Must from his wretched heart have vanished;
Our hills and valleys desolate,
Our ruined homes, our people banished.
And yet, God knows, he learned in youth
The gloomy story of his sireland--
Drank in at mother’s knees the truth
That England is the scourge of Ireland.
I cannot weep for brother Pat--
I hate the hellish cause he died for;
False traitor to the freedom that
His brothers strove, his sisters sighed for;
E’en when in tearful dreams I see
The parching sands drift blood-stained o’er him,
My grief is changed to anger. He
Was treacherous to the land that bore him!
RAPPAREE SONG.
Come up, comrades, up, see the night draweth on,
And black shadows loom over fair Slieve-namon;
The darkness is creeping o’er mountain and vale,
And our footsteps are drowned in the roar of the gale.
Our proud foemen rest in yon valley below,
And their slumbering guards never dream of a foe:
Then up, comrades, up, ere the bright sun appears
We’ll have vengeance galore for the sufferings of years.
They have plundered our homes and foredoomed us to die
Of famine and want ’neath the cold winter sky;
Our roof-trees are blazing, our altars o’erthrown,
And ’tis treason to ask or to hope for our own;
Our kinsmen lie food for the ravens and crows--
They craved but for bread, and were answered with blows;
And because we won’t perish while feasting they be,
Oh, robbers, and traitors, and cut-throats are we!
We’re robbers to snatch back our own from their hand,
We’re traitors because we are true to our land,
And cut-throats, ha! ha! so the cowards can feel
That we, like themselves, carry points to our steel!
They have hunted us down now for many a day;
To-night they shall find us the hunters, not they;
For we’ll bend to their foul yoke no longer, we’ll swear,
Whilst we’ve arms that can strike, boys, or hearts that can dare.
TO THE LANDLORDS OF IRELAND.
You tendered us when famine came
The pity of a thought,
Bestowed to slaves whose sense of shame
And hearts and souls you’d bought.
Time’s wheel turns round--you’ve lost your place,
And right into your tyrant face,
Your jibes and sneers
Of many years
At victims’ tears
Are thrown,
And in God’s name,
Our hearts aflame,
To-day we claim
Our own!
Once for ye, skulking, lazy elves,
Muscle and brain we wrought.
Toiled, starved, and died--scarce for ourselves
The crumbs of Lazarus sought;
And when ye flung us out a crust,
Our faces grovelling in the dust,
We gave ye thanks--
No prize, all blanks
In our poor ranks
Was known;
But now, thank God,
We’ve spurned your rod,
And claim this sod
Our own!
We lift our faces to the sky
Where once our heads were bowed,
We breathe no more a timid sigh,
But speak our thoughts aloud.
From dizzy hill and peaceful plain
Our voices join in this refrain:
The seeds we sow,
The crops we grow,
The fields we mow,
Alone,
Without your aid
In cash or spade
At last are made
Our own!
BALFOUR REJOICES.
So the toil of the session is over,
My woes for a period cease,
And hey for a journey by Dover
To latitudes promising peace;
Away to recuperate vigor--
Away from obstruction’s mad spell--
Away from the questions of Biggar--
Away from the taunts of Parnell.
No more my poor head shall be aching
With night after night of debate--
No more shall my soul feel a quaking
At bald, irrepressible prate.
And, though ocean attack me with rigor,
While sea-sick, with joy I will dwell
On the fact that I’m leaving Joe Biggar,
And getting away from Parnell.
No more to be quizzed on each capture
Of priest or of peasant by night--
I could dance the can-can in my rapture,
Or stand on my head with delight.
Play the banjo and sing like a nigger,
Or like a wild Irishman yell
Hurroo! I am free from Joe Biggar,
And don’t give--ahem--for Parnell!
Yet I feel an occasional spasm
At thoughts of returning at all,
’Twere better to leap down a chasm
Or under an avalanche fall;
Or, fingers embracing the trigger,
Let the pistol’s report loudly tell
How I hated the queries of Biggar
And the dolorous talk of Parnell.
A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.
There may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that
powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville _Sparrow_, is a
sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be
the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville
_Sparrow_ (_vide_ its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in
the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of
Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and
creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so
tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the
times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the
Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York
_Herald_ and _Tribune_ and _Times_ and the Boston _Herald_ and a score
of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the
_Sparrow_ felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by
following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper,
advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold
himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial
back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He
was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old
copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the
landed gentry of the country.
His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of ground. “You
know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were
there. We’ve got to lick the New York _Herald_ and the rest of ’em.
Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two.
There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious
management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d
better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do
to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might
skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and
give us some lively telegrams.”
Well, it _was_ lively for a few weeks after that in the _Sparrow_. One
day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland--Seven Landlords Shot!” The next
there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara--Six Agents
Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the _Tribune_ came out
with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there
had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and
seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious
reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere,
and who didn’t grasp the fact that the _Tribune’s_ was a three-months’
record, paralyzed the readers of the _Sparrow_ with a blood-curdling
telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in
the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in
their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having
suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and
processes on the half-shell, to being stripped naked and turned loose
for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time
the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names
eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to
improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of
variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred
land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should
diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:--
“GALWAY, Tuesday.--A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from
which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon
yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he
weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have
been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new
veins yet.”
“At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan
boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she
can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She
wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”
This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the
editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny,
according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers
began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen
murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of
errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as
well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the
chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable bar next door.
“We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you.
Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue,
and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy
for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the
_Sparrow_, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish
correspondent:--
“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose
energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a
position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville.
As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores,
and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who
for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his
repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to
abbreviate.
“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose
brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible
marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound,
whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin
elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature
had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy
proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we
asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.
“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of
being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness
will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was
down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought
me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything
like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They
were worn to threads.
“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make
a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could
produce anything like a respectable shade.
“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of
the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the
others.
“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to
bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.
“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He
felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion
warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and
succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary
instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow
you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.
“‘I gave the man a shilling for him--in two sixpences, so that he could
balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side
pocket, it would have brought him down.
“‘I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s
centre of gravity.
“‘I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the dining-room, but,
fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail.
In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom
of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He
couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat.
He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his
feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position
when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect
his tail.’
“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double
knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much
so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot
out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a
moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the
Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails
in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had
a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’
concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of
a knot on a dog’s tail!’”
THE IRISH BRIGADE.
When in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home,
They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam,
A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade.
A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain,
Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain;
And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face,
’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace,
And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!
Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout,
When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,--
The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade.
They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea,
And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee,
Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes,
Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose
From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!
When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain,
Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain,
Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made;
The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang
O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang
From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might
Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight,
Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!
Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave,
Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave,
In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid.
Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught,
They loved the green island, and died where they fought;
With face to the foeman unconquered they fell.
May we fight the battle of freedom as well
For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!
SNOOKS.
Justice in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the
law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high
priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist
temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about
one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British
honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only
pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very
corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends
to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should
be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is,
he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable
record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:--
“In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative
to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of
the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There
is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual.
When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he
holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks
[_laughter_] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by
Snooks.’ [_Laughter._]”
Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect
that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of
the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning,
deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest
admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to
that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:--
If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street
In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet,
A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat,
And confusion quite apparent in his looks,
An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect,
You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object;
The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect,
’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.
A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose
It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows
A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose,
Which his dignity but very little brooks.
You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh,
And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff,
Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff--
’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!
CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.
Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of
whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into
one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her
like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism
first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had
just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel
leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty
conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was
felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been
foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at
Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and
hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and
provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful
conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had
been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky
Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The
volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and
eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible
confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their
presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own,
while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like
Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were
seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s
residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with
nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express
for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the
suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of
engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the
defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in
England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they
were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed
to the depths of the silent waters.
It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm
existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was
augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county
constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest
surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public
buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags
of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the
sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like
Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water,
and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent
of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he
ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr.
Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian
bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon
the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in
garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer
when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing
the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the
troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the
ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the
barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes,
bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles,
sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into
as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.
Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of
Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without
knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the
Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks,
and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of
Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled,
and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms.
Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and
tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the
entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow
candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as
to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an
Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they
were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold
the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander
carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the
candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or
was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege
last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of
the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a
doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when
at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to
find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and
would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions
of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm
tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that
battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as
the Caledonian Candlesticks.
FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.
So they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies,
A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies;
Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll,
And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul;
All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies,
With months of preparation, could imagine and devise,
Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!
When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound,
Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round,
Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place,
Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face;
With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within,
With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin,
You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast,
But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!