feeling
among the poorer classes which could not but be productive of much
crime. And yet, notwithstanding this shameful prostitution of their
morals and comfort, for the purposes of political ambition or personal
aggrandizement, they were in general a peaceable and enduring people;
and it was only when some act of unjustifiable severity, or oppression
in the person of a middleman, agent, or hardhearted landlord, drove them
houseless upon the world, that they fell back upon the darker crimes
of which I am speaking. But what, I ask, could be expected from such a
state of things? And who generated it? It is not, indeed, to be wondered
at that a set of men, who so completely neglected their duties as
the old landlords of Ireland did, should have the very weapons turned
against themselves which their own moral profligacy first put into the
hands of those whom they corrupted. Up to this day the peasantry are
charged with indifference to the obligation of an oath, and in those who
still have anything to do in elections, I fear with too much truth. But
then let us inquire who first trained and familiarized them to it? Why,
the old landlords of Ireland; and now their descendants, and such of
themselves as survive, may behold, in the crimes which disgrace the
country, the disastrous effects of a bad system created by their
forefathers or themselves.

In the meantime, I have no doubt that by the removal of the causes which
produced this deplorable state of things, their disastrous effects will
also soon disappear. That the present landlords of Ireland are, with the
ordinary number of exceptions, a very different class of men from those
who have gone before them, is a fact which will ultimately tell for the
peace and prosperity of the country. Let the ignorance of the people,
or rather the positive bad knowledge with which, as to a sense of civil
duties, their minds are filled, be removed, and replaced with principles
of a higher and more Christian tendency. Let the Irish landlords
consider the interests of their tenantry as their own, and there is
little doubt that with the aids of science, agricultural improvement,
and the advantages of superior machinery, the Irish will become a
prosperous, contented, and great people.

It is not just to the general character of our people, however, to speak
of these crimes as national; for, in fact, they are not so. If Tipperary
and some of the adjoining parts of Munster were blotted out of the moral
map of the country, we would stand as a nation in a far higher position
than that which we occupy in the opinion of our neighbors. This is a
distinction which in justice to us ought to be made, for it is surely
unfair to charge the whole kingdom with the crimes which disgrace only
a single county of it, together with a few adjacent districts--allowing,
of course, for some melancholy exceptions in other parts.

Having now discussed, with, I think, sufficient candor and impartiality,
that portion of our national character which appears worst and weakest
in the eyes of our neighbors, and attempted to show that pre-existing
circumstances originating from an unwise policy had much to do in
calling into existence and shaping its evil impulses, I come now to
a more agreeable task--the consideration, of our social and domestic
virtues. And here it is where the Irishman immeasurably outstrips all
competitors. His hospitality is not only a habit but a principle; and
indeed of such a quick and generous temperament is he, that in ninety
cases out of a hundred the feeling precedes the reflection, which in
others prompts the virtue. To be a stranger and friendless, or suffering
hunger and thirst, is at any time a sufficient passport to his heart and
purse; but it is not merely the thing or virtue, but also his manner
of doing it, that constitutes the charm which runs through his conduct.
There is a natural politeness and sincerity in his manner which no man
can mistake; and it is a fact, the truth of which I have felt a thousand
times, that he will make you feel the acceptance of the favor of
kindness he bestows to be a compliment to himself rather than to you.
The delicate ingenuity with which he diminishes the nature or amount of
his own kindness, proves that he is no common man, either in heart or
intellect; and when all fails he will lie like Lucifer himself,
and absolutely seduce you into an acceptance of his hospitality or
assistance. I speak now exclusively of the peasantry. Certainly in
domestic life there is no man so exquisitely affectionate and humanized
as the Irishman. The national imagination is active and the national
heart warm, and it follows very naturally that he should be, and is,
tender and strong in all his domestic relations. Unlike the people of
other nations, his grief is loud but lasting, vehement but deep; and
whilst its shadow has been chequered by the laughter and mirth of a
cheerful disposition, still in the moments of seclusion, at his bedside
prayer, or over the grave of those he loved, it will put itself forth
after half a life with a vivid power of recollection which is sometimes
almost beyond belief.

The Irish, however, are naturally a refined people; but by this I mean
the refinement which appreciates and cherishes whatever there is in
nature, as manifested through the influence of the softer arts of music
and poetry. The effect of music upon the Irish heart I ought to know
well, and no man need tell me that a barbarous or cruel people ever
possessed national music that was beautiful and pathetic. The music of
any nation is the manifestation of its general feeling, and not that
which creates it; although there is no doubt but the one when formed
perpetuates and reproduces the other. It is no wonder, then, that the
domestic feelings of the Irish should be so singularly affectionate
and strong, when we consider that they have been, in spite of every
obstruction, kept under the softening influence of music and poetry.
This music and poetry, too, essentially their own--and whether streaming
of a summer through their still glens, or poured forth at the winter
hearth, still, by its soft and melancholy spirit, stirring up a thousand
tender associations that must necessarily touch and improve the heart.
And it is for this reason that, that heart becomes so remarkably
eloquent, if not poetical, when moved by sorrow. Many a time I have seen
a Keener commence her wail over the corpse of a near relative, and by
degrees she has risen from the simple wail or cry to a high but mournful
recitative, extemporized, under the excitement of the moment, into
sentiments that were highly figurative and impressive. In this she
was aided very much by the genius of the language, which possesses the
finest and most copious vocabulary in the world for the expression of
either sorrow or love.

It has been said that the Irish, notwithstanding a deep susceptibility
of sorrow, are a light-hearted people; and this is strictly true. What,
however, is the one fact but a natural consequence of the other? No man
for instance ever possessed a higher order of humor, whose temperament
was not naturally melancholy, and no country in the world more clearly
establishes that point than Ireland. Here the melancholy and mirth are
not simply in a proximate state, but frequently flash together, and
again separate so quickly, that the alternation or blending, as the case
may be, whilst it is felt by the spectators, yet stands beyond all known
rules of philosophy to solve it. Any one at all acquainted with Ireland,
knows that in no country is mirth lighter, or sorrow deeper, or the
smile and the tear seen more frequently on the face at the same moment.
Their mirth, however, is not levity, nor their sorrow gloom; and for
this reason none of those dreary and desponding reactions take place,
which, as in France especially, so frequently terminate in suicide.

The recreations of the Irish were very varied and some of them of
a highly intellectual cast. These latter, however, have altogether
disappeared from the country, or at all events are fast disappearing.
The old Harper is now hardly seen; the Senachie, where he exists, is but
a dim and faded representative of that very old Chronicler in his palmy
days; and the Prophecy-man unfortunately has survived the failure of
his best and most cherished predictions. The poor old Prophet's stock
in trade is nearly exhausted, and little now remains but the slaughter
which is to take place at the mill of Louth, when human blood, and the
miller to have six fingers and two thumbs on each hand, as a collateral
prognostication of that bloody event.

The amusement derived from these persons was undoubtedly of a very
imaginative character, and gives sufficient proof, that had the national
intellect been duly cultivated, it is difficult to say in what position
as a literary country Ireland might have stood at this day. At present
the national recreations, though still sufficiently varied and numerous
are neither so strongly marked nor diversified as formerly. Fun, or
the love of it, to be sure, is an essential principle in the Irish
character; and nothing that can happen, no matter how solemn or how
sorrowful it may be, is allowed to proceed without it. In Ireland the
house of death is sure to be the merriest one in the neighborhood; but
here the mirth is kindly and considerately introduced, from motives of
sympathy--in other words, for the alleviation of the mourners' sorrow.
The same thing may be said of its association with religion. Whoever has
witnessed a Station in Ireland made at some blessed lake or holy well,
will understand this. At such places it is quite usual to see young
men and women devoutly circumambulating the well or lake on their bare
knees, with all the marks of penitence and contrition strongly
impressed upon their faces; whilst again, after an hour or two, the same
individuals may be found in a tent dancing with ecstatic vehemence to
the music of the bagpipe or fiddle.

All these things, however, will be found, I trust I may say faithfully
depicted in the following volume--together with many other important
features of our general character; which I would dwell on here, were it
not that they are detailed very fully in other parts of my works, and I
do not wish to deprive them of the force of novelty when they occur, nor
to appear heavy by repetition.

In conclusion, I have endeavored, with what success has been already
determined by the voice of my own country, to give a panorama of Irish
life among the people--comprising at one view all the strong points of
their general character--their loves, sorrows, superstitions, piety,
amusements, crimes, and virtues; and in doing this, I can say with
solemn truth that I painted them honestly, and without reference to the
existence of any particular creed or party.

W. Carleton.

Dublin.




NED M'KEOWN.

Ned M'Keown's house stood exactly in an angle, formed by the cross-roads
of Kilrudden. It was a long, whitewashed building, well thatched and
furnished with the usual appurtenances of yard and offices. Like most
Irish houses of the better sort, it had two doors, one opening into a
garden that sloped down from the rear in a southern direction. The barn
was a continuation of the dwelling-house, and might be distinguished
from it by a darker shade of color, being only rough-cast. It was
situated on a small eminence, but, with respect to the general locality
of the country, in a delightful vale, which runs up, for twelve or
fourteen miles, between two ranges of dark, well-defined mountains, that
give to the interjacent country the form of a low inverted arch.
This valley, which altogether, allowing for the occasional breaks and
intersections of hill-ranges, extends upwards of thirty miles in length,
is the celebrated valley of the “Black Pig,” so well known in the
politico-traditional history of Ireland, and the legends connected with
the famous Beal Dearg.*

     * The following extract, taken from a sketch by the author
     called “The Irish Prophecy-man,” contains a very appropriate
     illustration of the above passage. “I have a little book
     that contains a prophecy of the milk-white hind an' the
     bloody panther, an' a foreboding of the slaughter there's to
     be in the Valley of the Black Pig, as foretould by Beal
     Derg, or the prophet wid the red mouth, who never was known
     to speak but when he prophesied, or to prophesy but when he
     spoke.”

     “The Lord bless an' keep us!--an' why was he called the Man
     with the Red Mouth, Barney?”

     “I'll tell you that: first, bekase he always prophesied
     about the slaughter an' fightin' that was to take place in
     the time to come; an', secondly, bekase, while he spoke, the
     red blood always trickled out of his mouth, as a proof that
     what he foretould was true.”

     “Glory be to God! but that's wondherful all out. Well,
     we'll!”

     “Ay, an' Beal Deig, or the Red Mouth, is still livin'.”

     “Livin! why, is he a man of our own time?”

     “Our own time! The Lord help you! It's more than a thousand
     years since he made the prophecy. The case you see is this:
     he an' the ten thousand witnesses are lyin' in an enchanted
     sleep in one of the Montherlony mountains.”

     “An' how is that known, Barney?”

     “It's known, Every night at a certain hour one of the
     witnesses--an' they're all sogers, by the way--must come out
     to look for the sign that's to come.”

     “An' what is that, Barney?”

     “It's the fiery cross; an' when he sees one on aich of the
     four mountains of the north, he's to know that the same
     sign's abroad in all the other parts of the kingdom. Beal
     Derg an' his men are then to waken up, an' by their aid the
     Valley of the Black Pig is to be set free forever.”

     “An' what is the Black Pig, Barney?”

     “The Prospitarian church, that stretches from Enniskillen to
     Darry, an' back again from Darry to Enniskillen.”

     “Well, well, Barney, but prophecy is a strange thing, to be
     sure! Only think of men livin' a thousand years!”

     “Every night one of Beal Derg's men must go to the mouth of
     the cave, which opens of itself, an' then look out for the
     sign that's expected. He walks up to the top of the
     mountain, an' turns to the four corners of the heavens, to
     thry if he can see it; an' when he finds that he cannot, he
     goes back to Beal Derg. who, afther the other touches him,
     starts up and axis him, 'Is the time come?' He replies, 'No;
     the _man is_, but the _hour is not!_' an' that instant
     they're both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is
     on the mountain top, the mouth of the cave is open, an' any
     one may go in that might happen to see it. One man it
     appears did, an' wishin' to know from curiosity whether the
     sogers were dead or livin', he touched one of them wid his
     hand, who started up an' axed him the same question, 'Is the
     time come?' Very fortunately he said, 'No;' an' that minute
     the soger was as sound in his trance as before.”

     “An', Barney, what did the soger mane when he said. 'The man
     is, but the hour is not?'”

     “What did he mane? I'll tell you that. The man is
     Bonyparty, which manes, when put into proper explanation,
     the _right side_; that is, the true cause. Larned men have
     found _that_ out.”

That part of it where Ned M'Keown resided was peculiarly beautiful and
romantic. From the eminence on which the house stood, a sweep of the
most fertile meadowland stretched away to the foot of a series of
intermingled hills and vales, which bounded this extensive carpet
towards the north. Through these meadows ran a smooth river, called the
Mullin-burn, which wound its way through them with such tortuosity, that
it was proverbial in the neighborhood to say of any man remarkable for
dishonesty, “He's as crooked as the Mullin-burn,” an epithet which was
sometimes, although unjustly, jocularly applied to Ned himself. This
deep but narrow river had its origin in the glens and ravines of a
mountain which bounded the vale in a south-eastern direction; and
after sudden and heavy rains it tumbled down with such violence and
impetuosity over the crags and rock-ranges in its way, and accumulated
so amazingly, that on reaching the meadows it inundated their surface,
carrying away sheep, cows, and cocks of hay upon its yellow flood. It
also boiled and eddied, and roared with a hoarse _sugh_, that was heard
at a considerable distance.

On the north-west side ran a ridge of high hills, with the cloud-capped
peek of Knockmany rising in lofty eminence above them; these, as they
extended towards the south, became gradually deeper in their hue, until
at length they assumed the shape and form of heath-clad mountains,
dark and towering. The prospect on either range is highly pleasing,
and capable of being compared with any I have ever seen, in softness,
variety, and that serene lustre which reposes only on the surface of a
country rich in the beauty of fertility, and improved, by the hand of
industry and taste. Opposite Knockmany, at a distance of about four
miles, on the south-eastern side, rose the huge and dark outline of
Cullimore, standing out in gigantic relief against the clear blue of a
summer sky, and flinging down his frowning and haughty shadow almost to
the firm-set base of his lofty rival; or, in winter, wrapped in a mantle
of clouds, and crowned with unsullied snow, reposing in undisturbed
tranquillity, whilst the loud voice of storms howled around him.

To the northward, immediately behind Cullimore, lies Althadhawan, a
deep, craggy, precipitous glen, running up to its very base, and wooded
with oak, hazel, rowan-tree, and holly. This picturesque glen extends
two or three miles, until it melts into the softness of grove and
meadow, in the rich landscape below. Then, again, on the opposite side,
is _Lumford's Glen_, with its overhanging rocks, whose yawning depth and
silver waterfall, of two hundred feet, are at once finely and fearfully
contrasted with the elevated peak of Knockmany, rising into the clouds
above it.

From either side of these mountains may be seen six or eight country
towns--the beautiful grouping of hill and plain, lake, river, grove, and
dell--the reverend cathedral (of Clogher)--the white-washed cottage, and
the comfortable farm-house. To these may be added the wild upland
and the cultivated demesne, the green sheep-walk, the dark moor,
the splendid mansion, and ruined castle of former days. Delightful
remembrance! Many a day, both of sunshine and storm, have I, in the
strength and pride of happy youth, bounded, fleet as the mountain foe,
over these blue hills! Many an evening, as the yellow beams of the
setting sun shot slantingly, like rafters of gold, across the depth
of this blessed and peaceful valley, have I followed, in solitude, the
impulses of a wild and wayward fancy, and sought the quiet dell, or
viewed the setting sun, as he scattered his glorious and shining beams
through the glowing foliage of the trees, in the vista, where I stood;
or wandered along the river whose banks were fringed with the hanging
willow, whilst I listened to the thrush singing among the hazels that
crowned the sloping green above me, or watched the splashing otter, as
he ventured from the dark angles and intricacies of the upland glen,
to seek his prey in the meadow-stream during the favorable dusk of
twilight. Many a time have I heard the simple song of Roger M'Cann,
coming from the top of brown Dunroe, mellowed, by the stillness of the
hour, to something far sweeter to the heart than all that the labored
pomp of musical art and science can effect; or the song of Katty Roy,
the beauty of the village, streaming across the purple-flowered moor,

     “Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains.”

Many a time, too, have I been gratified, in the same poetical hour, by
the sweet sound of honest Ned M'Keown's ungreased cartwheels, clacking,
when nature seemed to have fallen asleep after the day-stir and
animation of rural business--for Ned was sometimes a carman--on his
return from Dublin with a load of his own groceries, without as much
money in his pocket as would purchase oil wherewith to silence the
sounds which the friction produced--regaling his own ears the while, as
well as the music of the cart would permit his melody to be heard, with
his favorite tune of Cannie Soogah.*

     * “The Jolly Pedlar,”--a fine old Irish air.

Honest, blustering, good-humored Ned was the indefatigable merchant of
the village; ever engaged in some ten or twenty pound speculation, the
capital of which he was sure to extort, perhaps for the twelfth time,
from the savings of Nancy's frugality, by the equivocal test of a month
or six weeks' consecutive sobriety, and which said speculation he never
failed to wind up by the total loss of the capital for Nancy, and
the capital loss of a broken head for himself. Ned had eternally some
bargain on his hands: at one time you might see him a yarn-merchant,
planted in the next market-town upon the upper step of Mr. Birney's
hall-door, where the yarn-market was held, surrounded by a crowd of
eager country-women, anxious to give Ned the preference, first, because
he was a well-wisher; secondly, because he hadn't his heart in the
penny; and thirdly, because he gave sixpence a spangle more than any
other man in the market.

There might Ned be found; with his twenty pounds of hard silver jingling
in the bottom of a green bag, as a decoy to his customers, laughing loud
as he piled the yarn in and ostentatious heap, which in the pride of his
commercial sagacity, he had purchased at a dead loss. Again you might
see him at a horse-fair, cantering about on the back of some sleek
but broken-winded jade, with spavined legs, imposed on him as “a great
bargain entirely,” by the superior cunning of some rustic sharper; or
standing over a hogshead of damaged flaxseed, in the purchase of which
he shrewdly suspected himself of having overreached the seller--by
allowing him for it a greater price than the prime seed of the market
would have cost tim. In short, Ned was never out of a speculation, and
whatever he undertook was sure to prove a complete failure. But he
had one mode of consolation, which consisted in sitting down with the
fag-end of Nancy's capital in his pocket, and drinking night and day
with this neighbor and that, whilst a shilling remained; and when he
found himself at the end of his tether, he was sure to fasten a quarrel
on some friend or acquaintance, and to get his head broken for his
pains.

None of all this blustering, however, happened within the range of
Nancy's jurisdiction. Ned, indeed, might drink and sing, and swagger and
fight--and he contrived to do so; but notwithstanding all his apparent
courage, there was one eye which made him quail, and before which he
never put on the hector;--there was one, in whose presence the loudness
of his song would fall away into a very awkward and unmusical quaver,
and under whose glance his laughing face often changed to the visage of
a man who is disposed to anything but mirth.

The fact was this: Whenever Ned found that his speculation was gone
a shaughran, (*Gone astray) as he termed it, he fixed himself in some
favorite public house, from whence he seldom stirred while his money
lasted, except when dislodged by Nancy, who usually, upon learning where
he had taken cover, paid him an unceremonious visit, to which Ned's
indefensible delinquency gave the color of legitimate authority. Upon
these occasions, Nancy, accompanied by two sturdy “servant-boys,” would
sally forth to the next market-town, for the purpose of bringing home
“graceless Ned,” as she called him. And then you might see Ned between
the two servants, a few paces in advance of Nancy, having very much
the appearance of a man performing a pilgrimage to the gallows, or of
a deserter guarded back to his barrack, in order to become a target for
the muskets of his comrades. Ned's compulsory return always became
a matter of some notoriety; for Nancy's excursion in quest of the
“graceless” was not made without frequent denunciations of wrath against
him, and many melancholy apologies to the neighbors for entering upon
the task of personally securing him. By this means her enterprise was
sure to get wind, and a mob of the idle young men and barefooted
urchins of the village, with Bob M'Cann, “a three-quarter clift” * of
a fellow--half knave, half fool, was to be found, a little below the
village, upon an elevation of the road, that commanded a level stretch
of half a mile or so, in anxious expectation of the procession. No
sooner had this arrived at the point of observation, than the little
squadron would fall rearward of the principal group, for the purpose of
extracting from Nancy a full and particular account of the capture.

[Illustration: PAGE 656-- Bringing home “graceless Ned,”]

     * This is equal to the proverb--“he wants a square,” that
     is, though knavish not thoroughly rational; in other words,
     a combination of knave and fool. Bob, in consequence of his
     accomplishments, was always a great favorite in the village.
     Upon some odd occasions he was a ready and willing drudge at
     everything, and as strong as a ditch. Give him only a good
     fog-meal--which was merely a trifle, just what would serve
     three men or so--give him, we say, a fog-meal of this kind,
     about five times a day, with a liberal promise of more, and
     never was there a Scotch Brownie who could get through so
     much work. He knew no fatigue; frost and cold had no power
     over him; wind, sleet, and hail he laughed at; rain! it
     stretched his skin, he said, after a meal--and that, he
     added, was a comfort. Notwithstanding all this, he was
     neither more nor less than an impersonation of laziness,
     craft, and gluttony. The truth is, that unless in the hope
     of being gorged he would do nothing; and the only way to get
     anything out of him was, never to let the gorge precede the
     labor, but always, on the contrary, to follow it. Bob's
     accomplishments were not only varied, but of a very elevated
     order, and the means of holding him in high odor among us.
     Great and wonderful, Heaven knows, did we look upon his
     endowments to be. No man, wise or otherwise, could “hunt the
     brock,” alias the badger, within a hundred miles of Bob; for
     when he covered his mouth with his two hands, and gave forth
     the very sounds which the badger is said to utter, did we
     not look upon him--Bob--with as much wonder and reverence as
     we would have done upon the badger himself? Phup-um-phup--
     phup-um-phup--phup-um--phup-um--phup-um-phup. Who but a
     first-rate genius could accomplish this feat in such a
     style? Bob could crow like a cock, bark like a dog, mew like
     a cat, neigh like a horse, bray like an ass, or gobble like
     a turkey-cock. Unquestionably, I have never heard him
     equalled as an imitator of birds and beasts. Bob's crack
     feat, however, was performing the Screw-pin Dance, of which
     we have only this to say, that by whatsoever means he became
     acquainted with it, it is precisely the same dance which is
     said to have been exhibited by some strolling Moor before
     the late Queen Caroline. It is, indeed, very strange, but no
     less true, that many of the oriental customs are yet
     prevalent in the remote and isolated parts of Ireland. Had
     the late Mr. O'Brien, author of the Essay on Irish Round
     Towers, seen Bob perform the dance I speak of, he would have
     hailed him as a regular worshipper of Budh, and adduced his
     performance as a living confirmation of his theory. Poor
     Bob! he is gone the way of all fools, and all flesh.

“Indeed, childher, it's no wonder for yez to enquire! Where did I get
him, Dick?--musha, and where would I get him but in the ould place,
a-hagur; with the ould set: don't yez know that a dacent place or dacent
company wouldn't sarve Ned?--nobody but Shane Martin, and Jimmy Tague,
and the other blackguards.” *

     * The reader, here, is not to rely implicitly upon the
     accuracy of Nancy's description of the persons alluded to.
     It is true the men were certainly companions and intimate
     acquaintances of Ned's, but not entitled to the epithet
     which Nancy in her wrath bestowed upon them. Shane was a
     rollicking fighting, drinking butcher, who cared not a fig!
     whether he treated you to a drink or a drubbing, indeed, it
     was at all times extremely difficult to say whether he was
     likely to give you the drink first or the drubbing
     afterwards, or vice versa. Sometimes he made the drubbing
     the groundwork for the drink and quite as frequently the
     drink the groundwork for the drubbing. Either one or other
     you were sure to receive at his hands; but his general
     practice was to give both. Shane, in fact, was a good-
     humored fellow, well liked, and nobody's enemy but his own.
     Jemmy Tague was a quiet man, who could fight his corner,
     however, if necessary. Shane,was called Kittogue Shane, from
     being left-handed. Both were butchers, and both, we believe,
     alive and kicking at this day.

“And what will you do with him, Nancy?”

“Och! thin, Dick, avourneen, it's myself that's jist tired thinking of
that; at any rate, consamin' to the loose foot he'll get this blessed
month to come, Dick, agra!”

“Throth, Nancy,” another mischievous monkey would exclaim, “if
you hadn't great patience entirely, you couldn't put up with such
threatment, at all at all.”

“Why thin, God knows it's true for-you, Barney. D'ye hear that,
'graceless?' the very childhre making a laughing-stock and a may-game of
you!--but wait till we get under the roof, any how.”

“Ned,” a third would say, “isn't it a burning shame for you to break
the poor crathur's heart this a-way? Throth, but you ought to hould down
your head, sure enough--a dacent woman! that only for her you wouldn't
have a house over you, so you wouldn't.”

“And throth, and the same house is going, Tim,” Nancy would exclaim,
“and when it goes, let him see thin who'll do for him; let him thry if
his blackguards will stand to him, when he won't have poor foolish Nancy
at his back.”

During these conversations, Ned would walk on between his two guards
with a dogged-looking and condemned face; Nancy behind him, with his own
cudgel, ready to administer an occasional bang whenever he attempted
to slacken his pace, or throw over his shoulder a growl of dissent or
justification.

On getting near home, the neighbors would occasionally pop out their
heads, with a smile of good-humored satire on their faces, which Nancy
was very capable of translating:

“Ay,” she would say, addressing them, “I've caught him--here he is to
the fore. Indeed you may well laugh, Kitty Rafferty; not a one of myself
blames you for it.--Ah, ye mane crathur,” aside to Ned, “if you had the
blood of a hen in you, you wouldn't have the neighbors braking their
hearts laughing at you in sich a way; and above all the people in the
world, them Rafferty's, that got the decree against us at the last
sessions, although I offered to pay within fifteen shillings of the
differ--the grubs!”

Having seen her hopeful charge safely deposited on the hob, Nancy would
throw her cloak into this corner, and her bonnet into that, with the air
of a woman absorbed by the consideration of some vexatious trial;
she would then sit down, and, lighting her doodeen, (* a short pipe)
exclaim--

“Wurrah, wurrah! but it's me that's the heart-scalded crathur with that
man's four quarters! The Lord may help me and grant me patience with
him, any way!--to have my little honest, hard-earned penny spint among
a pack of vagabonds, that don't care if him and me wor both down the
river, so they could get their skinful of drink out of him! No matther,
agra, things can't long be this a-way; but what does Ned care?--give him
drink and fighting, and his blackguards about him, and that's his glory.
There now's the landlord coming down upon us for the rint; and unless he
takes the cows out of the byre, or the bed from anundher us, what in the
wide earth is there for him?”

The current of this lecture was never interrupted by a single
observation from Ned, who usually employed himself in silently playing
with “Bunty;” a little black cur, without a tail, and a great favorite
with Nancy; or, if he noticed anything out of its place in the house,
he would arrange it with great apparent care. In the meantime, Nancy's
wrath generally evaporated with the smoke of the pipe--a circumstance
which Ned well knew; for after she had sucked it until it emitted a
shrill, bubbling sound, like that from a reed, her brows, which wore
at other times an habitual frown, would gradually relax into a more
benevolent expression--the parenthetical curves on each side of her
mouth, formed by the irascible pursing of her lips, would become less
marked--the dog or cat, or whatever else came in her way, instead
of being kicked aside, or pursued in an underfit of digressional
peevishness, would be put out of her path with gentler force--so that
it was, in such circumstances, a matter of little difficulty to perceive
that conciliation would soon be the order of the day. Ned's conduct on
these critical occasions was very prudent and commendable: he still gave
Nancy her own way; never “jawed back to her;” but took shelter, as it
were, under his own patience, until the storm had passed, and the sun of
her good humor began to shine out again. Nancy herself, now softened
by the fumes of her own pigtail, usually made the first overtures to a
compromise, but, without departing from the practice and principles
of higher negotiators; always in an indirect manner: as, “Biddy,
avourneen,” speaking to her niece, “maybe that crathur,” pointing! to
Ned, “ate nothing to-day; you had better, agra! get him the could bacon
that's in the cupboard, and warm for him, upon the greeshaugh, (* hot
embers) them yallow-legs (* a kind of potato) that's in the colindher;
though God he knows it's ill my common (* It's ill-becoming--or it ill
becomes me, to everlook his conduct)--but no matther, ahagur! There's
enough said, I'm thinking--give them to him.”

On Ned seating himself to his bacon and potatoes, Nancy would light
another pipe, and plant herself on the opposite hob, putting some
interrogatory to him, in the way of business--always concerning a third
person, and still in a tone of dry ironical indifference: as--

“Did you see Jimmy Connolly on your travels?”

“No.”

“Humph! Can you tell us if Andy Morrow sould his coult?”

“He did.”

“May be you have _gumption_ enough to know what he got for him?”

“Fifteen guineas.”

“In troth, and it's more nor a poor body would get; but, anyway, Andy
Morrow desarves to get a good price; he's a man that takes care of his
own business, and minds nothing else. I wish that filly of ours was
dockt; you ought to spake to Jim M'Quade about her: it's time to make
her up--you know, we'll want to sell her for the rint.”

This was an assertion, by the way, which Ned knew to have everything but
truth in it.

“Never heed the filly,” Ned would reply, “I'll get Charley Lawdher (*
A blacksmith, and an honest man) to dock her--but it's not her I'm
thinking of: did you hear the news about the tobacky?”

“No; but I hope we won't be long go.”

“Well, any how, we wor in luck to buy in them three last rowls.”

“Eh?--in luck? death-alive, how, Ned?”

“Sure there was three ships of it lost last week, on their way from the
kingdom of Swuzerland, in the Aist Indians, where it grows: we can rise
it thruppence a-pound now.”

“No, Ned! you're not in airnest?”

“Faith, Nancy, you may say I am; and as soon as Tom Loan comes home from
Dublin, he'll tell us all about it; and for that matther, maybe it may
rise sixpence a-pound; any how we'll gain a lob by it, I'm thinking.”

“May I never stir, but that's luck! Well, Ned, you may thank me for
that, any way, or sorra rowl we'd have in the four corners of the
house; and you wanted to persuade me against buying them; but I knew
betther--for the tobacky's always sure to get a bit of a hitch at this
time o' the year.”

“Bedad, you can do it, Nancy: I'll say that for you--that is, and give
you your own way.”

“Eh!--can't I, Ned? And, what waa betther, I bate down Pether M'Entee
three-ha'pence a-pound afther I bought them.”

“Ha! ha! ha!--by my sannies, Nancy, as to market-making, they may
all throw their caps at you, you thief o' the world; you can do them
nately!”

“Ha! ha! ha! Stop, Ned; don't drink that water--it's not from the
garden-well. I'll jist mix a sup of this last stuff we got from the
mountains, till you taste it: I think it's not worse nor the last--for
Hugh Traynor's * an ould hand at making it.”

     * Hugh, who, by the way, is still living, and, I am glad to
     hear, in improved circumstances, was formerly in the habit
     of making a drop of the right sort.

This was all Ned wanted: his point was now carried; but with respect to
the rising of the tobacco, the less that is said about it the bettor for
his veracity.

Having thus given the reader a slight sketch of Ned and Nancy, and of
the beautiful valley in which this worthy speculator had his residence,
I shall next proceed to introduce him to the village circle, which,
during the long winter nights, might be found in front of Ned's
kitchen-fire of blazing turf, whose light was given back in ruddy
reflection from the bright pewter plates, that were ranged upon the
white and well-scoured dresser in just and gradual order, from the small
egg-plate to the large and capacious dish, whereon, at Christmas and
Easter, the substantial round of corned beef used to rear itself so
proudly over the more ignoble joints at the lower end of the table.

Seated in this clear-obscure of domestic light--which, after all, gives
the heart a finer and more touching notion of enjoyment than the glitter
of the theatre or the blaze of the saloon--might be found first, Andy
Morrow,* the juryman of the quarter-sessions, sage and important in the
consciousness of legal knowledge, and somewhat dictatorial withal in its
application to such knotty points as arose out of the subjects of
their nocturnal debates. Secondly, Bob Gott, who filled the foreign and
military departments, and related the wonderful history of the ghost
which appeared to him on the night after the battle of Bunker's-hill. To
him succeeded Tom M'Roarkin, the little asthmatic anecdotarian of half
the country,--remarkable for chuckling at his own stories. Then came old
M'Kinny, poacher and horse-jockey; little, squeaking, thin-faced Alick
M'Kinley, a facetious farmer of substance; and Shane Fadh, who handed
down, traditions and fairy tales. Enthroned on one hob sat Pat Frayne,
the schoolmaster with the short arm, who read and explained the
newspaper for “old Square Colwell,” and was looked upon as premier to
the aforesaid cabinet; Ned himself filled the opposite seat of honor.

One night, a little before the Christmas holidays in the year 18--, the
personages just described were seated around Ned's fire, some with their
chirping pints of ale or porter, and others with their quantum of
_Hugh Traynor_, or mountain-dew, and all with good humor, and a strong
tendency to happiness, visible in their faces. The night was dark,
close, and misty; so dark, indeed, that, as Nancy said, “you could
hardly see your finger before you.” Ned himself was full of fun, with
a pint of porter beside him, and a pipe in his mouth, just in his glory
for the night. Opposite to him was Pat Frayne, with an old newspaper on
his knee, which he had just perused for the edification of his
audience; beside him was, Nancy, busily employed in knitting a pair
of sheep's-grey stockings for Ned; the remaining personages formed a
semicircular ring about the hearth. Behind, on the kitchen-table sat
Paddy Smith, the servant-man, with three or four of the _gorsoons_ of
the village about him, engaged in an under-plot of their own. On the
other, a little removed from the light, sat Ned's two nieces, Biddy and
Bessy Connolly, former with Atty Johnson's mouth within whisper-reach
of her ear, and the latter seated close to her professed admirer, Billy
Fulton, her uncle's shopman.* This group; was completely abstracted from
the entertainment which was going forward in the circle round the fire.

     * Each pair have been since married, and live not more
     happily than I wish them. Fulton still lives in Ned's house
     at the Cross-roads.

“I wondher,” said Andy Morrow, “what makes Joe M'Crea throw down that
fine ould castle of his, in Aughentain?”

“I'm tould,” said M'Roarkin, “that he expects money; for they say
there's a lot of it buried somewhere about the same building.”

“Jist as much as there's in my wig,” replied Shane Fadh, “and there's
ne'er a pocket to it yet. Why, bless your sowl, how could there be money
in it, whin the last man of the Grameses that owned it--I mane of the
ould stock, afore it went into Lord Mountjoy's hands--sould it out, ran
through the money, and died begging afther'? Did none of you ever hear
of--

     '---- ---- ---- ---- Ould John Grame,
     That swally'd the castle of Aughentain?'”

“That was long afore my time,” said the poacher; “but I know that the
rabbit-burrow between that and Jack Appleden's garden will soon be run
out.”

“Your time!” responded Shane Fadh, with contempt; “ay, and your father's
afore you: my father doesn't remimber more nor seeing his funeral, and
a merry one it was; for my grandfather, and some of them that had a
respect for the family and his forbarers, if they hadn't it for himself,
made up as much money among them as berried him dacently any how,--ay,
and gave him a rousin' wake into the bargain, with lashins of whiskey,
stout beer, and ale; for in them times--God be with them every farmer
brewed his own ale and beer;--more betoken, that one pint of it was
worth a keg of this wash of yours, Ned.”

“Wasn't it he that used to _appear?_” inquired M'Roarkin.

“Sure enough he did, Tom.”

“Lord save us,” said Nancy, “what could trouble him, I dunna?”

“Why,” continued Shane Fadh, “some said one thing, and some another;
but the upshot of it was this: when the last of the Grameses sould the
estate, castle, and all, it seems he didn't resave all the purchase
money; so, afther he had spint what he got, he applied to the purchaser
for the remainder--him that the Mountjoy family bought it from; but it
seems he didn't draw up writings, or sell it according to law, so that
the thief o' the world baffled him from day to day, and wouldn't give
him a penny--bekase he knew, the blaggard, that the Square was then as
poor as a church mouse, and hadn't money enough to thry it at law with
him; but the Square was always a simple asy-going man. One day he went
to this fellow, riding on an ould garran, with a shoe loose--the only
baste he had in the world--and axed him, for God's sake, to give him of
what he owed him, if it was ever so little; 'for,' says he, 'I huve
not as much money betune me and death as will get a set of shoes for my
horse.'”

“'Well,' says the nager, 'if-you're not able to keep your horse shod, I
would jist recommend you to sell him, and thin his shoes won't cost you
any thing,' says he.

“The ould Square went away with tears in his eyes,--for he loved the
poor brute, bekase they wor the two last branches of the ould stock.”

“Why,” inquired M'Kinley, in his small squeaking voice, “was the horse
related to the family?”

“I didn't say he was related to the fam----

“Get out, you _shingaun!_” (* Fairy-like, or connected to the fairies)
returned the old man, perceiving by the laugh that now went round, the
sly tendency of the question--“no, nor to your family either, for he
had nothing of the ass in him--eh? will you put that in your pocket, my
little _skinadhre_ (* A thin, fleshless, stunted person.)--ha! ha! ha!”

The laugh was now turned against M'Kinley.

Shane Fadh proceeded: “The ould Square, as I was tellin yez, cried to
find himself an' the poor baste so dissolute; but when he had gone a bit
from the fellow, he comes back to the vagabone--'Now,' says he, 'mind my
words--if you happen to live afther me, you need never expect a night's
pace; for I here make a serous an' solemn vow, that as long as my
property's in your possession, or in any of your seed, breed, or
gineration's, I'll never give over hauntin' you an' them, till you'll
rue to the back-bone your dishonesty an' chathery to me an' this poor
baste, that hasn't a shoe to his foot.'

“'Well,' says the nager, 'I'll take chance of that, any way.'”

“I'm tould, Shane,” observed the poacher, “that the Square was a fine
man in his time, that wouldn't put up with sich treatment from anybody.”

“Ay, but he was ould now,” Shane replied, “and too wakely to fight.--A
fine man, Bill!--he was the finest man, 'cepting ould Square Storey,
that ever was in this counthry. I hard my granfather often say that he
was six feet four, and made in proportion--a handsome, black-a-vis'd
man, with great dark whiskers. Well! he spent money like sklates, and so
he died miserable--but had a merry birrel, as I said.”

“But,” inquired Nancy, “did he ever appear to the rogue that chated
him?”

“Every night in the year, Nancy, exceptin' Sundays; and what was more,
the horse along with him--for he used to come ridin' at midnight upon
the same garran; and it was no matther what place or company the other
'ud be in, the ould Square would come reglarly, and crave him for what
he owed him.”

“So it appears that horses have sowls,” observed M'Roarkin,
philosophically, giving, at the same time, a cynical chuckle at the
sarcasm contained in his own conceit.

“Whether they have sowls or bodies,” replied the narrator, “what I'm
tellin' you is truth; every night in the year the ould chap would come
for what was indue him; find as the two went along, the noise of the
loose shoe upon the horse would be hard rattlin', and seen knockin' the
fire out of the stones, by the neighbors and the thief that chated him,
even before the Square would appeal at all at all.”

“Oh, wurrah!” exclaimed Nancy, shuddering with terror. “I wouldn't take
anything and be out now on the _Drumfarrar road_*, and nobody with me
but myself.”

     *A lonely mountain-road, said to have been haunted. It is on
     this road that the coffin scenes mentioned in the Party
     fight and Funeral is laid.

“I think if you wor,” said M'Kinley, “the light weights and short
measures would be comin' acrass your conscience.”

“No, in troth, Alick, wouldn't they; but may be if you wor, the promise
you broke to Sally Mitchell might trouble you a bit: at any rate, I've a
prayer, and if I only repated it wanst, I mightn't be afeard of all the
divils in hell.”

“Throth, but it's worth havin', Nancy: where did you get it?” asked
M'Kinley.

“Hould your wicked tongue, you thief of a heretic,” said Nancy,
laughing, “when will _you_ larn anything that's good? I got it from one
that wouldn't have it if it _wasn't_ good--Darby M'Murt, the pilgrim,
since you must know.”

“Whisht!” said Frayne: “upon my word, I blieve the old Square's comin'
to pay tis a visit; does any of yez hear a horse trottin' with a shoe
loose?”


“I sartinly hear it,” observed Andy Morrow.

“And I,” said Ned himself.

There was now a general pause, and in the silence a horse, proceeding
from the moors in the direction of the house, was distinctly heard;
and nothing could be less problematical than that one of his shoes was
loose.

“Boys, take care of yourselves,” said Shane Fadh, “if the Square comes,
he won't be a pleasant customer--he was a terrible fellow in his day:
I'll hould goold to silver that he'll have the smell of brimstone about
him.”

“Nancy, where's your prayer now?” said M'Kinley, with a grin: “I think
you had betther out with it, and thry if it keeps this old brimstone
Square on the wrong side of the house.”

“Behave yourself, Alick; it's a shame for you to be sich a hardened
crathur: upon my sannies, I blieve your afeard of neither God nor the
divil--the Lord purtect and guard us from the dirty baste!”

“You mane particklarly them that uses short measures and light weights,”
 rejoined M'Kinley.

There was another pause, for the horseman was within a few perches of
the crossroads. At this moment an unusual gust of wind, accompanied by
torrents of rain, burst against the house with a violence that made
its ribs creak; and the stranger's horse, the shoe still clanking,
was distinctly heard to turn in from the road to Ned's door, where it
stopped, and the next moment a loud knocking intimated the horseman's
intention to enter. The company now looked at each other, as if
uncertain what to do. Nancy herself grew pale, and, in the agitation of
the moment, forgot to think of her protecting prayer. Biddy and Bessy
Connolly started from the settle on which they had been sitting with
their sweethearts, and sprung beside their uncle, on the hob. The
stranger was still knocking with great violence, yet there was no
disposition among the company to admit him, notwithstanding the severity
of the night--blowing, as it really did, a perfect hurricane. At length
a sheet of lightning flashed through the house, followed by an amazing
loud clap of thunder; while, with a sudden push from without, the door
gave way, and in stalked a personage Whose stature was at least six
feet four, with dark eyes and complexion, and coal-black whiskers of an
enormous size, the very image of the Squire they had been describing. He
was dressed in a long black surtout, which him appear even taller than
he actually was, had a pair of heavy boots upon and carried a tremendous
whip, large enough to fell an ox. He was in a rage on entering; and
the heavy, dark, close-knit-brows, from beneath which a pair of eyes,
equally black, shot actual fire, whilst the Turk-like whiskers, which
curled themselves up, as it were, in sympathy with his fury, joined to
his towering height, gave him altogether, when we consider the frame of
mind in which he found the company, an appalling and almost supernatural
appearance.

“Confound you, for a knot of lazy scoundrels,” exclaimed the stranger,
“why do you sit here so calmly, while any being craves admittance on
such a night as this? Here, you lubber in the corner, with a pipe in
your mouth, come and put up this horse of mine until the night settles.”

“May the blessed mother purtect us!” exclaimed Nancy, in a whisper,
to Andy Morrow, “if I blieve he's a right thing!--would it be the ould
Square? Did you ever set your eyes upon sich a”--

“Will you bestir yourself, you boor, and' not keep my horse and saddle
out under such a torrent?” he cried, “otherwise I must only bring him
into the house, and then you may say for once that you've had the devil
under your roof.”

“Paddy Smith, you lazy spalpeen,” said Nancy, winking at Ned to
have nothing to do with the horse, “why don't you fly and put up the
gintleman's horse? And you, Atty, avourneen, jist go out with him, and
hould the candle while he's doin' it: be quick now, and I'll give you
glasses a-piece when you come in.”

“Let them put him up quickly; but I say, you Caliban,” added the
stranger, addressing Smith, “don't be rash about him except you can bear
fire and brimstone; get him, at all events, a good feed of oats. Poor
Satan!” he continued, patting the horse's head, which was now within the
door, “you've had a hard night of it, my poor Satan, as well as myself.
That's my dark spirit--my brave chuck, that fears neither man nor
devil.”

This language was by no means calculated to allay the suspicions of
those who were present, particularly of Nancy and her two nieces. Ned
sat in astonishment, with the pipe in his hand, which he had, in the
surprise of the moment, taken from his mouth, his eyes fixed upon the
stranger, and his mouth open. The latter noticed him, and stretching
over the heads of the circle, tapped him on the shoulder with his
whip:--

“I have a few words to say to you, sir,” he said.

“To me, your honor!” exclaimed Ned, without stirring, however.

“Yes,” replied the other, “but you seem to be fastened to your seat:
come this way.”

“By all manner of manes, sir,” said Ned, starting up, and going over to
the dresser, against which the stranger stood.

When the latter had got him there, he very coolly walked up, and secured
Ned's comfortable seat on the hob, at the same time observing--

“You hadn't the manners to ask me to sit down; but I always make it a
point of conscience to take care of myself, landlord.”

There was not a man about the fire who did not stand up, as if struck
with a sudden recollection, and offer him a seat.

“No,” said he, “thank you, my good fellows, I am very well as it is: I
suppose, mistress, you are the landlady,” addressing Nancy; “if you
be, I'll thank you to bring me a gill of your best whiskey,--your best,
mind. Let it be as strong as an evil spirit let loose, and as hot as
fire; for it can't be a jot too ardent such a night as this, for a being
that rides the devil.”

Nancy started up instinctively, exclaiming, “Indeed, plase your honor's
reverence, I am the landlady, as you say, sir, sure enough; but, the
Lawk save and guard us! won't a gallon of raw whiskey be too much for
one man to drink?”

“A gallon! I only said a gill, my good hostess; bring me a gill--but I
forget--I believe you have no such measure in this country; bring me a
pint, then.”

Nancy now went into the bar, whither she gave Ned a wink to follow her;
and truly was glad of an opportunity of escaping from the presence of
the visitor. When there, she ejaculated--

“May the holy Mother keep and guard us, Ned, but I'm afeard that's no
Christian crathur, at all at all! Arrah, Ned, aroon, would he be that
ould Square Grame, that Shane Fadh, maybe, angered, by spakin' of him?”

“Troth,” said Ned, “myself doesn't know what he is; he bates any mortal
I ever seen.”

“Well, hould agra! I have it: we'll see whether he'll drink this or not,
any how.”

“Why, what's that you're doin'?” asked Ned.

“Jist,” replied Nancy, “mixin' the smallest taste in the world of holy
wather with the whiskey, and if he drinks that, you know he can be
nothing that's bad.” *

     * The efficacy of holy water in all Roman Catholic countries,
     but especially in Ireland, is supposed to be very great. It
     is kept in the house, or, in certain cases, about the
     person, as a safeguard against evil spirits, fairies, or
     sickness. It is also used to allay storms and quench
     conflagrations; and when an Irishman or Irishwoman is about
     to go a journey, commence labor or enter upon any other
     important undertaking, the person is sure to be sprinkled
     with holy water, under the hope that the journey or
     undertaking will prosper.

Nancy, however, did not perceive that the trepidation of her hand
was such as to incapacitate her from making nice distinctions in the
admixture. She now brought the spirits to the stranger, who no sooner
took a mouthful of it, than he immediately stopped it on its passage,
and fixing his eyes earnestly on herself, squirted it into the fire, and
the next moment the whiskey was in a blaze that seemed likely to set the
chimney in flames.

“Why, my honest hostess,” he exclaimed, “do you give this to me for
whiskey? Confound me, but two-thirds of it is water; and I have no
notion to pay for water when I want spirits: have the goodness to
exchange this, and get me some better stuff, if you have it.”

He again put the jug to his mouth, and having taken a little, swallowed
it:--“Why, I tell you, woman, you must have made some mistake; one-half
of it is water.”

Now, Nancy, from the moment he refused to swallow the liquor, had been
lock-jawed; the fact was, she thought that the devil himself, or old
Squire Graham, had got under her roof; and she stood behind Ned, who
was nearly as terrified as herself, with her hands raised, her tongue
clinging to the roof of her mouth, and the perspiration falling from her
pale face in large drops. But as soon as she saw him swallow a portion
of that liquid, which she deemed beyond the deglutition of ghost
or devil, she instantly revived--her tongue resumed its accustomed
office--her courage, as well as her good-humor, returned, and she went
up to him with great confidence, saying,

“Why, then, your Reverence's honor, maybe I did make a bit of a mistake,
sir”--taking up the jug, and tasting its contents: “Hut! bad scran to
me, but I did, beggin' your honor's pardon; how-an-diver, I'll soon
rightify that, your Reverence.”

So saying, she went and brought him a pint of the stoutest the house
afforded. The stranger drank a glass of it, and then ordered hot water
and sugar, adding--

“My honest friends here about the fire will have no objection to help me
with this; but, on second consideration, you had better get us another
quart, that as the night is cold, we may have a jorum at this pleasant
fire, that will do our hearts good; and this pretty girl here,”
 addressing Biddy, who really deserved the epithet, “will sit beside me,
and give us a song.”

It was surprising what an effect the punch even in perspective, had upon
the visual organs of the company; second-sight was rather its precursor
than its attendant; for, with intuitive penetration, they now discovered
various good qualities in his ghost-ship, that had hitherto been beyond
their ken; and those very personal properties, which before struck them
dumb with terror, already called forth their applause.

“What a fine man he is!” one would whisper, loud enough, however, to be
heard by the object of his panegyric.

“He is, indeed, and a rale gintleman,” another would respond in the same
key.

“Hut! he's none of your proud, stingy upsthart bodagahs*--none of your
beggarly half-sirs*,” a third would remark: “he's the dacent thing
entirely--you see he hasn't his heart in a thrifle.”

     * A person vulgar, but rich, without any pretensions but
     those of wealth to the character of a gentleman; a churl.
     Half-sir; the same as above.

“And so sign's on him,” a fourth would add, with comic gravity, “he
wasn't bred to shabbiness, as you may know by his fine behavior and his
big whiskers.”

When the punch was made, and the kitchen-table placed endwise towards
the fire, the stranger, finding himself very comfortable, inquired if he
could be accommodated with a bed and supper, to which Nancy replied in
the affirmative.

“Then, in that case,” said he, “I will be your guest for the night.”

Shane Fadh now took courage to repeat the story of old Squire Graham and
his horse with the loose shoe; informing the stranger, at the same time,
of the singular likeness which he bore to the subject of the story, both
in face and size, and dwelling upon the remarkable coincidence in the
time and manner of his approach.

“Tut, man!” said the stranger, “a far more extraordinary adventure
happened to one of my father's tenants, which, if none of you have any
objection, I will relate.”

There was a buzz of approbation at this; and they all thanked his
honor, expressing the strongest desire to hear his story. He was just
proceeding to gratify them, when another rap came to the door, and,
before any of the inmates had time to open it, Father Ned Deleery and
his curate made their appearance, having been on their way home from a
conference held in the town of ----, eighteen miles from the scene of
our present story.

It may be right here to inform the reader, that about two hundred yards
from Ned's home stood a place of Roman Catholic worship, called “the
Forth,” * from the resemblance it bore to the _Forts_ or _Baths_, so
common in Ireland. It was a small green, perfectly circular, and about
twenty yards in diameter. Around it grew a row of old overspreading
hawthorns, whose branches formed a canopy that almost shaded it from sun
and storm. Its area was encompassed by tiers of seats, one raised above
another, and covered with the flowery grass. On these the congregation
used to sit--the young men chatting or ogling their sweethearts on the
opposite side; the old ones in little groups, discussing the politics of
the day, as retailed by Mick M'Caffry.** the politician; while, up near
the altar, hemmed in by a ring of old men and women, you might perceive
a _voteen_, repeating some new prayer or choice piece of devotion--or
some other, in a similar circle, perusing, in a loud voice. Dr.
Gallagher's Irish Sermons, Pastorini's History of the Christian Church,
or Columbkill's Prophecy--and, perhaps, a strolling pilgrim, the centre
of a third collection, singing the _Dies irae_, in Latin, or the Hermit
of Killarney, in English.

     * This very beautiful but simple place of worship does not
     now exist. On its site is now erected a Roman Catholic
     chapel.

     ** Mick was also a schoolmaster, and the most celebrated
     village politician of his day. Every Sunday found him
     engaged as in the text.

At the extremity of this little circle was a plain altar of wood,
covered with a little thatched shed, under which the priest celebrated
mass; but before the performance of this ceremony, a large multitude
usually assembled opposite Ned's shop-door, at the cross-roads. This
crowd consisted of such as wanted to buy tobacco, candles, soap, potash,
and such other groceries as the peasantry remote from market-towns
require. After mass, the public-house was filled to the door-posts, with
those who wished to get a sample of Nancy's _Iska-behagh_* and many
a time has little Father Ned himself, of a frosty day, after having
performed mass with a celerity highly agreeable to his auditory, come in
to Nancy, nearly frost-bitten, to get his breakfast, and a toothful of
mountain dew to drive the cold out of his stomach.

     _Usquebaugh_--literally, “water of life.”

The fact is, that Father Deleery made himself quite at home at Ned's
without any reference to Nancy's saving habits; the consequence was,
that her welcome to him was extremely sincere--“from the teeth out.”
 Father Ned saw perfectly through her assumed heartiness of manner, but
acted as if the contrary was the case; Nancy understood him also, and
with an intention of making up by complaisance for their niggardliness
in other respects, was a perfect honeycomb. This state of
cross-purposes, however, could not last long; neither did it. Father Ned
never paid, and Nancy never gave credit; so, at length, they came to an
open rupture; she threatened to process him for what he owed her, and
he, in return, threatened to remove the congregation from “The Forth”
 to Ballymagowan bridge, where he intended to set up his nephew in the
“public line,” to the ruin of Nancy's flourishing establishment.

“Father Ned,” said Nancy, “I'm a hardworking, honest woman, and I don't
see why my substance is to be wasted by your Reverence when you won't
pay for it.”

“And do you forget,” Father Ned would reply, “that it's me that
brings you your custom? Don't you know that if I remove my flock to
Ballymagowan, you'll soon sing to another tune? so lay that to your
heart.”

“Troth, I know that whatever I get I'm obliged to pay for it; and I
think every man should do the same, Father Ned. You must get a hank of
yarn from me, and a bushel or two of oats from Ned, and your riglar dues
along with all; but, avourneen, it's yourself that won't pay a penny
when you can help it.”

“Salvation to me, but you'd skin a flint!”

“Well, if I would, I pay my debts first.”

“You do?”

“Yes, troth, do I.”

“Why then that's more than you'll be able to do long, plase the fates.”

“If all my customers wor like your Reverence, it is.”

“I'll tell you what it is, Nancy, I often threatened to take the
congregation from 'The Forth,' and I'll do it--if I don't, may I never
sup sorrow!”

Big with such a threat, Father Ned retired. The apprehensions of Nancy
on this point, however, were more serious than she was willing to
acknowledge. This dispute took place a few days before the night in
question.

Father Ned was a little man, with a red face, slender legs, and
flat feet; he was usually cased in a pair of ribbed minister's grey
small-clothes, with leggings of the same material. His coat, which was
much too short, rather resembled a jerkin, and gave him altogether an
appearance very much at variance with an idea of personal gravity or
reverence. Over this dress he wore in winter, a dark great-coat, with
high collar, that buttoned across his face, showing only the point, of
his red nose; so that, when riding or walking, his hat rested more upon
the collar of his coat than upon his head.

The curate was a tall, raw-boned young man, with high jutting
cheek-bones, low forehead, and close knees; to his shoulders, which were
very high, hung a pair of long bony arms, whose motions seemed rather
the effect of machinery than volition. His hair, which was a bad black,
was cropped close, and trimmed across his eye-brows, like that of a
Methodist preacher; the small-clothes he wore were of the same web which
had produced Father Ned's, and his body-coat was a dark blue, with black
buttons. Each wore a pair of gray woollen mittens.

“There, Pether,” said Father Ned, as he entered, “hook my bridle along
with your own, as your hand is in--God save all here! Paddy Smith,
ma bouchal, put these horses in the stable, till we dry ourselves a
bit--Father Pether and I.”

“Musha, but you're both welcome,” said Nancy, wishing to wipe out the
effects of the last tift with Father Ned, by the assistance of the
stranger's punch; “will ye bounce, ye spalpeens, and let them to the
fire? Father Ned, you're dhreepin' with the rain; and, Father Pether,
avourneen, you're wet to the skin, too.”

“Troth, and he is, Nancy, and a little bit farther, if you knew but all.
Mr. Morrow, how do you do, sir?--And--eh?--Who's this we've got in the
corner? A gintleman, boys, if cloth can make one! Mr. Morrow, introduce
me.”

“Indeed, Father Ned, I hav'nt the pleasure of knowing the gintleman
myself.”

“Well, no matter--come up, Pether. Sir, I have the honor of introducing
you to my curate and coadjutor, the Reverend Pether M'Clatchaghan, and
to myself, his excellent friend, but spiritual superior, the Reverend
Edward Deleery, Roman Catholic Rector of this highly respectable and
extensive parish; and I have further the pleasure,” he continued, taking
up Andy Morrow's Punch, “of drinking your very good health, sir.”

“And I have the honor,” returned the stranger, rising up, and diving
his head among the flitches of bacon that hung in the chimney, “of
introducing you and the Rev. Mr. M'--M'--M'----”

“Clatchagan, sir,” subjoined Father Ned.

“Peter M'Illclatchagan, to Mr. Longinus Polysyllabus Alexandrinus.”

“By my word, sir, but it's a good and appropriate name, sure enough,”
 said Father Ned, surveying his enormous length; “success to me but
you're an Alexandrine from head to foot--non solum Longinus, sed
Alexandrinus.”

“You're wrong, sir, in the Latin,” said Father Peter.

“Prove it, Peter--prove it.”

“It should be non tantum, sir.”

“By what rule Pether?”

“Why, sir, there's a phrase in Corderius's Colloquies that I could
condimn you from, if I had the book.”

“Pether, you think you're a scholar, and, to do you justice, you're cute
enough sometimes; but, Pether, you didn't travel for it, as I did--nor
were you obliged to lep out of a college windy in Paris, at the time of
the French Revolution, for your larning, as I was: not you, man, you ate
the king's mutton comfortably at home in Maynooth, instead of travelling
like your betters.”

“I appale to this gintleman,” said Father Peter turning to the stranger.
“Are you a classical scholar, sir--that is, do you understand Latin?”

“What kind?” demanded the stranger dryly.

“If you have read Corderius's Colloquies, it will do,” said Father
Peter.

“No, sir,” replied the other, “but I have read his commentator,
_Bardolphus_, who wrote a treatise upon the _Nasus Rubricundus_ of the
ancients.”

“Well, sir, if you did, it's probable that you may be able to understand
our dispute, so”--

“Peter, I'm afeard you've got into the wrong box; for I say he's no
chicken that's read _Nasus Rubricundus_, I can tell you that; I had my
own trouble with it: but, at any rate, will you take your punch, man
alive, and don't bother us with your Latin?”

“I beg your pardon, Father Ned: I insist that. I'm right; and I'll
convince you that you're wrong, if God spares me to see Corderius
to-morrow.”

“Very well then, Pether, if you're to decide it to-morrow, let us have
no more of it tonight.”

During this conversation between the two reverend worthies, the group
around the fire were utterly astonished at the erudition displayed in
this learned dispute.

“Well, to be sure, larnin's a great thing, entirely,” said M'Roarkin,
aside, to Shane Fadh.

“Ah, Tom, there's nothing like it: well, any way, it's wonderful what
they know!”

“Indeed it is, Shane--and in so short a time, too! Sure, it's not more
nor five or six years since Father Pether there used to be digging
praties on the one ridge with myself--by the same token, an excellent
spadesman he was--and now he knows more nor all the Protestant parsons
in the Diocy.”

“Why, how could they know any thing, when they don't belong to the thrue
church?” said Shane.

“Thrue for you, Shane,” replied M'Roaran; “I disremimbered that
clincher.”

This discourse ran parallel with the dispute between the two priests,
but in so low a tone as not to reach the ears of the classical
champions, who would have ill-brooked this eulogium upon Father Peter's
agricultural talent.

“Don't bother us, Pether, with your arguing to-night,” said Father
Ned, “it's enough for you to be seven days in the week at your
disputations.--Sir, I drink to our better acquaintance.”

“With all my heart, sir,” replied the stranger.

“Father Ned,” said Nancy, “the gintleman was going to tell us a sthrange
story, sir, and maybe your Reverence would wish to hear it, docthor?”

“Certainly, Nancy, we'll be very happy to hear any story the gintleman
may plase to tell us; but, Nancy, achora, before he begins, what if
you'd just fry a slice or two of that glorious flitch, hanging over his
head, in the corner?--that, and about six eggs, Nancy, and you'll have
the priest's blessing, gratis.”

“Why, Father Ned, it's too fresh, entirely--sure it's not a week hanging
yet.

“Sorra matter, Nancy dheelish, we'll take with all that--just try your
hand at a slice of it. I rode eighteen miles since I dined, and I feel a
craving, Nancy, a _whacuum_ in my stomach, that's rather troublesome.”

“To be sure, Father Ned, you must get a slice, with all the veins in my
heart; but I thought maybe you wouldn't like it so fresh: but what on
earth will we do for eggs? for there's not an egg under the roof with
me.”

“Biddy, a hagur,” said Father Ned, “just slip out to Molshy Johnson,
and tell her to send me six eggs for a rasher, by the same token that
I heard two or three hens cackling in the byre, as I was going to
conference this morning.”

“Well, Docthor,” said Pat Frayne, when Biddy had been gone some time, on
which embassy she delayed longer than the priest's judgment, influenced
by the cravings of his stomach, calculated to be necessary,--“Well,
Docthor, I often pity you, for fasting so long; I'm sure, I dunna how
you can stand it, at all, at all.”

“Troth, and you may well wonder, Pat; but we have that to support us,
that you, or any one like you, know nothing about--inward support,
Pat--inward support.”

“Only for that, Father Ned,” said Shane Fadh, “I suppose you could never
get through with it.”

“Very right, Shane--very right: only for it, we never could do.--What
the dickens is keeping this girl with the eggs?--why she might be at Mr.
Morrow's, here, since. By the way, Mr. Morrow,” he continued, laughing,
“you must come over to our church: you're a good neighbor, and a worthy
fellow, and it's a thousand pities you should be sent down.”

“Why, Docthor,” said Andy, “do you really believe I'll go downwards?”

“Ah, Mr. Morrow, don't ask me that question--out of the pale, you
know--out of the pale.”

“Then you think, sir, there's no chance for me, at all?” said Andy,
smiling.

“Not the laste, Andy, you must go this way,” said Father Ned, striking
the floor with the butt end of his whip, and winking--“to the lower
raigons; and, upon my knowledge, to tell you the truth, I'm sorry for
it, for you're a worthy fellow.”

“Ah, Docthor,” said Ned, “it's a great thing entirely to be born of the
true church--one's always sure, then.”

“Ay, ay; you may say that, Ned,” returned the priest, “come or go what
will, a man's always safe at the long run, except he dies without his
clargy.--Shane, hand me the jug, if you please.--Where did you get this
stuff, Nancy?--faith, it's excellent.”

“You forget, Father Ned, that that's a secret.----But here's Biddy with
the eggs, and now you'll have your rasher in no time.”

When the two clergymen had discussed the rashers and eggs, and while the
happy group were making themselves intimately acquainted with a fresh
jug of punch, as it circulated round the table--

“Now, sir,” said Father Ned to the stranger, “we'll hear your story with
the greatest satisfaction possible; but I think you might charge your
tumbler before you set to it.”

When the stranger had complied with this last hint, “Well, gentlemen,”
 said he, “as I am rather fatigued, will you excuse me for the position
I am about to occupy, which is simply to stretch myself along the hob
here, with my head upon the straw hassoch? and if you have no objection
to that, I will relate the story.”

To this, of course, a general assent was given. When he was stretched
completely at his ease--

“Well, upon my veracity,” observed Father Peter, “the gentleman's
supernaturally long.”

“Yes, Pether,” replied Father Ned, “but observe his
position--_Polysyllaba cuncta supina_, as Psorody says.--Arrah,
salvation to me but you're a dull man, afther all!--but we're
interrupting the gentleman. Sir, go on, if you please, with your story.”

“Give me a few minutes,” said he, “until I recollect the particulars.”

He accordingly continued quiescent for two or three minutes more,
apparently arranging the materials of his intended narration, and then
commenced to gratify the eager expectations of his auditory, by emitting
those nasal enunciations which are the usual accompaniments of sleep!

“Why, bad luck to the morsel of 'im but's asleep,” said Ned; “Lord
pardon me for swearin' in your Reverence's presence.”

“That's certainly the language of a sleeping man,” replied Father Ned,
“but there might have been a little more respect than all that snoring
comes to. Your health, boys.”

The stranger had now wound up his nasal organ to a high pitch, after
which he commenced again with somewhat of a lower and finer tone.

“He's beginning a new paragraph,” observed Father Peter with a smile at
the joke.

“Not at all,” said Father Ned, “he's turning the tune; don't you
perceive that he's snoring 'God save the King,' in the key of _bass
relievo?_”

“I'm no judge of instrumental music, as you are,” said the curate, “but
I think it's liker the 'Dead March of Saul,' than 'God save the King;'
however, if you be right, the gentleman certainly snores in a truly
loyal strain.”

“That,” said little M'Roarkin, “is liker the Swine's melody, or the
Bedfordshire hornpipe--he--he--he!”

“The poor gintleman's tired,” observed Nancy, “afther a hard day's
thravelling.”

“I dare say he is,” said Father Ned, in the sincere hospitality of his
country; “at all events, take care of him, Nancy, he's a stranger,
and get the best supper you can for him--he appears to be a truly
respectable and well-bred man.”

“I think,” said M'Kinley, with a comical grin, “you might know that by
his high-flown manner of sleeping--he snores very politely, and like a
gentleman, all out.”

“Well done, Alick,” said the priest, laughing; “go home, boys, it's near
bed-time; Paddy, ma bouchal, are the horses ready?”

“They'll be at the door in a jiffy, your Reverence,” said Paddy going
out.

In the course of a few minutes, he returned, exclaiming, “Why, thin, is
it thinkin' to venthur out sich a night as it's comin' on yer Reverences
would be? and it plashin' as if it came out of methers! Sure the life
would be dhrownded out of both of ye, and yees might colch a faver into
the bargain.”

“Sit down, gintlemen,” said Ned; “sit down, Father Ned, you and Father
Pether--we'll have another tumbler; and, as it's my turn to tell a
story, I'll give yez something, amuse yez,--the best I can, and, you all
know, who can do more?”

“Very right, Ned; but let us see”--replied father Ned, putting his head
out of the door to ascertain what the night did; “come, pether, it's
good to be on the safe side of any house in such a storm; we must only
content ourselves until it gets fair. Now, Ned, go on with your story,
and let it be as pleasant as possible.”

“Never fear, your Reverence,” replied Ned--“here goes--and healths
a-piece to begin with.”




THE THREE TASKS.


“Every person in the parish knows the purty knoll that rises above the
Routing Burn, some few miles from the renowned town of Knockimdowny,
which, as all the world must allow, wants only houses and inhabitants
to be as big a place as the great town of Dublin itself. At the foot of
this little hill, just under the shelter of a dacent pebble of a rock,
something above the bulk of half a dozen churches, one would be apt to
see--if they knew how to look sharp, otherwise they mightn't be able to
make it out from the gray rock above it, except by the smoke that ris
from the chimbley--Nancy Magennis's little cabin, snug and cosey with
its corrag* or ould man of branches, standing on the windy side of the
door, to keep away the blast. Upon my word, it was a dacent little
residence in its own way, and so was Nancy herself, for that matther;
for, though a poor widdy, she was very _punctwell_ in paying for Jack's
schooling, as I often heard ould Terry M'Phaudeen say, who told me the
story. Jack, indeed, grew up a fine slip; and for hurling, foot-ball
playing, and lepping, hadn't his likes in the five quarters of the
parish. It's he that knew how to handle a spade and a raping-hook, and
what was betther nor all that, he was kind and tindher to his poor ould
mother, and would let her want for nothing. Before he'd go to his day's
work in the morning, he'd be sure to bring home from the clear-spring
well that ran out of the other side of the rock, a pitcher of water to
serve her for the day; nor would he forget to bring in a good creel
of turf from the snug little peat-sack that stood thatched with rushes
before the door, and leave it in the corner, beside the fire; so that
she had nothing to do but put over her hand, without rising off of her
sate, and put down a sod when she wanted it.

     *The _Corrag_ is a roll of branches tied together when green
     and used for the purposes mentioned the story. It is six
     feet high, and much thicker than a sack, and is changed to
     either side of the door according to the direction from
     which the wind blows.

“Nancy, on her part, kept Jack very clane and comfortable; his linen,
though coorse, was always a good color, his working clothes tidily
mended at all times; and when he'd have occasion to put on his good coat
to work in for the first time, Nancy would sew on the fore-part of each
sleeve a stout patch of ould cloth, to keep them from being worn by the
spade; so that when she'd rip these off them every Saturday night, they
would look as new and fresh as if he hadn't been working in them at all,
at all.

“Then when Jack came home in the winter nights, it would do your heart
good to see Nancy sitting at her wheel, singing, '_Stachan Varagah_,'
or '_Peggy Na Laveen_,' beside a purty clear fire, with a small pot of
_murphys_ boiling on it for their supper, or laid up in a wooden
dish, comfortably covered with a clane praskeen on the well-swept
hearth-stone; whilst the quiet, dancing blaze might be seen blinking in
the nice earthen plates and dishes that stood over against the side-wall
of the house. Just before the fire you might see Jack's stool waiting
for him to come home; and on the other side, the brown cat washing her
face with her paws, or sitting beside the dog that lay asleep, quite
happy and continted, purring her song, and now and then looking over at
Nancy, with her eyes half-shut, as much as to say, 'Catch a happier pair
nor we are, Nancy, if you can.'

“Sitting quietly on the roost above the door, were Dicky the cock, and
half-a-dozen hens, that kept this honest pair in eggs and _egg-milk_ for
the best part of the year, besides enabling Nancy to sell two or three
clutches of March-birds every season, to help to buy wool for Jack's
big-coat, and her own gray-beard gown and striped red and blue
petticoat.

“To make a long story short--No two could be more comfortable,
considering every thing. But, indeed, Jack was always obsarved to have
a dacent ginteel turn with him; for he'd scorn to see a bad gown on his
mother, or a broken Sunday coat on himself; and instead of drinking his
little earning in a shebeen-house, and then eating his praties dry, he'd
take care to have something to kitchen* them; so that he was not only
snug and dacent of a Sunday, regarding wearables, but so well-fed and
rosy, that a point of a rush would take a drop of blood out of his
cheek.** Then he was the comeliest and best-looking young man in the
parish, could tell lots of droll stories, and sing scores of merry songs
that would make you split your sides with downright laughing; and when
a wake or a dance would happen to be in the neighborhood, maybe there
wouldn't be many a sly look from the purty girls for pleasant Jack
Magennis!

     * The straits to which the poor Irish are put for what is
     termed kitchen--that is some liquid that enables them to
     dilute and swallow the dry potato--are grievous to think of.
     An Irishman in his miserable cabin will often feel glad to
     have salt and water in which to dip it, but that alluded to
     in the text is absolute comfort. Egg milk is made as
     follows:--A measure of water is put down suited to the
     number of the family; the poor woman then takes the proper
     number of eggs, which she beats up, and, when the water is
     boiling, pours it in, stirring it well for a couple of
     minutes. It is then made, and handed round in wooden
     noggins, every one salting for themselves. In color it
     resembles milk, which accounts for its name.

     Our readers must have heard of the old and well known luxury
     of “potatoes and point,” which, humorous as it is, scarcely
     falls short of the truth. An Irish family, of the cabin
     class, hangs up in the chimney a herring, or “small taste” of
     bacon, and as the national imagination is said to be strong,
     each individual points the potato he is going to eat at it,
     upon the principle, I suppose, of _crede et habes_. It is
     generally said that the act communicates the flavor of the
     herring or bacon, as the case may be, to the potato; and
     this is called “potatoes and point.”

     ** This proverb, which is always used as above, but without
     being confined in its application, to only one sex, is a
     general one in Ireland. In delicacy and beauty I think it
     inimitable.

“In this way lived Jack and his mother, as happy and continted as two
lords; except now and thin, that Jack would feel a little consarn for
not being able to lay past anything for the _sorefoot_,* or that might
enable him to think of marrying--for he was beginning to look about him
for a wife; and why not, to be sure? But he was prudent for all that,
and didn't wish to bring a wife and small family into poverty and
hardship without means to support them, as too many do.

     * Accidents--future calamity--or old age.

“It was one fine, frosty, moonlight night--the sky was without a cloud,
and the stars all blinking that it would delight anybody's heart to look
at them, when Jack was crassing a bog that lay a few fields beyant his
own cabin. He was just crooning the '_Humors of Glynn_' to himself and
thinking that it was a very hard case that he couldn't save anything at
all, at all, to help him to the wife, when, on coming down a bank in the
middle of the bog, he saw a dark-looking man leaning against a clamp of
turf, and a black dog, with a pipe of tobacky in his mouth, sitting at
his ase beside him, and he smoking as sober as a judge. Jack, however,
had a stout heart, bekase his conscience was clear, and, barring being
a little daunted, he wasn't very much afeard. 'Who is this coming down
towards us?' said the black-favored man, as he saw Jack approaching
them. 'It's Jack Magennis,' says the dog, making answer, and taking the
pipe out of his mouth with his right paw; and after puffing away the
smoke, and rubbing the end of it against his left leg, exactly as a
Christian (this day's Friday, the Lord stand betune us and harm) would
do against his sleeve, giving it at the same time to his comrade--'It's
Jack Magennis,' says the dog, 'honest Widow Magennis's dacent son.' 'The
very man,' says the other, back to him, 'that I'd wish to sarve out of a
thousand. Arrah, Jack Magennis, how is every tether-length of you?' says
the old fellow, putting the _furrawn_* on him--'and how is every bone
in your body, Jack, my darling? I'll hould a thousand guineas,' says he,
pointing to a great big bag that lay beside him, 'and that's only the
tenth part of what's in this bag, Jack, that you're just going to be in
luck to-night above all the nights in the year.'

     * That frank, cordial manner of address which brings
     strangers suddenly to intimacy.

“'And may worse never happen you, Jack, my bouchal,' says the dog,
putting in his tongue, then wagging his tail, and houlding out his paw
to shake hands with Jack.

“'Gintlemen,' says Jack, never minding to give the dog his hand, bekase
he heard it wasn't safe to touch the likes of him--'Gintlemen,' says he,
'ye're sitting far from the fire this frosty night.'

“'Why, that's true, Jack,' answers the ould fellow; 'but if we're
sitting far from the fire, we're sitting very near the makins of it, man
alive.' So, with this, he pulls the bag of goold over to him, that Jack
might know, by the jingle of the shiners, what was in it.

“'Jack,' says dark-face, 'there's some born with a silver ladle in their
mouth, and others with a wooden spoon; and if you'll just sit down on
the one end of this clamp with me, and take a hand at the five and ten,'
pulling out, as he spoke, a deck of cards, 'you may be a made man for
the remainder of your life.'

“'Sir,' says Jack, 'with submission, both yourself and this cur--I
mane,' says he, not wishing to give the dog offence, 'both yourself
and this dacint gintleman with the tail and claws upon him, have
the advantage of me, in respect of knowing my name; for, if I don't
mistake,' says he, putting his hand to his caubeen, 'I never had the
pleasure of seeing either of ye before.'

“'Never mind that,' says the dog, taking back the pipe from the other,
and clapping it in his mouth; 'we're both your well-wishers, anyhow, and
it's now your own fault if you're not a rich man.'

“Jack, by this time, was beginning to think that they might be afther
wishing to throw luck in his way; for he had often heard of men being
made up entirely by the fairies, till there was no end to their wealth.

“'Jack,' says the black man, 'you had better be led by us for this
bout--upon the honor of a gintleman we wish you well: however, if you
don't choose to take the ball at the right hop, another may; and you're
welcome to toil all your life, and die a beggar after.'

“'Upon my reputation, what he says is true, Jack,' says the dog, in his
turn, 'the lucky minute of your life is come: let it pass without doing
what them that wishes your mother's son well desire you, and you'll die
in a ditch.'

“'And what am I to do,' says Jack, 'that's to make me so rich all of a
sudden?'

“'Why only to sit down, and take a game of cards with myself says
black-brow, 'that's all, and I'm sure its not much.'

“'And what is it to be for?' Jack inquires; 'for I have no
money--tare-nation to the rap itself's in my company.'

“'Well, you have yourself,' says the dog, putting up his fore-claw
along his nose, and winking at Jack; 'you have yourself, man--don't be
faint-hearted: he'll bet the contents of this bag;' and with that the
ould thief gave it another great big shake, to make the guineas jingle
again. 'It's ten thousand guineas in hard goold; if he wins, you're
to sarve him for a year and a day; and if he loses, you're to have the
bag.'

“'And the money that's in it?' says Jack, wishing, you see, to make a
sure bargain, anyhow.

“'Ev'ry penny,' answered the ould chap, 'if you win it;' and there's
fifty to one in your favor.'

“By this time the dog had gone into a great fit of laughing at Jack's
sharpness about the money. 'The money that's in it, Jack!' says he; and
he took the pipe out of his mouth, and laughed till he brought on a
hard fit of coughing. 'O, by this and by that says he, 'but that bates
Bannagher! And you're to get ev'ry penny, you thief o' the world, if
you win it!' but for all that he seemed to be laughing at something that
Jack wasn't up to.

“At any rate, surely, they palavered Jack betune them until he sot down
and consinted. 'Well,' says he, scratching his head, 'why, worse nor
lose I can't, so here goes for one trial at the shiners, any how!'

“'Now,' says the obscure gintleman, just whin the first card was in his
hand, ready to be laid down, 'you're to sarve me for a year and a day,
if I win; and if I lose, you shall have all the money in the bag.'

“'Exactly,' said Jack, and, just as he said the word, he saw the dog
putting the pipe in his pocket, and turning his head away, for fraid
Jack would see him breaking his sides laughing. At last, when he got his
face sobered, he looks at Jack, and says, 'Surely, Jack, if you win,
you must get all the money in the bag; and, upon my reputation, you may
build castles in the air with it, you'll be so rich.'

“This plucked up Jack's courage a little, and to work they went; and
how could it end otherwise than Jack to lose betune two such knowing
schamers as they soon turned out to be? For, what do you think? but,
as Jack was beginning the game, the dog tips him a wink--laying his
fore-claw along his nose as before, as much as to say, 'Watch me, and
you'll win'--turning round, at the same time, and showing Jack a nate
little looking-glass, that was set in his oxther, in which Jack saw,
dark as it was, the spots of all the other fellow's cards, as he
thought, so that he was cock-sure of bating him. But they were a pair of
downright knaves any how; for Jack, by playing to the cards that he saw
in the looking-glass, instead of to them the other held in his hand,
lost the game and the money. In short, he saw that he was blarnied and
chated by them both; and when the game was up, he plainly tould them as
much.

“'What?--you scoundrel!' says the black fellow, starting up and catching
him by the collar; 'dare you go for to impache my honor?'

“'Leather him, if he says a word,' says the dog, running over on his
hind-legs, and laying his shut paw upon Jack's nose. 'Say another word,
you rascal!' says he, 'and I'll down you;' with this, the ould fellow
gives him another shake.

“'I don't blame you so much,' says Jack to him; 'it was the
looking-glass that desaved me. That cur's nothing but a black leg!'

“'What looking-glass?--you knave you!' says dark-face, giving him a
fresh haul.

“'Why, the one I saw under the dog's oxther,' replied Jack.

“'Under my oxther, you swindling rascal!' replied the dog, giving him
a pull by the other side of the collar; 'did ever any honest pair
of gintlemen hear the like?--but he only wants to break through the
agreement: so let us turn him at once into an ass, and then he'll break
no more bargains, nor strive to take in honest men and win their money.
Me a black-leg!' So the dark fellow drew his two hands over Jack's jaws,
and in a twinkling there was a pair of ass's ears growing up out of his
head. When Jack found this, he knew that he wasn't in good hands: so he
thought it best to get himself as well out of the scrape as possible.

“'Gintlemen, be aisy,' says he, 'and let us understand one another: I'm
very willing to sarve you for a year and a day; but I've one requist
to ax, and it's this: I've a helpless ould mother at home,--and if I
go with you now, she'll break her heart with grief first, and starve
afterwards. Now, if your honor will give me a year to work hard, and lay
in provision to support her while I'm away, I'll serve you with all the
veins of my heart--for a bargain's a bargain.'

“With this, the dog gave his companion a pluck by the skirt, and, after
some chat together that Jack didn't hear, they came back and said
that they would comply with his wishes that far: 'So, on to-morrow
twelvemonth, Jack,' says the dark fellow, 'the dog here will come to
your mother's, and if you follow him he'll bring you safe to my castle.'

“'Very well, your honor,' says Jack; 'but as dogs resemble one another
so much, how will I know him when he comes?'

“'Why,' answers the other, 'he'll have a green ribbon and a spy-glass
about his neck, and a pair of Wellington boots on his hind legs.'

“'That's enough, sir,' says Jack, 'I can't mistake him in that dress, so
I'll be ready; but, jintlemen, if it would be plasing to you both I'd
every bit as soon not go home with these,' and he handled the brave pair
of ears he had got, as he spoke. 'The truth is, jintlemen, I'm deluding
enough without them; and as I'm so modest, you persave, why if you'd
take them away, you'd oblige me!'

“To this they had no objection, and during that year Jack wrought night
and day, that he might be able to lave as much provision with his poor
mother as would support her in his absence; and when the morning came
that he was to bid her farewell, he went down on his two knees and got
her blessing. He then left her with tears in his eyes, and promised to
come back the very minute his time would be up. 'Mother,' says he, 'be
kind to your little family here, and feed them well, as they are all
you'll have to keep you company till you see me again.'

“His mother then stuffed his pockets with bread, till they stuck out
behind him, and gave him a crooked six-pence for luck; after which, he
got his staff, and was just ready to tramp, when, sure enough, he spies
his ould friend the dog, with the green ribbon about his neck, and the
Wellington boots upon his hind legs. He didn't go in, but waited on the
outside till Jack came out. They then set off, but no one knows how
far they travelled, till they reached the dark gintleman's castle, who
appeared very glad to see Jack, and gave him a hearty welcome.

“The next day, in consequence of his long journey, he was ax'd to do
nothing; but in the coorse of the evening, the dark chap brought
him into a long, frightful room, where there were three hundred and
sixty-five hooks sticking out of the wall, and on every hook but one
a man's head. When Jack saw this agreeable sight, his dinner began
to quake within him; but he felt himself still worse, when his master
pointed to the empty hook, saying, 'Now, Jack, your business to-morrow
is to clane out a stable that wasn't claned for the last seven years,
and if you don't have it finished before dusk--do you see that hook?'

“'Ye--yes,' replied Jack, hardly able to spake.

“'Well, if you don't have it finished before dusk, your head will be
hanging on that hook as soon as the sun sets.'

“'Very well, your honor,' replied Jack; scarcely knowing what he said,
or he wouldn't have said 'very well' to such a bloody-minded intention,
any how---'Very well,' says he, 'I'll do my best, and all the world
knows that the best can do no more.'

“Whilst this discoorse was passing betune them, Jack happened to look
at the upper end of the room, and there he saw one of the beautifullest
faces that ever was seen on a woman, looking at him through a little
panel that was in the wall. She had a white, snowy forehead--such
eyes, and cheeks, and teeth, that there's no coming up to them; and the
clusters of dark hair that hung about her beautiful temples!--by the
laws, I'm afeard of falling in love with her myself, so I'll say no more
about her, only that she would charm the heart of a wheel-barrow. At any
rate, in spite of all the ould fellow could say--heads and hooks, and
all, Jack couldn't help throwing an eye, now and then, to the panel; and
to tell the truth, if he had been born to riches and honor, it would be
hard to fellow him, for a good face and a good figure.

“'Now, Jack,' says his master, 'go and eat your supper, and I hope
you'll be able to perform your task--if not, off goes your head.'

“'Very well, your honor,' says Jack, again scratching it in the hoith of
perplexity, 'I must only do what I can.'

“The next morning Jack was up with the sun, if not before him, and hard
at his task; but before breakfast time he lost all heart, and little
wonder he should, poor fellow, bekase for every one shovelful he'd throw
out, there would come three more in: so that instead of making his
task less, according as he got on, it became greater. He was now in the
greatest dilemmy, and didn't know how to manage, so he was driven at
last to such an amplush, that he had no other shift for employment,
only to sing _Paddeen O'Rafferty_ out of mere vexation, and dance the
hornpipe trebling step to it, cracking his fingers, half mad, through
the stable. Just in the middle of this tantrum, who comes to the door to
call him to his breakfast, but the beautiful crathur he saw the evening
before peeping at him through the panel. At this minute, Jack had so
hated himself by the dancing, that his handsome face was in a fine glow,
entirely.

“'I think,' said, she to Jack, with one of her own sweet smiles, 'that
this is an odd way of performing your task.'

“'Och, thin, 'tis you that may say that,' replies Jack; 'but it's myself
that's willing to have my head hung up any day, just for one sight of
you, you darling.'

“'Where did you come from?' asked the lady, with another smile that bate
the first all to nothing.

“'Where did I come from, is it?' answered Jack; 'why, death-alive!
did you never hear of ould Ireland, my jewel!--hem--I mane, plase your
ladyship's honor.'

“'No,' she answered; 'where is that country?'

“'Och, by the honor of an Irishman,' says Jack, 'that takes the
shine!--not heard of Erin--the Imerald Isle--the Jim of the ocean, where
all the men are brave and honorable, and all the women--hem--I mane the
ladies--chaste and beautiful?'

“'No,' said she; 'not a word: but if I stay longer I may get you
blame--come in to your breakfast, and I'm sorry to find that you have
done so little at your task. Your roaster's a man that always acts up to
what he threatens: and, if you have not this stable cleared out before
dusk, your head will be taken of your shoulders this night.'

“'Why, thin,' says Jack, 'my beautiful darl--plase your honor's
ladyship--if he Dangs it up, will you do me the favor, _acushla
machree_, to turn my head toardst that same panel where I saw a sartin
fair face that I won't mintion: and if you do, let me alone for watching
a sartin purty face I'm acquainted with.'

“'What means _cushla machree?_ inquired the lady, as she turned to go
away.

“'It manes that you're the pulse of my heart, avourneen, plase your
ladyship's Reverence,' says Jack.

“'Well,' said the lovely crathur, 'any time you speak to me in future,
I would rather you would omit terms of honor, and just call me after the
manner of your own country; instead, for instance, of calling me
your ladyship, I would be better pleased if you called me
cushla--something--' 'Cushla machree, ma vourneen--the pulse of my
heart--my darling,' said Jack, consthering it (the thief) for her, for
fraid she wouldn't know it well enough.

“'Yes,' she replied, 'cushla machree; well, as I can pronounce it,
acushla machree, will you come in to your breakfast?' said the darling,
giving Jack a smile that would be enough, any day, to do up the heart
of an Irishman. Jack, accordingly, went after her, thinking of nothing
except herself; but on going in he could see no sign of her, so he-sat
down to his breakfast, though a single ounce, barring a couple of pounds
of beef, the poor fellow couldn't ate, at that bout, for' thinking of
her.

“Well, he went again to his work, and thought he'd have better luck; but
it was still the ould game--three shovelfuls would come in for ev'ry one
he'd throw out; and now he began, in earnest, to feel something about
his heart that he didn't like, bekase he couldn't, for the life of him,
help thinking of the three hundred and sixty-four heads, and the empty
hook. At last he gave up the work entirely, and took it into his head to
make himself scarce from about the old fellow's castle, altogether; and
without more to do, he set off, never saying as much as 'good-bye' to
his master: but he hadn't got as far as the lower end of the yard, when
his ould friend, the dog, steps out of a kennel, and meets him full but
in the teeth.

“'So, Jack,' says he, 'you're going to give us leg bail, I see; but walk
back with yourself, you spalpeen, this minute, and join your work, or
if you don't,' says he, 'it'll be worse for your health. I'm not so much
your enemy now as I was, bekase you have a friend in coort that you know
nothing about; so just do whatever you are bid, and keep never minding.'

“Jack went back with a heavy heart, as you may be sure, knowing that,
whenever the black cur began to blarney him, there was no good to come
in his way. He accordingly went into the stable, but consuming to the
hand's turn he did, knowing it would be only useless; for, instead of
clearing it out, he'd be only filling it.

“It was near dinner-time, and Jack was very sad and sorrowful, as how
could he be otherwise, poor fellow, with such a bloody-minded ould chap
to dale with? when up comes the darling of the world again, to call him
to his dinner.

“'Well, Jack,' says she, with her white arms so beautiful, and her dark
clusters tossed about by the motion of her walk--how are you coming on
at your task?' 'How am I coming on, is it? Och, thin,' says Jack, giving
a good-humored smile through the frown that was on his face, 'plase your
lady--a cushla machree--it's all over with me; for I've still the same
story to tell, and off goes my head, as sure as it's on my shoulders,
this blessed night.'

“'That would be a pity, Jack,' says she, 'for there are worse heads on
worse shoulders; but will you give me the shovel?' 'Will I give you
the shovel, is it?--Och thin, wouldn't I be a right big baste to do the
likes of that, any how?' says Jack; 'what! avourneen dheelish! to stand
up with myself, and let this hard shovel into them beautiful, soft,
white hands of your own! Faix, my jewel, if you knew but all, my
mother's son's not the man to do such a disgraceful turn, as to let a
lady like you take the shovel out of his hand, and he standing with his
mouth under his nose, looking at you--not myself auourneen! we have no
such ungenteel manners as that in our country.' 'Take my advice, Jack,'
says she, pleased in her heart at what Jack said, for all she didn't
purtend it--'give me the shovel, and depend upon it, I'll do more in a
short time to clear the stable than you would for years.' 'Why, thin,
avour-neen, it goes to my heart to refuse you; but, for all that, may
I never see yesterday, if a taste of it will go into your purty, white
fingers,' says the thief, praising her to her face all the time--'my
head may go off, any day, and welcome, but death before dishonor. Say no
more, darling; but tell your father I'll be to my dinner immediately.'

“Notwithstanding all this, by jingo, the lady would not be put off; like
a raal woman, she'd have her own way; so on telling Jack that she didn't
intend to work with the shovel, at all, at all, but only to take it for
a minute in her hand, at long last he gave it to her; she then struck
it three times on the threshel of the door, and, giving it back into his
hand, tould him to try what he could do. Well, sure enough, now there
was a change; for, instead of three shovelfuls coming in, as before,
when he threw one out, there went nine more along with it. Jack,
in coorse, couldn't do less than thank the lovely crathur for her
assistance; but when he raised his head to speak to her, she was gone.
I needn't say, howsomever, that he went in to his dinner with a light
heart and a murdhering appetite; and when the ould fellow axed him how
he was coming on, Jack tould him he was doing gloriously. 'Remember the
empty hook, Jack,' said he. 'Never fear, your honor,' answered Jack, 'if
I don't finish my task, you may bob my head off anytime.'

“Jack now went out, and was a short time getting through his job, for
before the sun set it was finished, and he came into the kitchen, ate
his supper, and, sitting down before the fire, sung 'Love among the
Roses,' and the 'Black Joke,' to vex the ould fellow.

“This was one task over, and his head was safe for that bout; but that
night, before he went to bed, his master called him upstairs, brought
him into the bloody room, and gave him his orders for the next day.
'Jack,' says he, 'I have a wild filly that has never been caught,
and you must go to my demesne to-morrow, and catch her, or if you
don't--look there,' says the big blackguard, 'on that hook it hangs,
before to-morrow, if you havn't her at sunset in the stable that you
claned yesterday.' 'Very well, your honor,' said Jack, carelessly, 'I'll
do every thing in my power, and if I fail, I can't help it.'

“The next morning, Jack was out with a bridle in his hand, going to
catch the filly. As soon as he got into the domain, sure enough, there
she was in the middle of a green field, grazing quite at her ase. When
Jack saw this he went over towards her, houlding out his hat as if it
was full of oats; but he kept the hand that had the bridle in it behind
his back, for fraid she'd see it and make off. Well, my dear, on he went
till he was almost within grip of her, cock-sure that he had nothing
more to do than slip the bridle over her neck and secure her; but he
made a bit of a mistake in his reckoning, for though she smelt and
snoaked about him, just as if she didn't care a feed of oats whether he
caught her or not, yet when he boulted over to hould her fast, she was
off like a shot with her tail cocked, to the far end of the demesne,
and Jack had to set off hot foot after here. All, however, was to no
purpose; he couldn't come next or near her for the rest of the day, and
there she kept coorsing him about from one field to another, till he
hadn't a blast of breath in his body.

“In this state was Jack when the beautiful crathur came out to call
him home to his breakfast, walking with the pretty small feet and
light steps of her own upon the green fields, so bright and beautiful,
scarcely bending the flowers and the grass as she went along, the
darling.

“'Jack,' says she, 'I fear you have as difficult a task to-day as you
had yesterday.'

“'Why, and it's you that may say that with your own purty mouth,' says
Jack, says he; for out of breath and all as he was, he couldn't help
giving her a bit of blarney, the rogue.

“'Well, Jack,' says she, 'take my advice, and don't tire yourself any
longer by attempting to catch her; truth's, best--I tell you, you could
never do it; come home to your breakfast, and when you return again,
'just amuse yourself as well as you can until dinner-time.'

“'Och, och!' says Jack, striving to look, the sly thief, as if she had
promised to help him--'I only wish I was a king, and, by the powers,
I know who would be my queen, any how; for it's your own sweet
lady--savourneen dheelish--I say, amn't I bound to you for a year and
a day longer, for promising to give me a lift, as well as for what you
done yesterday?'

“'Take care, Jack,' says she, smiling, however, at his ingenuity in
striving to trap her into a promise, 'I don't think I made any promise
of assistance.'

“'You didn't,' says Jack, wiping his face with the skirt of his coat,
''cause why?--you see pocket-handkerchiefs weren't invented in them
times: 'why, thin, may I never live to see yesterday, if there's not
as much rale beauty in that smile that's diverting itself about them
sweet-breathing lips of yours, and in them two eyes of light that's
breaking both their hearts laughing at me, this minute, as would
encourage any poor fellow to expect a good turn from you--that is, whin
you could do it, without hurting or harming yourself; for it's he would
be the right rascal that could take it, if it would injure a silken hair
of your head.'

“'Well,' said the lady, with a mighty roguish smile, 'I shall call you
home to your dinner, at all events.'

“When Jack went back from his breakfast, he didn't slave himself after
the filly toy more, but walked about to view the demesne, and the
avenues, and the green walks, and nice temples, and fish-ponds, and
rookeries, and everything, in short, that was worth seeing. Towards
dinner-time, howiver, he began to have an eye to the way the sweet
crathur was to come, and sure enough she that wasn't one minute late.

“'Well, Jack,' says she, 'I'll keep you no longer in doubt:' for the
tender-hearted crathur saw that Jack, although he didn't wish to let
an to her, was fretting every now and then about the odd hook and the
bloody room--'So, Jack,' says she, 'although I didn't promise, yet I'll
perform;' and with that she pulled a small ivory whistle out of her
pocket, and gave three blasts on it that brought the wild filly up to
her very hand, as quick as the wind. She then took the bridle, and threw
it over the baste's neck, giving her up, at the same time, to Jack; 'You
needn't fear now, Jack,' says she, 'you'll find her as quiet as a lamb,
and as tame as you wish; as proof of it, just walk before her, and you
will see she will follow you to any part of the field.'

“Jack, you maybe sure, paid her as many and as sweet compliments as
he could, and never heed one from his country for being able to say
something toothsome to the ladies. At any rate, if he laid it on thick
the day before, he gave two or three additional coats this time, and the
innocent soul went away smiling, as usual.

“When Jack brought the filly home, the dark fellow, his master, if dark
before, was a perfect thunder-cloud this night: bedad, he was nothing
less than near bursting with vexation, bekaise the thieving ould sinner
intended to have Jack's head upon the hook, but he fell short in his
reckoning now as well as before. Jack sung 'Love among the Roses,' and
the 'Black Joke,' to help him into better timper.

“'Jack,' says he, striving to make himself speak pleasant to him,
'you've got two difficult tasks over you; but you know the third time's
the charm--take care of the next.'

“'No matter about that,' says Jack, speaking up to him stiff and stout,
bekase, as the dog tould him, he knew he had a friend in coort--'let's
hear what it is, any how.'

“'To-morrow, then,' says the other, 'you're to rob a crane's nest, on
the top of a beech-tree which grows in the middle of a little island in
the lake that you saw yesterday in my demesne; you're to have neither
boat, nor oar, nor any kind of conveyance, but just as you stand; and if
you fail to bring me the eggs, or if you break one of them,--look here!'
says he, again pointing to the odd hook, for all this discoorse took
place in the bloody room.

“'Good again,' says Jack; 'if I fail I know my doom.'

“'No, you don't, you spalpeen,' says the other, getting vexed with him
entirely, 'for I'll roast you till you're half dead, and ate my dinner
off you after; and, what is more than that, you blackguard, you must
sing the 'Black Joke' all the time for my amusement.'

“'Div'l fly away with you,' thought Jack, 'but you're fond of music, you
vagabone.'

“The next morning Jack was going round and round the lake, trying about
the edge of it, if he could find any place shallow enough to wade in;
but he might as well go to wade the say, and what was worst of all, if
he attempted to swim, it would be like a tailor's goose, straight to
the bottom; so he kept himself safe on dry land, still expecting a visit
from the 'lovely crathur,' but, bedad, his good luck failed him for
wanst, for instead of seeing her coming over to him, so mild and sweet,
who does he obsarve steering at a dog's trot, but his ould friend the
smoking cur. 'Confusion to that cur,' says Jack to himself, 'I know now
there's some bad fortune before me, or he wouldn't be coming acrass me.'

“'Come home to your breakfast, Jack,' says the dog, walking up to him,
'it's breakfast time.'

“'Ay,' says Jack, scratching his head, 'it's no matter whether I do or
not, for I bleeve my head's hardly worth a flat-dutch cabbage at the
present speaking.'

“'Why, man, it was never worth so much,' says the baste, pulling out his
pipe and putting it in his mouth, when it lit at once.

“'Take care of yourself,' says Jack, quite desperate,--for he thought he
was near the end of his tether,--'take care of yourself, you dirty cur,
or maybe I might take a gintleman's toe from your tail.'

“'You had better keep a straight tongue in your head,' says four-legs,
'while it's on your shoulders, or I'll break every bone in your
skin--Jack, you're a fool,' says he, checking himself, and speaking
kindly to him--'you're a fool; didn't I tell you the other day to do
what you were bid, and keep never minding?'

“'Well,' thought Jack to himself, 'there's no use in making him any more
my enemy than he is--particularly as I'm in such a hobble.'

“'You lie,' says the dog, as if Jack had spoken out to him, wherein he
only thought the words to himself, 'you lie,' says he, 'I'm not, nor
never was, your enemy, if you knew but all.'

“'I beg your honor's pardon,' answers Jack, 'for being so smart with
your honor, but, bedad, if you were in my case,--if you expected your
master to roast you alive,--eat his dinner of your body,--make you sing
the 'Black Joke,' by way of music for him; and, to crown all, know that
your head was to be stuck upon a hook after--maybe you would be a little
short, in your temper, as well as your neighbors.'

“'Take heart, Jack,' says the other, laying his fore claw as knowingly
as ever along his nose, and winking slyly at Jack, didn't I tell you
that you had a friend in coort--the day's not past yet, so cheer up, who
knows but there is luck before you still?'

“'Why, thin,' says Jack, getting a little cheerful, and wishing to crack
a joke with him, 'but your honor's very fond of the pipe!' 'Oh! don't
you know, Jack,' says he, 'that that's the fashion at present among my
tribe; sure all my brother puppies smoke now, and a man might as well be
out of the world as out of the fashion, you know.'

“When they drew near home, they got quite thick entirely; 'Now,' says
Jack, in a good-humored way, 'if you can give me a lift in robbing this
crane's nest, do; at any rate, I'm sure your honor won't be my enemy. I
know you have too much good nature in your face to be one that wouldn't
help a lame dog over a style--that is,' says he, taking himself up for
fear of offending the other,--'I'm sure you'd be always inclined to help
the weak side.'

“'Thank you for the compliment,' says, the dog; 'but didn't I tell you
that you have a friend in coort?'

“When Jack went back to the lake, he-could only sit and look sorrowfully
at the tree, or walls; about the edge of it, without being able to do
anything else. He spent the whole day this way, till dinner-time, when
what would you have of it, but he sees the darlin' coming out to him, as
fair and as blooming as an angel. His heart, you may be sure, got up
to his mouth, for he knew she would be apt to take him out of his
difficulties. When she came up--

“'Now, Jack,' says she, 'there is not a minute to be lost, for I'm
watch'd; and if it's discovered that I gave you any assistance, we will
both be destroyed.'

“'Oh, murder sheery!' (* Murder everlasting) says Jack, 'fly back,
avourneen machree--for rather than anything should happen you, I'd lose
fifty-lives.'

“'No,' says she, 'I think I'll be able to-get you over this, as well as
the rest; so have a good heart, and be faithful' 'That's it,' replied
Jack, 'that's it, acushla--my own _correcthur_ to a shaving; I've a
heart worth its weight in bank notes, and a more faithful boy isn't
alive this day nor I'm to yez all, ye darlings of the world.'

“She then pulled a small white wand out of her pocket, struck the lake,
and there was the prettiest green ridge across it to the foot of the
tree that ever eye beheld. 'Now,' says she, turning her back to Jack,
and stooping down to do something that he couldn't see, 'Take these,'
giving him her ten toes, 'put them against the tree, and you will have
steps to carry you to the top, but be sure, for your life and mine,
not to forget any of them. If you do, my life will be taken tomorrow
morning, for your master puts on my slippers with his own hands.'

“Jack was now going to swear that he would give up the whole thing and
surrender his head at once; but when life looked at her feet, and saw
no appearance of blood, he went over without more to do, and robbed
the nest, taking down the eggs one by one, that he mightn't brake them.
There was no end to his joy, as he secured the last egg; he instantly
took down the toes, one after another, save and except the little one
of the left foot, which in his joy and hurry he forgot entirely. He then
returned by the green ridge to the shore, and accordingly as he went
along, it melted away into water behind him.

“'Jack,' says the charmer, 'I hope you forgot none of my toes.'

“'Is it me?' says Jack, quite sure that he had them all--'arrah, catch
any one from my country making a blunder of that kind.'

“'Well,' says she, 'let us see; so, taking the toes, she placed them on
again, just as if they had never been off. But, lo and behold! on coming
to the last of the left foot, it wasn't forthcoming. 'Oh! Jack, Jack,'
says she, 'you have destroyed me; to-morrow morning your master will
notice the want of this toe, and that instant I'll be put to death.'

“'Lave that to me,' says Jack; 'by the powers, you won't lose a drop of
your darling blood for it. Have you got a pen-knife about you? and I'll
soon show you how you won't.'

“'What do you want with the knife?' she inquired.

“'What do I want with it?--Why to give you the best toe on both my feet,
for the one I lost on you; do you think I'd suffer you to want a toe,
and I having ten thumping ones at your sarvice?--I'm not the man, you
beauty you, for such a shabby trick as that comes to.'

“'But you forget,' says the lady, who was a little cooler than Jack,
'that none of yours would fit me.'

“'And must you die to-morrow, _acushla?_' asked Jack, in desperation.

“'As sure as the sun rises,' answered the lady 'for Your master would
know at once that it was by my toes the nest was robbed.'

“'By the powers,' observed Jack, 'he's one of the greatest ould vag--I
mane, isn't he a terrible man, out and out, for a father?'

“'Father!' says the darling,--'he's not my father, Jack, he only wishes
to marry me and if I'm not able to outdo him before three days more,
it's decreed that he must.

“When Jack heard this, surely the Irishman must come out; there he
stood, and began to wipe his eyes with the skirt of his coat, making
out as if he was crying, the thief of the world. 'What's the matter with
you?' she asked.

“'All!' says Jack, 'you darling, I couldn't find it in my heart to
desave you; for I have no way at home to keep a lady like you, in proper
style, at all at all; I would only bring I you into poverty, and since
you wish to know what ails me, I'm vexed that I'm not rich for your
sake; and next, that that thieving ould villain's to have you; and, by
the powers, I'm crying for both these misfortunes together.'

“The lady could not help being touched and plaised with Jack's
tinderness and ginerosity; so, says she, 'Don't be cast down, Jack, come
or go what will, I won't marry him--I'd die first. Do you go home as
usual; but take care and don't sleep at all this night. Saddle the wild
filly--meet me under the whitethorn bush at the end of the lawn, and
we'll both leave him for ever. If you're willin' to marry me, don't let
poverty distress you, for I have more money than we'll know what to do
with.'

“Jack's voice now began to tremble in airnest, with downright love and
tinderness, as good right it had; so he promised to do everything just
as she bid him, and then went home with a dacint appetite enough to his
supper.

“You may be sure the ould fellow looked darker and grimmer than ever at
Jack: but what could he do? Jack had done his duty? so he sat before
the fire, and sung 'Love among the Roses,' and the 'Black Joke,' with a
stouter and a lighter heart than ever, while the black chap, could have
seen him skivered.

“When midnight came, Jack, who kept a hawk's eye to the night, was at
the hawthorn with the wild filly, saddled and all--more betoken,
she wasn't a bit wild then, but as tame as a dog. Off they set, like
Erin-go-bragh, Jack and the lady, and never pulled bridle till it
was one o'clock next day, when they stopped at an inn, and had some
refreshment. They then took to the road again, full speed; however,
they hadn't gone far, when they heard a great noise behind them, and the
tramp of horses galloping like mad. 'Jack,' says the darling, on hearing
the hubbub, 'look behind you, and see what's this.'

[Illustration PAGE 676-- Throw it over your left shoulder]

“'Och! by the elevens,' says Jack, 'we're done at last; it's the dark
fellow, and half the country after us.' 'Put your hand,' says she, 'in
the filly's right ear, and tell me what you find in it.' 'Nothing at
all,' says Jack, 'but a weeshy bit of a dry stick.' 'Throw it over your
left shoulder says she, 'and see what will happen.' Jack did so at
once, and there was a great grove of thick trees growing so close to one
another, that a dandy could scarcely get his arm betwixt them. 'Now,'
said she, 'we are safe for another day.' 'Well,' said Jack, as he pushed
on the filly, 'you're the jewel of the world, sure enough; and maybe
it's you that won't live happy when we get to the Jim of the Ocean.'

“As soon as dark-face saw what happened, he was obliged to scour the
country for hatchets and hand-saws, and all kinds of sharp instruments,
to hew himself and his men a passage through the grove. As the saying
goes, many hands make light work, and sure enough, it wasn't long till
they had cleared a way for themselves, thick as it was, and set off with
double speed after Jack and the lady.

“The next day, about' one o'clock, he and she were after taking another
small refreshment of roast-beef and porther, and pushing on, as before,
when they heard the same tramping behind them, only it was ten times
louder.

“'Here they are again,' says Jack; 'and I'm afeard they'll come up with
us at last.'

“'If they do,' says she, 'they'll put us to death on the spot; but we
must try somehow to stop them another day, if we can; search the filly's
right ear again, and let me know what you find in it.'

“Jack pulled out a little three-cornered pebble, telling her that it was
all he got; 'well,' says she, 'throw it over your left shoulder like the
stick.'

“No sooner said than done; and there was a great chain of high, sharp
rocks in the way of divel-face and all his clan. 'Now,' says she, 'we
have gained another day.' 'Tundher-and-turf!' says Jack, 'what's this
for, at all, at all?--but wait till I get you in the Immerald Isle, for
this, and if you don't enjoy happy days any how, why I'm not sitting
before you on this horse, by the same token that it's not a horse at
all, but a filly though; if you don't get the hoith of good aiting and
drinking--lashings of the best wine and whisky that the land can afford,
my name's not Jack. We'll build a castle, and you'll have upstairs and
downstairs--a coach and six to ride in--lots of sarvints to attend on
you, and full and plinty of everything; not to mintion--hem!--not to
mintion that you'll have a husband that the fairest lady in the land
might be proud of,' says he, stretching himself up in the saddle, and
giving the filly a jag of the spurs, to show off a bit; although the
coaxing rogue knew that the money which was to do all this was her own.
At any rate, they spent the remainder of this day pleasantly enough,
still moving on, though, as fast as they could. Jack, every now and
then, would throw an eye behind, as if to watch their pursuers, wherein,
if the truth was known, it was to get a peep at the beautiful glowing
face and warm lips that were breathing all kinds of _fragrancies_ about
him. I'll warrant he didn't envy the king upon his throne, when he felt
the honeysuckle of her breath, like the smell of Father Ned's orchard
there, of a May morning.

“When Fardorougha (* the dark man) found the great chain of rocks before
him, you may set it down that he was likely to blow up with vexation;
but, for all that, the first thing he blew up was the rocks--and that he
might lose little or no time in doing it, he collected all the gunpowder
and crowbars, spades and pickaxes, that could be found for miles about
him, and set to it, working as if it was with inch of candle. For half
a day there was nothing but boring and splitting, and driving of iron
wedges, and blowing up pieces of rocks as big as little houses, until,
by hard, labor, they made a passage for themselves sufficient to carry
them over. They then set off again, full speed; and great advantage they
had over the poor filly that Jack and the lady rode on, for their horses
were well rested, and hadn't to carry double, like Jack's. The next day
they spied Jack and his beautiful companion, just about a quarter of a
mile before them.

“'Now,' says dark-brow, 'I'll make any man's fortune forever that will
bring me them two, either living or dead, but, if possible, alive: so,
spur on, for whoever secures them, man, woman, or child, is a made man,
but, above all, make no noise.'

“It was now divil take the hindmost among the bloody pack--every spur
was red with blood, and every horse smoking. Jack and the lady were
jogging on acrass a green field, not suspecting that the rest were so
near them, and talking over the pleasant days they would spind together
in Ireland, when they hears the hue-and-cry once more at their very
heels.

“'Quick as lightning, Jack,' says she, 'or we're lost--the right ear and
the left shoulder, like thought--they're not three lengths of the filly
from us!'

“But Jack knew his business; for just as a long, grim-looking villain,
with a great rusty rapier in his hand, was within a single leap of them,
and quite sure of either killing or making prisoners of them both, Jack
flings a little drop of green water that he got in the filly's ear over
his left shoulder, and in an instant there was a deep, dark gulf, filled
with black, pitchy-looking water between them. The lady now desired Jack
to pull up the filly a bit, that they might see what would become of the
dark fellow; but just as they turned round, the ould nagur set 'spurs to
his horse, and, in a fit of desperation, plunged himself, horse and all,
into the gulf, and was never seen or heard of more. The rest that were
with him went home, and began to quarrel about his wealth, and kept
murdering and killing one another, until a single vagabond of them
wasn't left alive to enjoy it.

“When Jack saw what happened, and that the blood-thirsty ould villain
got what he desarved so richly, he was as happy as a prince, and ten
times happier than most of them as the world goes, and she was every bit
as delighted. 'We have nothing more to fear,' said the darling that put
them all down so cleverly, seeing that she was but a woman; but, bedad,
it's she was the right sort of a woman--'all our dangers are now over,
at least, all yours are; regarding myself,' says she, 'there's a trial
before me yet, and that trial, Jack, depends upon your faithfulness and
constancy.'

“'On me, is it?--Och, then, murder! isn't it a poor case entirely, that
I have no way of showing you that you may depind your life upon me, only
by telling you so?'

“'I do depend upon you,' says she--'and now, as you love me, do not,
when the trial comes, forget her that saved you out of so many troubles,
and made you such a great and wealthy man.'

“The foregoing part of this Jack could well understand, but the last
part of it, making collusion to the wealth, was a little dark, as he
thought, bekase, he hadn't fingered any of it at the time: still, he
knew she was truth to the back-bone, and wouldn't desave him. They
hadn't travelled much farther, When Jack snaps his fingers with a 'Whoo!
by the powers, there it is, my darling--there it is, at long last!'

“'There is what, Jack?' said she, surprised, as well she might, at his
mirth and happiness--'There is what?' says she. 'Cheer up!' says Jack;
'there it is, my darling,--the Shannon!--as soon as we get to the other
side of it, we'll be in ould Ireland once more.'

“There was no end to Jack's good humor, when he crossed the Shannon;
and she was not a bit displeased to see him so happy. They had now no
enemies to fear, were in a civilized country, and among green fields
and well-bred people. In this way they travelled at their ase, till they
came within a few miles of the town of Knockimdowny, near which Jack's
mother lived.

“'Now, Jack,' says she, 'I told you that I would make you rich. You know
the rock beside your mother's cabin; in the east end of that rock there
is a loose stone, covered over with gray moss, just two feet below the
cleft out of which the hanging rowan-tree grows--pull that stone out,
and you will find more goold than would make a duke. Neither speak to
any person, nor let any living thing touch your lips till you come back
to me, or you'll forget that you ever saw me, and I'll lie left poor and
friendless in a strange, country.'

“'Why, thin, _manim asthee hu_,' (* My soul's within you.) says Jack,
'but the best way to guard against that, is to touch your own sweet lips
at the present time,' says he, giving her a smack that you'd hear, of
a calm evening, acrass a couple of fields. Jack set off to touch the
money, with such speed that when he fell he scarcely waited to rise
again; he was soon at the rock, any how, and without either doubt or
disparagement, there was a cleft of real goolden guineas, as fresh as
daisies. The first thing he did, after he had filled his pockets with
them, was to look if his mother's cabin was to the fore; and there
surely it was, as snug as ever, with the same dacent column of smoke
rowling from the chimbley.

“'Well,' thought he, 'I'll just stale over to the door-cheek, and peep
in to get one sight of my poor mother; then I'll throw her in a handful
of these guineas, and take to my scrapers.'

“Accordingly, he stole up at a half bend to the door, and was just going
to take a peep in, when out comes the little dog Trig, and begins to
leap and fawn upon him, as if it would eat him. The mother, too, came
running out to see what was the matter, when the dog made another spring
up about Jack's neck, and gave his lips the slightest lick in the world
with its tongue, the crathur was so glad to see him: the next minute,
Jack forgot the lady, as clane as if he had never seen her; but if he
forgot her, catch him at forgetting the money--not he, avick!--that
stuck to him like pitch.

“When the mother saw who it was, she flew to him, and, clasping her arms
about his neck, hugged him till she wasn't worth three halfpence. After
Jack sot a while, he made a trial to let her know what had happened him,
but he disremembered it all, except having the money in the rock, so
he up and tould her that, and a glad woman she was to hear of his good
fortune. Still he kept the place where the goold was to himself, having
been often forbid by her ever to trust a woman with a sacret when he
could avoid it.

“Now everybody knows what changes the money makes, and Jack was no
exception to this ould saying. In a few years he built himself a fine
castle, with three hundred and sixty-four windies in it, and he would
have added another, to make one for every day in the year, only that
would be equal to the number in the King's palace, and the Lord of the
Black Rod would be sent to take his head off, it being high thrason for
a subject to have as many windies in his house as the king. (* Such is
the popular opinion.) However, Jack, at any rate, had enough of them;
and he that couldn't be happy with three hundred and sixty-four,
wouldn't desarve to have three hundred and sixty-five. Along with all
this, he bought coaches and carriages, and didn't get proud like many
another beggarly upstart, but took especial good care of his mother,
whom he dressed in silks and satins, and gave her nice nourishing food,
that was fit for an ould woman in her condition. He also got great
tachers, men of great larning, from Dublin, acquainted with all
subjects; and as his own abilities were bright, he soon became a very
great scholar, entirely, and was able, in the long run, to outdo all his
tutherers.

“In this way he lived for some years--was now a man of great larning
himself--could spake the seven _langidges_, and it would delight your
ears to hear how high-flown and Englified he could talk. All the world
wondered where he got his wealth; but as he was kind and charitable
to every one that stood in need of assistance, the people said that
wherever he got it it couldn't be in better hands. At last he began to
look about him for a wife, and the only one in that part of the country
that would be at all fit for him, was the Honorable Miss Bandbox, the
daughter of a nobleman in the neighborhood. She indeed flogged all the
world for beauty; but it was said that she was proud and fond of wealth,
though, God he knows, she had enough of that any how. Jack, however, saw
none of this; for she was cunning enough to smile, and simper, and look
pleasant, whenever he'd come to her father's. Well, begad, from one
thing, and one word, to another, Jack thought it was best to make up to
her at wanst, and try if she'd accept of him for a husband; accordingly
he put the word to her like a man, and she, making as if she was
blushing, put her fan before her face and made no answer. Jack, however,
wasn't to be daunted; for he knew two things worth knowing, when a man
goes to look for a wife: the first is--that 'faint heart never won fair
lady,' and the second--that 'silence gives consint;' he, therefore,
spoke up to her in fine English, for it's he that knew how to speak now,
and after a little more fanning and blushing, by jingo, she consinted.
Jack then broke the matter to her father, who was as fond of money as
the daughter, and only wanted to grab at him for the wealth.

“When the match was a making, says ould Bandbox to Jack, 'Mr. Magennis,'
says he, (for nobody called him Jack now but his mother)--'these two
things you must comply with, if you marry my daughter, Miss Gripsy:--you
must send away your mother from about you, and pull down the cabin in
which you and she used to live; Gripsy says that they would jog her
memory consarning your low birth and former poverty; she's nervous
and high-spirited, Mr. Magennis, and declares upon her honor that
she couldn't bear the thoughts of having the delicacy of her feeling
offinded by these things.'

“'Good morning to you both,' says Jack, like an honest fellow as he
was, 'if she doesn't marry me except on these conditions, give her my
compliments, and tell her our courtship is at an end.'

“But it wasn't long till they soon came out with another story,
for before a week passed they were very glad to get him on his own
conditions. Jack was now as happy as the day was long--all things
appointed for the wedding, and nothing a wanting to make everything to
his heart's content but the wife, and her he was to have in less than
no time. For a day or two before the wedding, there never was seen
such grand preparations: bullocks, and hogs, and sheep were roasted
whole--kegs of whiskey, both Roscrea and Innishowen, barrels of ale and
beer were there in dozens. All descriptions of niceties and wild-fowl,
and fish from the _say_; and the dearest wine that could be bought with
money, was got for the gentry and grand folks. Fiddlers, and pipers, and
harpers, in short all kinds of music and musicianers, played in shoals.
Lords and ladies, and squares of high degree were present--and, to crown
the thing, there was open house to all comers.

“At length the wedding-day arrived; there was nothing but roasting
and boiling; servants dressed in rich liveries ran about with joy and
delight in their countenances, and white gloves and wedding favors on
their hats and hands. To make a long story short, they were all seated
in Jack's castle at the wedding breakfast, ready for the priest to marry
them when they'd be done; for in them times people were never married
until they had laid in a good foundation to carry them through the
ceremony. Well, they were all seated round the table, the men dressed
in the best of broadcloth, and the ladies rustling in their silks and
satins--their heads, necks, and arms hung round with jewels both rich
and rare; but of all that were there that day, there wasn't the likes of
the bride and bridegroom. As for him, nobody could think, at all at all,
that he was ever any thing else than a born gintleman; and what was more
to his credit, he had his kind ould mother sitting beside the bride, to
tache her that an honest person, though poorly born, is company for the
king. As soon as the breakfast was served up, they all set to, and maybe
the various kinds of eatables did not pay for it; and among all this
cutting and thrusting, no doubt but it was remarked, that the bride
herself was behindhand wid none of them--that she took her _dalin-trick_
without flinching, and made nothing less than a right fog meal of it;
and small blame to her for that same, you persave.

“When the breakfast was over, up gets Father Flannagan--out with his
book, and on with his stole, to marry them. The bride and bridegroom
went up to the end of the room, attended by their friends, and the rest
of the company stood on each side of it, for you see they were too
high bred, and knew their manners too well, to stand in a crowd like
spalpeens. For all that, there was many a sly look from the ladies to
their bachelors, and many a titter among them, grand as they were;
for, to tell the truth, the best of them likes to see fun in the way,
particularly of that sort. The priest himself was in as great a glee as
any of them, only he kept it under, and well he might, for sure enough
this marriage was nothing less than a rare windfall to him and the
parson that was to marry them after him--bekase you persave a Protestant
and Catholic must be married by both, otherwise it does not hould good
in law. The parson was as grave as a mustard-pot, and Father Flannagan
called the bride and bridegroom his childher, which was a big bounce for
him to say the likes of, more betoken that neither of them was a drop's
blood to him.

“However, he pulled out the book, and was just beginning to buckle them
when in comes Jack's ould acquaintance, the smoking cur, as grave as
ever. The priest had just got through two or three words of Latin, when
the dog gives him a pluck by the sleeve; Father Flannagan, of coorse,
turned round to see who it was that _nudged_ him: 'Behave yourself,'
says the dog to him, just as he peeped over his shoulder---'behave
yourself,' says he; and with that he sat him down on his hunkers beside
the priest, and pulling a cigar instead of a pipe out of his pocket, he
put it in his mouth, and began to smoke for the bare life of him. And,
by my own word, it's he that could smoke: at times he would shoot the
smoke in a slender stream like a knitting-needle, with a round curl at
the one end of it, ever so far out of the right side of his mouth; then
he would shoot it out of the left, and sometimes make it swirl out so
beautiful from the middle of his lips!--why, then, it's he that must
have been the well-bred puppy all out, as far as smoking went. Father
Flannagan and they all were thundherstruck.

“'In the name of St. Anthony, and of that holy nun, St. Teresa,' said
his Reverence to him, 'who and what are you, at all at all?'

“'Never mind that,' says the dog, taking the cigar for a minute between
his claws; 'but if you wish particularly to know, I'm a thirty-second
cousin of your own by the mother's side.'

“'I command you in the name of all the saints,' says Father Flarmagan,
believing him to be the devil, 'to disappear from among us, and never
become visible to any one in this house again.'

“'The sorra a budge, at the present time, will I budge,' says the dog to
him, 'until I see all sides rightified, and the rogues disappointed.'

“Now one would be apt to think the appearance of a _spaking_ dog might
be after fright'ning the ladies; but doesn't all the world know that
_spaking_ puppies are their greatest favorites? Instead of that, you
see, there was half a dozen fierce-looking whiskered fellows, and three
or four half-pay officers, that were nearer making off than the ladies.
But, besides the cigar, the dog had his beautiful eye-glass, and through
it, while he was spaking to Father Flannigan, he ogled all the ladies,
one after another, and when his eye would light upon any that pleased
him, he would kiss his paw to her and wag his tail with the greatest
politeness.

“'John,' says Father Flannagan, to one of the servants, 'bring me salt
and water, till I consecrate them* to banish the divil, for he has
appeared to us all during broad daylight in the shape of a dog.'

     * Salt and water consecrated by a particular form is Holy Water.

“'You had better behave yourself, I say again,' says the dog, 'or if
you make me speak, by my honor as a gintleman I'll expose you: I say you
won't marry the same two, neither this nor any other day, and I'll give
you my raisons presently; but I repate it, Father

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