Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
exploring turn of mind that I admire--though certainly it is the
most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,
Yours, as ever,
HARRY MCCARTHY.
P. S.--I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
you tickets?
They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after
they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply
for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the
whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the
greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot
say which was the greater surprise--that which he felt when he
encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he
got it back again.
OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.
Brightly our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,
Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;
Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;
Firm is each footstep, erect every head.
Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,
Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;
Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry
Wakens the nation--Our land shall be free!
We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining
In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,
And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,
For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!
What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;
Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;
On to the contest, then, up with the green again!
Death to the tyrant--Our land shall be free!
The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,
The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;
Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;
While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!
Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,
But now she rises erect from her knee,
And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,
Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!
England no longer can mock or deride us;
Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;
Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;
True to the cause we shall ever remain.
Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;
Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;
Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,
Soldiers, press onward--Our land shall be free!
PHILIPSON’S PARTY.
Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson
Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived
in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the
express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there,
which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out
of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had
allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three
years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle
manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease--with a
view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all
round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to
view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was
regarded by Old Soapsuds,--which was the very irreverend title those
benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the
city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime
of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the
tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table
had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest
bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson
had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it
would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no
effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and
calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict
Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest
of the tenants.
At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going
agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction,
ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of
landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the
entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put
down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was
smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of
any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally
workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked
fifty--fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to
beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was
what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had
Peter Philipson--“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.
The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained
the old housekeeper and the cook and the coachman and a stable boy,
only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas
Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the
evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of
the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first
proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the
neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his
next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as
a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he
expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the
recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses.
These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate
missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears,
including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under
penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon
his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his
father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle
to the _Limehouse Chronicle_ on the proper method of settling the Irish
difficulty.
On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his
tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay
up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected
so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the
farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men
who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them
retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say
that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be
a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant,
and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself,
he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got
round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”
“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest
without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”
“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an
ill-disguised sneer.
Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the
wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the
twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.
“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re here to bring _you_ to _your_ senses; not to show that
we’ve parted with our own.”
“I--I--” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t
understand you.”
“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for
arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to
raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long
as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint
too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man, to offer you a fair rint for
this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t
like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to
the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”
Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was
nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he
did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is
mo--mo--monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in
every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll
evict--I’ll-I’ll--by Jove! I’ll--I’ll--Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of
this!”
“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like
to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve
only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well,
begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man
to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out,
thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches.
Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts
of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own
fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t
neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word
of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A
thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the
deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest
chair with a dim conviction surging through his brain that there was
something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane,
Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than
Ballymurphy, County Cork.
After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things
were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the
decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about
that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so
how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with
him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived
spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was
interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man
Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which
at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.
“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.
“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook,
she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the
’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the
front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe
there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer,
’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’
mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a
hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with
the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve
come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey--I mean
to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham--I
didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as
much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for
Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of
hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful
Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”
Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed
sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest
railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the
distance he could place before nightfall between himself and
Ballymurphy.
A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had
spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires
were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision
store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig
he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his
equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter
groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited
guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev.
Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring
squires from half a dozen estates--a goodly company of fifteen or
sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their
wants, and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple
of loaves to feast their appetites!
It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the
burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman
in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the
whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial
in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking
examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he
would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do?
Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing
his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where
boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and
housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he
poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?
He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan.
With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove
the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to
his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He
restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the
stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The
party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it
was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.
If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a
soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into the counting-house of
Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his
candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned
to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be
firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on
the subject.
THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.
Fill up once more, we’ll drink a toast
To comrades far away;
No nation on the earth can boast
Of braver hearts than they.
And though they sleep in dungeons deep,
Or flee, outlawed and banned,
We love them yet, we ne’er forget
The felons of our land!
In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,
Foredoomed by alien laws,
Some on the scaffold proudly died
For holy Ireland’s cause.
And brothers, say, shall we to-day
Unmoved like cowards stand,
While traitors shame and foes defame
The felons of our land?
Some in the convict’s dreary cell
Have found a living tomb,
And some unseen, unfriended, fell
Within its silent gloom.
Yet what care we, although it be
Trod by a ruffian band,
God bless the clay where rest to-day
The felons of our land!
Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,
Oh, little do we care,
A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown
An Irish head can wear!
And every Gael in Innisfail
Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,
From Lee to Boyne would gladly join
The felons of our land!
AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.
The wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,
In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;
And as he contemplated the interminable rain,
On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,
For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.
The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,
And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,
As he thought of bronchial attacks,
Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,
And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.
The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,
The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil
Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,
O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,
And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.
His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,
And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,
His gloomy face relaxed,--indeed, he actually laughed;
He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught
That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.
He whispered to the jarvey--“You remember Murphy’s land;
Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?
That is, could you perambulate
Around that gentleman’s estate
In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?
“You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,
But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,
Return the muddy boots to me
Unbrushed, because I wish to be
Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.”
That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,
He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,
He simply mopped the boots around
The dirtiest adjacent ground,
And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.
And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent
Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,
Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,
Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure
That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,
That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.
A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.
I’m diminted,--this is awful; so it is
My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;
’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz
The time I lost my churning through the thunder.
Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,
An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary--
Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!--
Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.
I wouldn’t mind the ould man,--not a jot;
I always looked upon him as a blaggard,
Since his language was so disperately hot,
Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.
They might pass their resolutions by the score
About him, and I would niver prove contrary,
But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore
Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.
Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,
Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;
An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,
Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.
Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;
They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,
An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,--
Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.
If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,
Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,
Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,
An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,
I would do my best endayvors to obey;
But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy
Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,--
Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!
A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.
O Peggy, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,
And help me to recover from my state of discontint;
There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,
And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.
For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,
By the light of that same silver moon,
Found out of his bed,
But will straightway be led
To a cushion of plank,
That of feathers is blank,
An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.
Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,
With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;
Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant
Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;
An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste
For resting his arm round your waist,
An’ except for a sigh,
Or a glance of your eye,
Or an odd little squeeze
That there’s nobody sees,
His comfort will be of the laste.
Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,
Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?
I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,
I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;
I despised my five miles of a thramp
In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,
For I knew at its ind
I could always dipind
That some one I’d find
Who had sootherings kind,
To rescue my sperits from damp.
But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,
The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;
And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,
I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.
An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,
Stritched out on an ould cabin door,
With six ounces of lead
Settled inside my head,
An’ my bosom, that’s true
As the saints unto you,
Disarranged by an ounce or two more.
Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,
Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;
And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,
That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;
So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,
And the law has such far-seeing eyes,
’Twould find thim all out,
And there isn’t a doubt
Introduced I would be,
By some dirty J. P.,
To a suit of the Government frieze.
O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.
BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.
Gallant sons of Innisfail,
Ye whose stout hearts never quail,
Though no glittering coats of mail
Their proud throbbings hide:
Hark! yon distant sullen hum!
’Tis the rolling of the drum.
See! our Saxon foemen come
In their wrath and pride.
Meet them, comrades, face to face,
Meet them as becomes our race,
Let no shadow of disgrace
Dim our spotless name.
Front to front, unshrinking, stand,
Fire each heart and nerve each hand,
Strike for God and fatherland,
Liberty and fame!
Kinsmen, they are still the same
As when, centuries past, they came
To our shores, and blood and flame
Followed in their track;
By the still uncancelled debt
We were cowards to forget,
By the wrongs we suffer yet,
Drive them headlong back!