And the horses are headless as it:
Of the driver the same may be said,
And the passengers inside who sit.
See the wheels! how they fly o’er the stones!
And whirl, as the whip it goes crack:
Their spokes are of dead men’s thigh bones,
And the pole is the spine of the back!
The hammer-cloth, shabby display,
Is a pall rather mildew’d by damps;
And to light this strange coach on its way,
Two hollow skulls hang up for lamps!
From the gloom of Rathcooney churchyard,
They dash down the hill of Glanmire;
Pass Lota in gallop as hard
As if horses were never to tire!
With people thus headless ’tis fun
To drive in such furious career;
Since _headlong_ their horses can’t run,
Nor coachman be _heady_ from beer.
Very steep is the Tivoli lane,
But up-hill to them is as down;
Nor the charms of Woodhill can detain
These Dullahans rushing to town.
Could they feel as I’ve felt—in a song—
A spell that forbade them depart;
They’d a lingering visit prolong,
And after their head lose their heart!
No matter!—’tis past twelve o’clock;
Through the streets they sweep on like the wind,
And, taking the road to Blackrock,
Cork city is soon left behind.
Should they hurry thus reckless along,
To supper instead of to bed,
The landlord will surely be wrong,
If he charge it at so much a head!
Yet mine host may suppose them too poor
To bring to his wealth an increase;
As till now, all who drove to his door,
Possess’d at least _one crown_ a-piece.
Up the Deadwoman’s hill they are roll’d;
Boreenmannah is quite out of sight;
Ballintemple they reach, and behold!
At its churchyard they stop and alight.
“Who’s there?” said a voice from the ground,
“We’ve no room, for the place is quite full.”
“O! room must be speedily found,
For we come from the parish of Skull.
“Though Murphys and Crowleys appear
On headstones of deep-letter’d pride;
Though Scannels and Murleys lie here,
Fitzgeralds and Toonies beside;
“Yet here for the night we lie down,
To-morrow we speed on the gale;
For having no heads of our own,
We seek the Old Head of Kinsale.”
THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN.
XXIX.
“God speed you, and a safe journey this night to you, Charley,”
ejaculated the master of the little sheebeen house at Ballyhooley
after his old friend and good customer, Charley Culnane, who at length
had turned his face homewards, with the prospect of as dreary a ride
and as dark a night as ever fell upon the Blackwater, along the banks
of which he was about to journey.
Charley Culnane knew the country well, and, moreover, was as bold a
rider as any Mallow-boy that ever _rattled_ a four-year-old upon
Drumrue race-course. He had gone to Fermoy in the morning, as well for
the purpose of purchasing some ingredients required for the Christmas
dinner by his wife, as to gratify his own vanity by having new reins
fitted to his snaffle, in which he intended showing off the old mare
at the approaching St. Stephen’s day hunt.
Charley did not get out of Fermoy until late; for although he was not
one of your “nasty particular sort of fellows” in any thing that
related to the common occurrences of life, yet in all the appointments
connected with hunting, riding, leaping, in short, in whatever was
connected with the old mare, “Charley,” the saddlers said, “was the
devil to _plase_.” An illustration of this fastidiousness was afforded
by his going such a distance for his snaffle bridle. Mallow was full
twelve miles nearer “Charley’s farm” (which lay just three quarters
of a mile below Carrick) than Fermoy; but Charley had quarrelled with
all the Mallow saddlers, from hard-working and hard-drinking Tim
Clancey, up to Mr. Ryan, who wrote himself “Saddler to the Duhallow
Hunt;” and no one could content him in all particulars but honest
Michael Twomey of Fermoy, who used to assert—and who will doubt
it—that he could stitch a saddle better than the lord-lieutenant,
although they made him all as one as king over Ireland.
This delay in the arrangement of the snaffle bridle did not allow
Charley Culnane to pay so long a visit as he had at first intended to
his old friend and gossip, Con Buckley, of the “Harp of Erin.” Con,
however, knew the value of time, and insisted upon Charley making good
use of what he had to spare. “I won’t bother you waiting for water,
Charley, because I think you’ll have enough of that same before you
get home; so drink off your liquor, man. It’s as good _parliament_ as
ever a gentleman tasted, ay, and holy church too, for it will bear ‘x
_waters_,’ and carry the bead after that, may be.”
Charley, it must be confessed, nothing loath, drank success to Con,
and success to the jolly “Harp of Erin,” with its head of beauty and
its strings of the hair of gold, and to their better acquaintance, and
so on, from the bottom of his soul, until the bottom of the bottle
reminded him that Carrick was at the bottom of the hill on the other
side of Castletown Roche, and that he had got no farther on his
journey than his gossip’s at Ballyhooley, close to the big gate of
Convamore. Catching hold of his oil-skin hat, therefore, whilst Con
Buckley went to the cupboard for another bottle of the “real stuff,”
he regularly, as it is termed, bolted from his friend’s hospitality,
darted to the stable, tightened his girths, and put the old mare into
a canter towards home.
The road from Ballyhooley to Carrick follows pretty nearly the course
of the Blackwater, occasionally diverging from the river and passing
through rather wild scenery, when contrasted with the beautiful seats
that adorn its banks. Charley cantered gaily, regardless of the rain,
which, as his friend Con had anticipated, fell in torrents: the good
woman’s currants and raisins were carefully packed between the folds
of his yeomanry cloak, which Charley, who was proud of showing that he
belonged to the “Royal Mallow Light Horse Volunteers,” always strapped
to the saddle before him, and took care never to destroy the military
effect of by putting it on.—Away he went singing like a thrush—
“Sporting, belleing, dancing, drinking,
Breaking windows—(_hiccup_!)—sinking,
Ever raking—never thinking,
Live the rakes of Mallow.
“Spending faster than it comes,
Beating—(_hiccup, hic_,) and duns,
Duhallow’s true-begotten sons,
Live the rakes of Mallow.”
Notwithstanding that the visit to the jolly “Harp of Erin” had a
little increased the natural complacency of his mind, the drenching of
the new snaffle reins began to disturb him; and then followed a train
of more anxious thoughts than even were occasioned by the dreaded
defeat of the pride of his long-anticipated _turn out_ on St.
Stephen’s day. In an hour of good fellowship, when his heart was warm,
and his head not over cool, Charley had backed the old mare against
Mr. Jephson’s bay filly Desdemona for a neat hundred, and he now felt
sore misgivings as to the prudence of the match. In a less gay tone
he continued—
“Living short, but merry lives,
Going where the devil drives,
Keeping——”
“Keeping” he muttered, as the old mare had reduced her canter to a
trot at the bottom of Kilcummer Hill. Charley’s eye fell on the old
walls that belonged, in former times, to the Templars: but the silent
gloom of the ruin was broken only by the heavy rain which splashed and
pattered on the grave-stones. He then looked up at the sky, to see if
there was, among the clouds, any hopes for mercy on his new snaffle
reins; and no sooner were his eyes lowered, than his attention was
arrested by an object so extraordinary as almost led him to doubt the
evidence of his senses. The head, apparently, of a white horse, with
short cropped ears, large open nostrils and immense eyes, seemed
rapidly to follow him. No connexion with body, legs, or rider, could
possibly be traced—the head advanced—Charley’s old mare, too, was
moved at this unnatural sight, and snorting violently, increased her
trot up the hill. The head moved forward, and passed on: Charley,
pursuing it with astonished gaze, and wondering by what means, and for
what purpose, this detached head thus proceeded through the air, did
not perceive the corresponding body until he was suddenly startled by
finding it close at his side. Charley turned to examine what was thus
so sociably jogging on with him, when a most unexampled apparition
presented itself to his view. A figure, whose height (judging as well
as the obscurity of the night would permit him) he computed to be at
least eight feet, was seated on the body and legs of a white horse
full eighteen hands and a half high. In this measurement Charley could
not be mistaken, for his own mare was exactly fifteen hands, and the
body that thus jogged alongside he could at once determine, from his
practice in horseflesh, was at least three hands and a half higher.
After the first feeling of astonishment, which found vent in the
exclamation “I’m sold now for ever!” was over, the attention of
Charley, being a keen sportsman, was naturally directed to this
extraordinary body; and having examined it with the eye of a
connoisseur, he proceeded to reconnoitre the figure so unusually
mounted, who had hitherto remained perfectly mute. Wishing to see
whether his companion’s silence proceeded from bad temper, want of
conversational powers, or from a distaste to water, and the fear that
the opening of his mouth might subject him to have it filled by the
rain, which was then drifting in violent gusts against them, Charley
endeavoured to catch a sight of his companion’s face, in order to form
an opinion on that point. But his vision failed in carrying him
farther than the top of the collar of the figure’s coat, which was a
scarlet single-breasted hunting frock, having a waist of a very
old-fashioned cut reaching to the saddle, with two huge shining
buttons at about a yard distance behind. “I ought to see farther than
this, too,” thought Charley, “although he is mounted on his high
horse, like my cousin Darby, who was made barony constable last week,
unless ’tis Con’s whiskey that has blinded me entirely.” However, see
farther he could not, and after straining his eyes for a considerable
time to no purpose, he exclaimed, with pure vexation, “By the big
bridge of Mallow, it is no head at all he has!”
“Look again, Charley Culnane,” said a hoarse voice, that seemed to
proceed from under the right arm of the figure.
Charley did look again, and now in the proper place, for he clearly
saw, under the aforesaid right arm, that head from which the voice had
proceeded, and such a head no mortal ever saw before. It looked like a
large cream cheese hung round with black puddings; no speck of colour
enlivened the ashy paleness of the depressed features; the skin lay
stretched over the unearthly surface, almost like the parchment head
of a drum. Two fiery eyes of prodigious circumference, with a strange
and irregular motion, flashed like meteors upon Charley, and to
complete all, a mouth reached from either extremity of two ears, which
peeped forth from under a profusion of matted locks of lustreless
blackness. This head, which the figure had evidently hitherto
concealed from Charley’s eyes, now burst upon his view in all its
hideousness. Charley, although a lad of proverbial courage in the
county of Cork, yet could not but feel his nerves a little shaken by
this unexpected visit from the headless horseman, whom he considered
his fellow-traveller must be. The cropped-eared head of the gigantic
horse moved steadily forward, always keeping from six to eight yards
in advance. The horseman, unaided by whip or spur, and disdaining the
use of stirrups, which dangled uselessly from the saddle, followed at
a trot by Charley’s side, his hideous head now lost behind the lappet
of his coat, now starting forth in all its horror, as the motion of
the horse caused his arm to move to and fro. The ground shook under
the weight of its supernatural burden, and the water in the pools
became agitated into waves as he trotted by them.
On they went—heads without bodies, and bodies without heads.—The
deadly silence of night was broken only by the fearful clattering of
hoofs, and the distant sound of thunder, which rumbled above the
mystic hill of Cecaune a Mona Finnea. Charley, who was naturally a
merry-hearted, and rather a talkative fellow, had hitherto felt
tongue-tied by apprehension, but finding his companion showed no evil
disposition towards him, and having become somewhat more reconciled to
the Patagonian dimensions of the horseman and his headless steed,
plucked up all his courage, and thus addressed the stranger:—
“Why, then, your honour rides mighty well without the stirrups!”
“Humph,” growled the head from under the horseman’s right arm.
“’Tis not an over civil answer,” thought Charley; “but no matter, he
was taught in one of them riding-houses, may be, and thinks nothing at
all about bumping his leather breeches at the rate of ten miles an
hour. I’ll try him on the other track. Ahem!” said Charley, clearing
his throat, and feeling at the same time rather daunted at this second
attempt to establish a conversation. “Ahem! that’s a mighty neat coat
of your honour’s, although ’tis a little too long in the waist for the
present cut.”
“Humph,” growled again the head.
This second humph was a terrible thump in the face to poor Charley,
who was fairly bothered to know what subject he could start that would
prove more agreeable. “’Tis a sensible head,” thought Charley,
“although an ugly one, for ’tis plain enough the man does not like
flattery.” A third attempt, however, Charley was determined to make,
and having failed in his observations as to the riding and coat of his
fellow-traveller, thought he would just drop a trifling allusion to
the wonderful headless horse, that was jogging on so sociably beside
his old mare; and as Charley was considered about Carrick to be very
knowing in horses, besides, being a full private in the Royal Mallow
Light Horse Volunteers, which were every one of them mounted like real
Hessians, he felt rather sanguine as to the result of his third
attempt.
“To be sure, that’s a brave horse your honour rides,” recommenced the
persevering Charley.
“You may say that, with your own ugly mouth,” growled the head.
Charley, though not much flattered by the compliment, nevertheless
chuckled at his success in obtaining an answer, and thus continued:—
“May be your honour wouldn’t be after riding him across the country?”
“Will you try me, Charley?” said the head, with an inexpressible look
of ghastly delight.
“Faith, and that’s what I’d do,” responded Charley, “only I’m afraid,
the night being so dark, of laming the old mare, and I’ve every
halfpenny of a hundred pounds on her heels.”
This was true enough; Charley’s courage was nothing dashed at the
headless horseman’s proposal; and there never was a steeple-chase, nor
a fox-chase, riding or leaping in the country, that Charley Culnane
was not at it, and foremost in it.
“Will you take my word,” said the man who carried his head so snugly
under his right arm, “for the safety of your mare?”
“Done,” said Charley; and away they started, helter skelter, over
every thing, ditch and wall, pop, pop, the old mare never went in such
style, even in broad daylight: and Charley had just the start of his
companion, when the hoarse voice called out, “Charley Culnane,
Charley, man, stop for your life, stop!”
Charley pulled up hard. “Ay,” said he, “you may beat me by the head,
because it always goes so much before you; but if the bet was
neck-and-neck, and that’s the go between the old mare and Desdemona,
I’d win it hollow!”
It appeared as if the stranger was well aware of what was passing in
Charley’s mind, for he suddenly broke out quite loquacious.
“Charley Culnane,” says he, “you have a stout soul in you, and are
every inch of you a good rider. I’ve tried you, and I ought to know;
and that’s the sort of man for my money. A hundred years it is since
my horse and I broke our necks at the bottom of Kilcummer hill, and
ever since I have been trying to get a man that dared to ride with me,
and never found one before. Keep, as you have always done, at the tail
of the hounds, never balk a ditch, nor turn away from a stone wall,
and the headless horseman will never desert you nor the old mare.”
Charley, in amazement, looked towards the stranger’s right arm, for
the purpose of seeing in his face whether or not he was in earnest,
but behold! the head was snugly lodged in the huge pocket of the
horseman’s scarlet hunting-coat. The horse’s head had ascended
perpendicularly above them, and his extraordinary companion, rising
quickly after his avant-coureur, vanished from the astonished gaze of
Charley Culnane.
Charley, as may be supposed, was lost in wonder, delight, and
perplexity; the pelting rain, the wife’s pudding, the new
snaffle—even the match against squire Jephson—all were forgotten;
nothing could he think of, nothing could he talk of, but the headless
horseman. He told it, directly that he got home, to Judy; he told it
the following morning to all the neighbours; and he told it to the
hunt on St. Stephen’s day: but what provoked him after all the pains
he took in describing the head, the horse, and the man, was that one
and all attributed the creation of the headless horseman to his
friend Con Buckley’s “X water parliament.” This, however, should be
told, that Charley’s old mare beat Mr. Jephson’s bay filly, Desdemona,
by Diamond, and Charley pocketed his cool hundred; and if he didn’t
win by means of the headless horseman, I am sure I don’t know any
other reason for his doing so.
DULLAHAN or DULACHAN signifies a dark sullen person. The word
_Durrachan_ or _Dullahan_, by which in some places the goblin
is known, has the same signification. It comes from _Dorr_ or
_Durr_, anger, or _Durrach_, malicious, fierce, &c.—_MS.
communication from the late_ MR. EDWARD O’REILLY.
The correctness of this last etymology may be questioned, as
black is evidently a component part of the word.
The Death Coach, or Headless Coach and Horses, is called in
Ireland “_Coach a bower_;” and its appearance is generally
regarded as a sign of death, or an omen of some misfortune.
The belief in the appearance of headless people and horses
appears to be, like most popular superstitions, widely
extended.
In England, see the Spectator (No. 110) for mention of a spirit
that had appeared in the shape of a black horse without a head.
In Wales, the apparition of “_Fenyw heb un pen_,” the headless
woman, and “_Ceffyl heb un pen_,” the headless horse, are
generally accredited.—_MS. communication from_ MISS WILLIAMS.
“The Irish Dullahan puts me in mind of a spectre at Drumlanrig
Castle, of no less a person than the Duchess of
Queensberry,—‘Fair Kitty, blooming, young, and gay,’—who,
instead of setting fire to the world in mamma’s chariot, amuses
herself with wheeling her own head in a wheel-barrow through
the great gallery.”—_MS. communication from_ SIR WALTER SCOTT.
In Scotland, so recently as January, 1826, that veritable
paper, the Glasgow Chronicle, records, upon the occasion of
some silk-weavers being out of employment at Paisley, that
“Visions have been seen of carts, caravans, and coaches, going
up Gleniffer braes without horses, with horses without heads,”
&c.
Cervantes mentions tales of the “_Caballo sin cabeça_ among the
_cuentos de viejas con que se entretienen al fuego las
dilatadas noches del invierno_,” &c.
“The people of Basse Brétagne believe, that when the death of
any person is at hand, a hearse drawn by skeletons (which they
call _carriquet au nankon_,) and covered with a white sheet,
passes by the house where the sick person lies, and the
creaking of the wheels may be plainly heard.”—_Journal des
Sciences_, 1826, _communicated by_ DR. WILLIAM GRIMM.
See also _Thiele’s Danske Folkesagn_, vol. iv. p. 66, &c.
THE FIR DARRIG.
Whene’er such wanderers I meete,
As from their night-sports they trudge home,
With counterfeiting voice I greete,
And call them on with me to roame
Through woods, through lakes,
Through bogs, through brakes;
Or else, unseene, with them I go,
All in the nicke,
To play some tricke,
And frolicke it, with ho, ho, ho!
—_Old Song._
DIARMID BAWN, THE PIPER
XXX.
One stormy night Patrick Burke was seated in the chimney corner
smoking his pipe quite contentedly after his hard day’s work; his two
little boys were roasting potatoes in the ashes, while his rosy
daughter held a splinter[26] to her mother, who, seated on a
siesteen,[27] was mending a rent in Patrick’s old coat; and Judy, the
maid, was singing merrily to the sound of her wheel, that kept up a
beautiful humming noise, just like the sweet drone of a bagpipe.
Indeed they all seemed quite contented and happy; for the storm howled
without, and they were warm and snug within, by the side of a blazing
turf fire. “I was just thinking,” said Patrick, taking the dudeen from
his mouth and giving it a rap on his thumb-nail to shake out the
ashes—“I was just thinking how thankful we ought to be to have a snug
bit of a cabin this pelting night over our heads, for in all my born
days I never heard the like of it.”
[26] A splinter, or slip of bog-deal, which, being dipped in
tallow, is used as a candle.
[27] Siesteen is a low block-like seat, made of straw bands
firmly sewed or bound together.
“And that’s no lie for you, Pat,” said his wife; “but, whisht! what
noise is that I _hard_?” and she dropped her work upon her knees, and
looked fearfully towards the door. “The _Vargin_ herself defend us
all!” cried Judy, at the same time rapidly making a pious sign on her
forehead, “if ’tis not the banshee!”
“Hold your tongue, you fool,” said Patrick, “it’s only the old gate
swinging in the wind;” and he had scarcely spoken, when the door was
assailed by a violent knocking. Molly began to mumble her prayers, and
Judy proceeded to mutter over the muster-roll of saints; the
youngsters scampered off to hide themselves behind the settle-bed; the
storm howled louder and more fiercely than ever, and the rapping was
renewed with redoubled violence.
“Whisht, whisht!” said Patrick—“what a noise ye’re all making about
nothing at all. Judy a-roon, can’t you go and see who’s at the door?”
for, notwithstanding his assumed bravery, Pat Burke preferred that the
maid should open the door.
“Why, then, is it me you’re speaking to?” said Judy in the tone of
astonishment; “and is it cracked mad you are, Mister Burke; or is it,
may be, that you want me to be _rund_ away with, and made a horse of,
like my grandfather was?—the sorrow a step will I stir to open the
door, if you were as great a man again as you are, Pat Burke.”
“Bother you, then! and hold your tongue, and I’ll go myself.” So
saying, up got Patrick, and made the best of his way to the door.
“Who’s there?” said he, and his voice trembled mightily all the while.
“In the name of Saint Patrick, who’s there?” “’Tis I, Pat,” answered a
voice which he immediately knew to be the young squire’s. In a moment
the door was opened, and in walked a young man, with a gun in his
hand, and a brace of dogs at his heels. “Your honour’s honour is quite
welcome, entirely,” said Patrick; who was a very civil sort of a
fellow, especially to his betters. “Your honour’s honour is quite
welcome; and if ye’ll be so condescending as to demean yourself by
taking off your wet jacket, Molly can give ye a bran new blanket, and
ye can sit forenent the fire while the clothes are drying.” “Thank
you, Pat,” said the squire, as he wrapt himself, like Mr. Weld, in the
proffered blanket.[28]
[28] See Weld’s Killarney, 8vo ed. p. 228.
“But what made you keep me so long at the door?”
“Why then, your honour, ’twas all along of Judy, there, being so much
afraid of the good people; and a good right she has, after what
happened to her grandfather—the Lord rest his soul!”
“And what was that, Pat?” said the squire.