AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
SMILES AND TEARS, WOVEN INTO
SONG AND STORY.
BY
ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
BOSTON:
ALFRED MUDGE & SON PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET.
1891.
COPYRIGHT,
1890,
BY ARTHUR M. FORRESTER.
TO THE
“FELONS” OF IRELAND,
THE BRAVE AND FAITHFUL FEW,
WHO HAVE BEEN EXILED OR IMPRISONED OR EXECUTED
BECAUSE THEY LOVED THEIR NATIVE LAND MORE THAN
HOME OR LIBERTY OR LIFE,
This Volume
IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
SONGS AND BALLADS.
PAGE.
The Church of Ballymore 7
The Old Boreen 9
The Irish Schoolhouse 11
Pat Murphy’s Cows 13
Father Tom Malone 16
You Can Guess 18
Only! 19
Songs of Innisfail 20
The Lord of Kenmare 32
An Old Irish Tune 39
Harvey Duff 45
Ivan Petrokoffsky 52
The Emperor’s Ring 54
Black Loris 56
The Red Heart Daisy 67
The Tide is Turning 68
Our Own Again 70
The Tale of a Tail 71
The Seasick Sub-Commissioners 75
Clare Constabulary Caione 77
Clause Twenty-six 78
Jenkins, M. P. 80
Thady Malone 81
Rory’s Reverie 83
Our Land Shall be Free 102
The Felons of Our Land 111
An Official Valuation 112
A Bewildered Boycotter 113
A Complaint of Coercion 115
O’Neil’s Address (Benburb) 118
The Fenian’s Dream 119
The Speaker’s Complaint 126
Erin Machree 128
Balfour’s Wish 135
Our Cause 136
Served Him Right 138
Rapparee Song 140
To the Landlords of Ireland 141
Balfour Rejoices 142
The Irish Brigade 149
Faithful to the Last 156
Fenian Battle Song 158
The Grave of the Martyrs 159
Death’s Victory 160
The Green Flag at Fredericksburg 161
The Flag of Our Land 162
Hurrah for Liberty 163
The Messenger 165
John Bull’s Appeal 175
The Story of a Bomb 177
Avenging, Though Dim 180
Christmas Dirge of London
Police 180
Ireland’s Prayer 182
John Bull’s New Year 183
Ready and Steady 185
The Charge of the Guards 193
An Address to Slaves 195
The Lion’s Lamentation 200
Memorial Ode to Irish Dead 202
Song of King Alcohol 209
Contrary Cognomens 210
An Æsthetic Wooing 211
The Drunkard’s Dream 212
Constable X 222
Lucifer’s Laboratory 223
The Monopolist’s Moan 224
With the Grand Army Veterans 225
The Irish Soldier at Grant’s
Grave 228
Maine and Mayo 229
The Priest with the Brogue 238
Arab War Song 240
The Linguist of the Liffey 247
Peggy O’Shea 250
The Boston Carrier’s Plaint 253
New England’s Marksmen 260
Calcraft and Price 270
Entitled to a Raise 272
The Postman’s Wooing 273
Sonnets to a Shoemaker 275
At the College Sports 278
Mulrooney: A Trooper’s Tale 286
STORIES AND SKETCHES.
Taming a Tiger 22
Ryan’s Revenge 34
Harvey Duff 40
A Seditious Slide 47
Who Shot Phlynn’s Hat? 58
A Double Surprise 86
Philipson’s Party 103
That Traitor Timmins 129
A Picturesque Penny-a-Liner 144
Snooks 151
Caledonian Candlesticks 152
A Typical Trial 168
Why Smithers Resigned 186
Exploits of an Irish Reporter 197
A Political Lesson Spoiled 199
An Orange Oration 205
Frederick’s Folly 215
A Sandy Row Skirmish 232
Hobbies in Our Block 241
Not a John L. Sullivan 244
A Windy Day at Cabra 248
Apropos of the Census 256
A Mixed Antiquarian 261
Jones’s Umbrella 263
Lessons in the French Drama 265
A Commercial Crisis 276
A Musical Revenge 280
A Liar Laid Out 282
AN IRISH CRAZY-QUILT.
THE CHURCH OF BALLYMORE.
I have knelt in great cathedrals with their wondrous naves and aisles,
Whose fairy arches blend and interlace,
Where the sunlight on the paintings like a ray of glory smiles,
And the shadows seem to sanctify the place;
Where the organ’s tones, like echoes of an angel’s trumpet roll,
Wafted down by seraph wings from heaven’s shore--
They are mighty and majestic, but they cannot touch my soul
Like the little whitewashed church of Ballymore.
Ah! modest little chapel, half-embowered in the trees,
Though the roof above its worshippers was low,
And the earth bore traces sometimes of the congregation’s knees,
While they themselves were bent with toil and woe!
Milan, Cologne, St. Peter’s--by the feet of monarchs trod--
With their monumental genius and their lore,
Never knew in their magnificence more trustful prayers to God
Than ascended to His throne from Ballymore!
Its priest was plain and simple, and he scorned to hide his brogue
In accents that we might not understand,
But there was not in the parish such a renegade or rogue
As to think his words not heaven’s own command!
He seemed our cares and troubles and our sorrows to divide,
And he never passed the poorest peasant’s door--
In sickness he was with us, and in death still by our side--
God be with you, Father Tom, of Ballymore.
There’s a green graveyard behind it, and in dreams at night I see
Each little modest slab and grassy mound;
For my gentle mother’s sleeping ’neath the withered rowan tree,
And a host of kindly neighbors lie around!
The famine and the fever through our stricken country spread,
Desolation was about me, sad and sore,
So I had to cross the waters, in strange lands to seek my bread,
But I left my heart behind in Ballymore!
I am proud of our cathedrals--they are emblems of our love
To an ever-mighty Benefactor shown;
And when wealth and art and beauty have been given from above,
The devil should not have them as his own!
Their splendor has inspired me--but amidst it all I prayed
God to grant me, when life’s weary work is o’er,
Sweet rest beside my mother in the dear embracing shade
Of the little whitewashed church of Ballymore!
THE OLD BOREEN.
Embroidered with shamrocks and spangled with daisies,
Tall foxgloves like sentinels guarding the way,
The squirrel and hare played bo-peep in its mazes,
The green hedgerows wooed it with odorous spray;
The thrush and the linnet piped overtures in it,
The sun’s golden rays bathed its bosom of green.
Bright scenes, fairest skies, pall to-day on my eyes,
For I opened them first on an Irish boreen!
It flung o’er my boyhood its beauty and gladness,
Rich homage of perfume and color it paid;
It laughed with my joy--in my moments of sadness
What solace I found in its pitying shade.
When Love, to my rapture, rejoiced in my capture,
My fetters the curls of a brown-haired colleen,
What draught from his chalice, in mansion or palace,
So sweet as I quaffed in the dear old boreen?
But green fields were blighted and fair skies beclouded,
Stern frost and harsh rain mocked the poor peasant’s toil,
Ere they burst into blossom the buds were enshrouded,
The seed ere its birth crushed in merciless soil;
Wild tempests struck blindly, the landlord, less kindly,
Aimed straight at our hearts with a “death sentence” keen;
The blast spared our sheeling, which he, more unfeeling,
Left roofless and bare to affright the boreen.
A dirge of farewell through the hawthorn was pealing,
The wind seemed to stir branch and leaf with a sigh,
As, down on a tear-bedewed shamrock sod kneeling,
I kissed the old boreen a weeping good-by;
And vowed that should ever my patient endeavor
The grains of success from life’s harvest-field glean,
Where’er fortune found me, whatever ties bound me,
My eyes should be closed in the dear old boreen.
Ah! Fate has been cruel, in toil’s endless duel
With sickness and want I have earned only scars;
Life’s twilight is nearing--its day disappearing--
My weary soul sighs to escape through its bars;
But ere fields elysian shall dazzle its vision,
Grant, Heaven, that its flight may be winged through the scene
Of streamlet and wild-wood, the home of my childhood,
The grave of my kin, and the dear old boreen!
AN IRISH SCHOOLHOUSE.
Upon the rugged ladder rungs--whose pinnacle is Fame--
How often have ambitious pens deep graven Harvard’s name;
The gates of glory Cambridge men o’er all the world assail,
And rulers in the realm of thought look back with pride to Yale.
To no such Alma Mater can my Muse in triumph raise
Its Irish voice in canticles of gratitude and praise;
Yet still I hold in shrine of gold, and until death I will,
The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
When in the balmy morning, racing down the green boreen
Toward its portal, ivy-framed, our curly heads were seen,
We felt no shame for ragged coats, nor blushed for shoeless feet,
But bubbled o’er with laughter dear old master’s smile to meet;
Yet saw beneath his homespun garb an awe-inspiring store
Of learning’s fearful mysteries and academic lore.
No monarch wielded sceptre half so potent as his quill
In that old schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
Perhaps--and yet ’tis hard to think--our boastful modern school
Might feel contempt for master, for his methods and his rule;
Would scorn his simple ways--and in the rapid march of mind
His patient face and thin gray locks would lag far, far behind.
No matter; he was all to us, our guide and mentor then;
He taught us how to face life’s fight with all the grit of men;
To honor truth, and love the right, and in the future fill
Our places in the world as he had done behind the hill.
He taught us, too, of Ireland’s past; her glories and her wrongs--
Our lessons being varied with the most seditious songs:
We were quite a nest of rebels, and with boyish fervor flung
Our hearts into the chorus of rebellion when we sung.
In truth, this was the lesson, above all, we conned so well
That some pursued the study in the English prison cell,
And others had to cross the seas in curious haste, but still
All living love to-day, as then, the school behind the hill.
The wind blows through the thatchless roof in stormy gusts to-day;
Around its walls young foxes now, in place of children, play;
The hush of desolation broods o’er all the country-side;
The pupils and their kith and kin are scattered far and wide.
But wheresoe’er one scholar on the face of earth may roam,
When in a gush of tears comes back the memory of home,
He finds the brightest picture limned by Fancy’s magic skill,
The little schoolhouse, thatched with straw, that lay behind the hill.
PAT MURPHY’S COWS.
[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary
Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to
the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited
roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat
Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less
than eleven children.]
In a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,
There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;
From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,
With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.
He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,
And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;
While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse
Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole--a pair of Kerry cows.
Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose
The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,
Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,
And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.
And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,
For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;
In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;
He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.
And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,
Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;
His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair--
The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,
Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,
Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;
And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows
Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.
Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,
How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!
A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,
And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.
What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,
As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,
He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,
For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.
Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan--
He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;
He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,
And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.
Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,
And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:
They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,
But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
FATHER TOM MALONE.
A LAND LEAGUE REMINISCENCE.
Hair white as innocence, that crowned
A gentle face which never frowned;
Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;
Lips framed to counsel and to bless;
Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,
A reflex of our native skies,
Through which now tears, now sunshine shone--
There you have Father Tom Malone.
He bade the infant at its birth
_Cead mille failthe_ to the earth;
With friendly hand he guided youth
Along the thorny track of truth;
The dying felt, yet knew not why,
Nearer to Heaven when he was by--
For, sure, the angels at God’s throne
Were friends of Father Tom Malone.
For us, poor simple sons of toil
Who wrestled with a stubborn soil,
Our one ambition, sole content,
Not to be backward with the rent;
Our one absorbing, constant fear,
The agent’s visits twice a year;
We had, our hardships to atone,
The love of Father Tom Malone.
One season failed. The dull earth slept.
Despite of ceaseless vigil kept
For sign of crop, day after day,
To coax it from the sullen clay,
Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;
The tubers rotted--then, oh, shame!
We--’twas the last time ever known--
Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.
We had, from fruitful years before,
Garnered with care a frugal store;
’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas gone
What were our babes to live upon?
We had no seed for coming spring,
Nor faintest hope to which to cling;
We would have starved without a moan,
When out spoke Father Tom Malone.
His voice, so flute-like in the past,
Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,
His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,
Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!
“God’s wondrous love doth not intend
Hundreds to starve that one may spend;
Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”
_That_ from mild Father Tom Malone.
And when the landlord with a force
Of English soldiers, foot and horse,
Came down and direst vengeance swore,
Who met him at the cabin door?
Who reasoned first and then defied
The thief in all his power and pride?
Who won the poor man’s fight alone?
Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.
So, when you point to heroes’ scars,
And boast their prowess in the wars,
Give one small meed of praise, at least,
To this poor modest Irish priest.
No laurel wreath was twined for him,
But pulses throb and eyelids dim
When toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,
God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
YOU CAN GUESS.
There are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,
And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,
And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to find
Sweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;
But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,
Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,
There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confess
I first met my fate,--what it was you can guess.
It was under the shade of its bordering trees,
One day I grew suddenly weak at the knees
At the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,
And yet it was but a short question to ask.
’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I bless
The boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”
And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;
And the question was this--but I’m sure you can guess.
ONLY!
Only a cabin, thatched and gray,
Only a rose-twined door,
Only a barefooted child at play
On only an earthern floor.
Only a little brain--not wise
For even a head so small,
And that is the reason he bitterly cries
For leaving his home--that’s all.
Only the thought of her girlhood there,
And her happier days as wife,
In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,
Have endeared them to her for life;
What is the weeping woman’s cause?
Why are her accents gall?
What does she know of our intricate laws?
It was only a hut--that’s all.
He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,
That man with the eyelids dim,
And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earth
For sinewy serfs like him.
Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,
For his heart such a wondrous thrall?
Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?
He was born in the place--that’s all.
* * * * *
The years have gone, and the worn-out pair
Sleep under the stranger’s clay,
And the weeping child with the curly hair
Is a brave, strong man to-day;
Yet still he thinks of the olden land,
And prays for her tyrant’s fall,
And longs to be one of some chosen band,
With only a chance--that’s all.
SONGS OF INNISFAIL.
Where the Austral river rushes
Through feathery heath and bushes,
Through its gurgles and its gushes
You may hear,
To your wonder and surprise,
Sweet melodies arise
You have heard ’neath other skies
Low and clear.
Yes! within the gold land,
Strange to you and cold land,
Voices from the old land
Swell upon the gale--
Lyrics of the story,
Lit with flames of glory,
Dimmed with pages gory,
Songs of Innisfail!
Where Mississippi leaping
O’er cliffs and crags, or creeping
Through valleys fair, is sweeping
To the sea,
From the fields of nodding grain
On some mountain path or plain
Rings a stirring old refrain
Fresh and free.
Yes! where’er we wander
Irish hearts will ponder
O’er our land, and fonder
Throb with ev’ry tale
Of the home that bore us,
Till the new skies o’er us
Echo with our chorus
Songs of Innisfail.
Exiles o’er the spray-foam,
Whereso’er we may roam,
Thoughts of far-away home
Linger still,
And in dreams we see again
Babbling stream and silent glen,
Forest green and lonely fen,
Vale and hill.
Yes! our hearts’ devotion
Flies across the ocean,
While with deep emotion
Sternest features pale,
As around us stealing,
Softened by sad feeling,
Through the air are pealing
Songs of Innisfail!
TAMING A TIGER.
We were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus,
Dublin,--five of us--a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.
There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the
representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay
amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified,
who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & Brassey; Tim
Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing
stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a
distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical
jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome
kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30 A.M. train
south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance
of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was
attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid
individual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally
irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.
“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the
newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way
from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks
we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would
ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a
little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him
out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of
the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take
whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me
see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick
Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this
Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and
Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each
of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst,
and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville,
will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he
must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my
sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What
do you say, boys?”
Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand
in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the
major into a first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed
rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the
compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in
Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping
Harry,--delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble
servant).
At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all
manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished
off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to
the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot,
swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had
pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout
to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe
Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home,
and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.
He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry!
the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now
the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.
He had killed a panther with his naked hands--with one naked hand, in
fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in
desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its
tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s
spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and
he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior
recesses. He tore its heart out, sir,--its heart,--and an assortment of
lungs and ribs and other things.
He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello
crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his
waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He
never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.
At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare,
and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we
managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in
Ireland.
“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that--down
in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a
fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled
twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized
atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing
dumb, my name’s not Boomerang--Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”
“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the
peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt,
for instance.”
“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach
of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,--flay him alive,
sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember
Joe Boomerang--fighting Joe--as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild
elephants! I would annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief,
the--the--by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”
Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions,
and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am
the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your
abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally
concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I
suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will
oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an
officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you
have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”
We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform
and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like
an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but
his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I
cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D---- me, if I will!”
“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not
a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with
perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for
you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with
pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him
in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the
bullet? People said, you know, that it was the doctors and not Davitt
that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.
The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man
in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man
already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not
going to be killed--I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not
going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as
if they were snipe.”
“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of
the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith
did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting
Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively
blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for
the honor of the service.”
“The service be d----d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a
kaleidoscope of colors--red, purple, blue, yellow, and white--were
flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like
this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a
different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his
courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead
of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had
ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung,
sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them
that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance
from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and
winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar
and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round;
and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb
from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”
Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock,
and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a
cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy.
I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I
shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that
I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you
must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you
to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The
prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had
disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow.
Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone
got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed
to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”
“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party,
he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he
has always chosen that so far.”
“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such
horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing
outright.
“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”
“Has he--has he--I’m not afraid, you know--ha! ha! Joe Boomerang
afraid--capital joke--but--but--has he killed anybody?”
“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him
personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal,
matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The
major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I
continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both
pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy.
You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It
will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs,
but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere
with my duty.”
“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that--that--”
“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the
best. I know an undertaker in Cork--a decent sort of a chap. We can
arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the
first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills
you.”
“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me
sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what
alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I
remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major
managed to get hold of enough of his voice to inquire how it came to
pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as
duelling.
“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western
institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in
deference to Yankee ideas.”
“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we
would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang
of--”
“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the
car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife
clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish
determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter
collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower.
“Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot
that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and
glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of
America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to
the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m
bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the
Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I
squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the
blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies,
sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a
Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for the snub-nosed,
curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury.
Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena
from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge
forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that
seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made
a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim,
but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.
When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told
him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and,
having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed
staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered
that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for
his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at
the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to
Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.
“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that
gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to
Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him
this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he
booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’
thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since
the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at
the ould cross roads.” A few days after I read this announcement in the
Dublin _Gazette_: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the
humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident
magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly
return to Bengal.”
THE LORD OF KENMARE.
There are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;
The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,
When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,
Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.
What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,
What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,
On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,
That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!
Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morning
The bountiful prizes of Nature to win,
While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,
Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,
Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadow
Distemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;
Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,
But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!
When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;
When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,
For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the county
Were--the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.
And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,
Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,
The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,
Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.
Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster--
This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,
Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master--
A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!
He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;
He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayer
That Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surges
Sobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!
He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,
Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,
But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devil
Still essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.
Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,
The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,
And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”
Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.
Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;
Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;
The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rally
Avengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.
Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,
Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,
Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,
The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
RYAN’S REVENGE.
During the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most
exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement
articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the
post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and,
for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect
“reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This
peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional
association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was
popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been
introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain
refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French,
Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the
government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the
indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions
that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham,
subsequent cabinets did not hesitate to adopt his invention when they
had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with the
_status quo_ was afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt,
English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his
reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office
pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that
nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.
The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that
Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical
visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence
in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of
his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted
county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a
Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than
turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof
that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds.
So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.
For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to
get muddled,--his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the
spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scented _billet-doux_ from
that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue
envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna
to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an
envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes
being found to contain nothing at all.
Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with
the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy
for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent
sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that
euphonious cognomen.
Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state
indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw
a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You
couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy.
If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or
individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was
a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the
shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy
for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress
suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good
harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were
thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of
as a blight among the Murphys.
So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed
to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal,
it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances,
the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.
But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central
bureau of the postal pimpdom. He took the clan Murphy into his
confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy
in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the
fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went
forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many
letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could
put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,--the crops, the
weather, the price of provisions,--anything, in fact, or nothing at all.
The language was of minor importance,--Irish, however, preferred,--and
the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the
cause.
Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.
The first day of the interception of _the_ Murphy’s letters, three bags
full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.
The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.
The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s
private sanctum with spare bags.
The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.
The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy
letters on the stairs.
Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.
But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking
Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters
for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.
Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the
grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to
the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or
hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the
general chaos.
The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service
Corps, and from 8 A.M. till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were
blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs
and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated
protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for
Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.
Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War
Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey
quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the
intercepted epistles in.
Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,--the order to
overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would
have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the
task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was
relieved.
Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy
correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed
to the treacherous waves.
To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up
a thousand leagues from land, on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir
William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a
week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the
gout.
AN OLD IRISH TUNE.
We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,
And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay
By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood
A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.
Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,
And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,
When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,
There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.
It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,
It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,
And over the dreams of the slumberers cast
The magical spell of a voice from the past;
It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain
Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;
And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,
Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.
Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,
Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,
Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,
For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.
Once again in old homes we were children at play,
Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.
Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,
And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.
A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,
To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,
And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,
Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;
A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,
But never a ball on its death-mission sped;
Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon
Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!
It linked with its strains ere they melted away
True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,
But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,
To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.
The air seemed to throb with invisible tears
Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,
And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,
Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
“HARVEY DUFF.”
There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible
to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the
different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes
or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
“God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence;
“Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment
before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the
living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself
a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles
of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five
minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because
he has been killed in the lump.
But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers
existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is
none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced
upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished
in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican
convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a
trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling
outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but
if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain
tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone,
dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage,
hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take
a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of
mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will
amply repay the journey. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be
anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well
to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest
you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky
enough to go to hospital.
Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The
performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.
How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its
composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated
with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the
authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories
and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.
I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”
There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server
and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular
“Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled
in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place
as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally
difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the
melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has
been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to
submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied
experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff”
for thirty seconds.