awakened—“it’s yourself, any how. There never was a gentleman in the
whole country ever did so good a turn to a poor man as your honour
has been after doing to me: the Lord reward you for that same. Oh! but
strike me again, and let me feel that it is yourself, master
dear;—may whisky be my poison—”
“It will be your poison, you good-for-nothing scoundrel,” said Mr.
Gumbleton.
“Well, then, _may_ whiskey be my poison,” said Ned, “if ’twas not I
was—in the blackest of misfortunes, and they were before me,
whichever way I turned ’twas no matter. Your honour sent me last
night, sure enough, with Modderaroo to mister Falvey’s—I don’t deny
it—why should I? for reason enough I have to remember what happened.”
“Ned, my man,” said Mr. Gumbleton, “I’ll listen to none of your
excuses: just take the mare into the stable and yourself off, for I
vow—”
“Begging your honour’s pardon,” said Ned, earnestly, “for interrupting
your honour; but, master, master! make no vows—they are bad things: I
never made but one in all my life, which was, to drink nothing at all
for a year and a day, and ’tis myself rep_i_nted of it for the clean
twelvemonth after. But if your honour would only listen to reason:
I’ll just take in the poor baste, and if your honour don’t pardon me
this one time may I never see another day’s luck or grace.”
“I know you, Ned,” said Mr. Gumbleton. “Whatever your luck has been,
you never had any grace to lose: but I don’t intend discussing the
matter with you. Take in the mare, sir.”
Ned obeyed, and his master saw him to the stables. Here he reiterated
his commands to quit, and Ned Sheehy’s excuse for himself began. That
it was heard uninterruptedly is more than I can affirm; but as
interruptions, like explanations, spoil a story, we must let Ned tell
it his own way.
“No wonder your honour,” said he, “should be a bit angry—grand
company coming to the house and all, and no regular serving-man to
wait, only long Jem; so I don’t blame your honour the least for being
fretted like; but when all’s heard, you will see that no poor man is
more to be pitied for last night than myself. Fin Mac Coul never went
through more in his born days than I did, though he was a great
_joint_ (giant,) and I only a man.
“I had not rode half a mile from the house, when it came on, as your
honour must have perceived clearly, mighty dark all of a sudden, for
all the world as if the sun had tumbled down plump out of the fine
clear blue sky. It was not so late, being only four o’clock at the
most, but it was as black as your honour’s hat. Well, I didn’t care
much, seeing I knew the road as well as I knew the way to my mouth,
whether I saw it or not, and I put the mare into a smart canter; but
just as I turned down by the corner of Terence Leahy’s field—sure
your honour ought to know the place well—just at the very spot the
fox was killed when your honour came in first out of a whole field of
a hundred and fifty gentlemen, and may be more, all of them brave
riders.”
(Mr. Gumbleton smiled.)
“Just then, there, I heard the low cry of the good people wafting upon
the wind. ‘How early you are at your work, my little fellows!’ says I
to myself; and, dark as it was, having no wish for such company, I
thought it best to get out of their way; so I turned the horse a
little up to the left, thinking to get down by the boreen, that is
that way, and so round to Falvey’s; but there I heard the voice
plainer and plainer close behind, and I could hear these words:—
‘Ned! Ned!
By my cap so red!
You’re as good, Ned,
As a man that is dead.’
‘A clean pair of spurs is all that’s for it now,’ said I; so off I
set, as hard as I could lick, and in my hurry knew no more where I was
going than I do the road to the hill of Tarah. Away I galloped on for
some time, until I came to the noise of a stream, roaring away by
itself in the darkness. ‘What river is this?’ said I to myself—for
there was nobody else to ask—‘I thought,’ says I, ‘I knew every inch
of ground, and of water too, within twenty miles, and never the river
surely is there in this direction.’ So I stopped to look about; but I
might have spared myself that trouble, for I could not see as much as
my hand. I didn’t know what to do; but I thought in myself, it’s a
queer river, surely, if somebody does not live near it; and I shouted
out as loud as I could, Murder! murder!—fire!—robbery!—any thing
that would be natural in such a place—but not a sound did I hear
except my own voice echoed back to me, like a hundred packs of hounds
in full cry above and below, right and left. This didn’t do at all; so
I dismounted, and guided myself along the stream, directed by the
noise of the water, as cautious as if I was treading upon eggs,
holding poor Modderaroo by the bridle, who shook, the poor brute, all
over in a tremble, like my old grandmother, rest her soul any how! in
the ague. Well, sir, the heart was sinking in me, and I was giving
myself up, when, as good luck would have it, I saw a light. ‘May be,’
said I, ‘my good fellow, you are only a jacky lantern, and want to bog
me and Modderaroo.’ But I looked at the light hard, and I thought it
was too _study_ (steady) for a jacky lantern. ‘I’ll try you,’ says
I—‘so here goes; and, walking as quick as a thief, I came towards it,
being very near plumping into the river once or twice, and being stuck
up to my middle, as your honour may perceive cleanly the marks of, two
or three times in the _slob_.[29] At last I made the light out, and it
coming from a bit of a house by the road-side; so I went to the door
and gave three kicks at it, as strong as I could.
[29] Or _slaib_; mire on the sea strand or river’s
bank.—O’BRIEN.
“‘Open the door for Ned Sheehy,’ said a voice inside. Now, besides
that I could not, for the life of me, make out how any one inside
should know me before I spoke a word at all, I did not like the sound
of that voice, ’twas so hoarse and so hollow, just like a dead
man’s!—so I said nothing immediately. The same voice spoke again, and
said, ‘Why don’t you open the door to Ned Sheehy?’ ‘How pat my name is
to you,’ said I, without speaking out, ‘on tip of your tongue, like
butter;’ and I was between two minds about staying or going, when what
should the door do but open, and out came a man holding a candle in
his hand, and he had upon him a face as white as a sheet.
“‘Why, then, Ned Sheehy,’ says he, ‘how grand you’re grown, that you
won’t come in and see a friend, as you’re passing by?’
“‘Pray, sir,’ says I, looking at him—though that face of his was
enough to dumbfounder any honest man like myself—‘Pray, sir,’ says I,
‘may I make so bold as to ask if you are not Jack Myers that was
drowned seven years ago, next Martinmas, in the ford of
Ah-na-fourish?’
“‘Suppose I was,’ says he: ‘has not a man a right to be drowned in the
ford facing his own cabin-door any day of the week that he likes, from
Sunday morning to Saturday night?’
“‘I’m not denying that same, Mr. Myers, sir,’ says I, ‘if ’tis
yourself is to the fore speaking to me.’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘no more words about that matter now: sure you and
I, Ned, were friends of old; come in, and take a glass; and here’s a
good fire before you, and nobody shall hurt or harm you, and I to the
fore, and myself able to do it.’
“Now, your honour, though ’twas much to drink with a man that was
drowned seven years before, in the ford of Ah-na-fourish, facing his
own door, yet the glass was hard to be withstood—to say nothing of
the fire that was blazing within—for the night was mortal cold. So
tying Modderaroo to the hasp of the door—if I don’t love the creature
as I love my own life—I went in with Jack Myers.
“Civil enough he was—I’ll never say otherwise to my dying hour—for
he handed me a stool by the fire, and bid me sit down and make myself
comfortable. But his face, as I said before, was as white as the snow
on the hills, and his two eyes fell dead on me, like the eyes of a cod
without any life in them. Just as I was going to put the glass to my
lips, a voice—’twas the same that I heard bidding the door be
opened—spoke out of a cupboard that was convenient to the left-hand
side of the chimney, and said, ‘Have you any news for me, Ned Sheehy?’
“‘The never a word, sir,’ says I, making answer before I tasted the
whisky, all out of civility; and, to speak the truth, never the least
could I remember at that moment of what had happened to me, or how I
got there; for I was quite bothered with the fright.
“‘Have you no news,’ says the voice, ‘Ned, to tell me, from Mountbally
Gumbletonmore; or from the Mill; or about Moll Trantum that was
married last week to Bryan Oge, and you at the wedding?’
“‘No, sir,’ says I, ‘never the word.’
“‘What brought you in here, Ned, then?’ says the voice. I could say
nothing; for, whatever other people might do, I never could frame an
excuse; and I was loath to say it was on account of the glass and the
fire, for that would be to speak the truth.
“‘Turn the scoundrel out,’ says the voice; and at the sound of it, who
would I see but Jack Myers making over to me with a lump of a stick in
his hand, and it clenched on the stick so wicked. For certain, I did
not stop to feel the weight of the blow; so, dropping the glass, and
it full of the stuff too, I bolted out of the door, and never rested
from running away, for as good, I believe, as twenty miles, till I
found myself in a big wood.
“‘The Lord preserve me! what will become of me now!’ says I. ‘Oh, Ned
Sheehy!’ says I, speaking to myself, ‘my man, you’re in a pretty
hobble; and to leave poor Modderaroo after you!’ But the words were
not well out of my mouth, when I heard the dismallest ullagoane in the
world, enough to break any one’s heart that was not broke before, with
the grief entirely; and it was not long till I could plainly see four
men coming towards me, with a great black coffin on their shoulders.
‘I’d better get up in a tree,’ says I, ‘for they say ’tis not lucky to
meet a corpse: I’m in the way of misfortune to-night, if ever man
was.’
“I could not help wondering how a _berrin_ (funeral) should come there
in the lone wood at that time of night, seeing it could not be far
from the dead hour. But it was little good for me thinking, for they
soon came under the very tree I was roosting in, and down they put the
coffin, and began to make a fine fire under me. I’ll be smothered
alive now, thinks I, and that will be the end of me; but I was afraid
to stir for the life, or to speak out to bid them just make their fire
under some other tree, if it would be all the same thing to them.
Presently they opened the coffin, and out they dragged as
fine-looking a man as you’d meet with in a day’s walk.
“‘Where’s the spit?’ says one.
“‘Here ’tis,’ says another, handing it over; and for certain they
spitted him, and began to turn him before the fire.
“If they are not going to eat him, thinks I, like the _Hannibals_
father Quinlan told us about in his _sarmint_ last Sunday.
“‘Who’ll turn the spit while we go for the other ingredients?’ says
one of them that brought the coffin, and a big ugly-looking blackguard
he was.
“‘Who’d turn the spit but Ned Sheehy?’ says another.
“Burn you! thinks I, how should you know that I was here so handy to
you up in the tree?
“‘Come down, Ned Sheehy, and turn the spit,’ says he.
“‘I’m not here at all, sir,’ says I, putting my hand over my face that
he might not see me.
“‘That won’t do for you, my man,’ says he; ‘you’d better come down, or
may be I’d make you.’
“‘I’m coming, sir,’ says I; for ’tis always right to make a virtue of
necessity. So down I came, and there they left me turning the spit in
the middle of the wide wood.
“‘Don’t scorch me, Ned Sheehy, you vagabond,’ says the man on the
spit.
“‘And my lord, sir, and ar’n’t you dead, sir,’ says I, ‘and your
honour taken out of the coffin and all?’
“‘I ar’n’t,’ says he.
“‘But surely you are, sir,’ says I, ‘for ’tis to no use now for me
denying that I saw your honour, and I up in the tree.’
“‘I ar’n’t,’ says he again, speaking quite short and snappish.
“So I said no more, until presently he called out to me to turn him
easy, or that may be ’twould be the worse turn for myself.
“‘Will that do, sir?’ says I, turning him as easy as I could.
“‘That’s too easy,’ says he: so I turned him faster.
“‘That’s too fast,’ says he; so finding that, turn him which way I
would, I could not please him, I got into a bit of a fret at last,
and desired him to turn himself, for a grumbling spalpeen as he was,
if he liked it better.
“Away I ran, and away he came hopping, spit and all, after me, and he
but half-roasted. ‘Murder!’ says I, shouting out; ‘I’m done for at
long last—now or never!’—when all of a sudden, and ’twas really
wonderful, not knowing where I was rightly, I found myself at the door
of the very little cabin by the road-side that I had bolted out of
from Jack Myers; and there was Modderaroo standing hard by.
“‘Open the door for Ned Sheehy,’ says the voice,—for ’twas shut
against me,—and the door flew open in an instant. In I ran without
stop or stay, thinking it better to be beat by Jack Myers, he being an
old friend of mine, than to be spitted like a Michaelmas goose by a
man that I knew nothing about, either of him or his family, one or the
other.
“‘Have you any news for me?’ says the voice, putting just the same
question to me that it did before.
“‘Yes, sir,’ says I, ‘and plenty.’ So I mentioned all that had
happened to me in the big wood, and how I got up in the tree, and how
I was made come down again, and put to turning the spit, roasting the
gentleman, and how I could not please him, turn him fast or easy,
although I tried my best, and how he ran after me at last, spit and
all.
“‘If you had told me this before, you would not have been turned out
in the cold,’ said the voice.
“‘And how could I tell it to you, sir,’ says I, ‘before it happened?’
“‘No matter,’ says he, ‘you may sleep now till morning on that bundle
of hay in the corner there, and only I was your friend, you’d have
been _kilt_ entirely.’ So down I lay, but I was dreaming, dreaming all
the rest of the night; and when you, master dear, woke me with that
blessed blow, I thought ’twas the man on the spit had hold of me, and
could hardly believe my eyes, when I found myself in your honour’s
presence, and poor Modderaroo safe and sound by my side; but how I
came there is more than I can say, if ’twas not Jack Myers, although
he did make the offer to strike me, or some one among the good people
that befriended me.”
“It is all a drunken dream, you scoundrel,” said Mr. Gumbleton; “have
I not had fifty such excuses from you?”
“But never one, your honour, that really happened before,” said Ned,
with unblushing front. “Howsomever, since your honour fancies ’tis
drinking I was, I’d rather never drink again to the world’s end, than
lose so good a master as yourself, and if I’m forgiven this once, and
get another trial——”
“Well,” said Mr. Gumbleton, “you may, for this once, go into
Mountbally Gumbletonmore again; let me see that you keep your promise
as to not drinking, or mind the consequences; and, above all, let me
hear no more of the good people, for I don’t believe a single word
about them, whatever I may do of bad ones.”
So saying, Mr. Gumbleton turned on his heel, and Ned’s countenance
relaxed into its usual expression.
“Now I would not be after saying about the good people what the master
said last,” exclaimed Peggy, the maid, who was within hearing, and
who, by the way, had an eye after Ned: “I would not be after saying
such a thing; the good people, may be, will make him feel the _differ_
(difference) to his cost.”
Nor was Peggy wrong; for whether Ned Sheehy dreamt of the Fir Darrig
or not, within a fortnight after, two of Mr. Gumbleton’s cows, the
best milkers in the parish, ran dry, and before the week was out,
Modderaroo was lying dead in the stone quarry.
THE LUCKY GUEST.
XXXIII.
The kitchen of some country houses in Ireland presents in no ways a
bad modern translation of the ancient feudal hall. Traces of clanship
still linger round its hearth in the numerous dependants on “the
master’s” bounty. Nurses, foster-brothers, and other hangers-on, are
there as matter of right, while the strolling piper, full of mirth and
music, the benighted traveller, even the passing beggar, are received
with a hearty welcome, and each contributes planxty, song, or
superstitious tale, towards the evening’s amusement.
An assembly, such as has been described, had collected round the
kitchen fire of Ballyrahenhouse, at the foot of the Galtee mountains,
when, as is ever the case, one tale of wonder called forth another;
and with the advance of the evening each succeeding story was received
with deep and deeper attention. The history of Cough na Looba’s dance
with the black friar at Rahill, and the fearful tradition of _Coum an
‘ir morriv_ (the dead man’s hollow,) were listened to in breathless
silence. A pause followed the last relation, and all eyes rested on
the narrator, an old nurse who occupied the post of honour, that next
the fire-side. She was seated in that peculiar position which the
Irish name “_currigguib_,” a position generally assumed by a veteran
and determined story-teller. Her haunches resting upon the ground, and
her feet bundled under the body; her arms folded across and supported
by her knees, and the outstretched chin of her hooded head pressing on
the upper arm; which compact arrangement nearly reduced the whole
figure into a perfect triangle.
Unmoved by the general gaze, Bridget Doyle made no change of attitude,
while she gravely asserted the truth of the marvellous tale concerning
the Dead Man’s Hollow; her strongly marked countenance at the time
receiving what painters term a fine chiaro-obscuro effect from the
fire-light.
“I have told you,” she said, “what happened to my own people, the
Butlers and the Doyles, in the old times; but here is little Ellen
Connell from the county Cork, who can speak to what happened under her
own father and mother’s roof.”
Ellen, a young and blooming girl of about sixteen, was employed in the
dairy at Ballyrahen. She was the picture of health and rustic beauty;
and at this hint from nurse Doyle, a deep blush mantled over her
countenance; yet, although “unaccustomed to public speaking,” she,
without farther hesitation or excuse, proceeded as follows:—
“It was one May-eve, about thirteen years ago, and that is, as every
body knows, the airiest day in all the twelve months. It is the day
above all other days,” said Ellen, with her large dark eyes cast down
on the ground, and drawing a deep sigh, “when the young boys and the
young girls go looking after the _Drutheen_, to learn from it rightly
the name of their sweethearts.
“My father, and my mother, and my two brothers, with two or three of
the neighbours, were sitting round the turf fire, and were talking of
one thing or another. My mother was hushoing my little sister,
striving to quieten her, for she was cutting her teeth at the time,
and was mighty uneasy through the means of them. The day, which was
threatening all along, now that it was coming on to dusk, began to
rain, and the rain increased and fell fast and faster, as if it was
pouring through a sieve out of the wide heavens; and when the rain
stopped for a bit there was a wind which kept up such a whistling and
racket, that you would have thought the sky and the earth were coming
together. It blew and it blew, as if it had a mind to blow the roof
off the cabin, and that would not have been very hard for it to do, as
the thatch was quite loose in two or three places. Then the rain began
again, and you could hear it spitting and hissing in the fire, as it
came down through the big _chimbley_.
“‘God bless us,’ says my mother, ‘but ’tis a dreadful night to be at
sea,’ says she, ‘and God be praised that we have a roof, bad as it is,
to shelter us.’
“I don’t, to be sure, recollect all this, mistress Doyle, but only as
my brothers told it to me, and other people, and often have I heard
it; for I was so little then, that they say I could just go under the
table without tipping my head. Any way, it was in the very height of
the pelting and whistling that we heard something speak outside the
door. My father and all of us listened, but there was no more noise at
that time. We waited a little longer, and then we plainly heard a
sound like an old man’s voice, asking to be let in, but mighty feeble
and weak. Tim bounced up, without a word, to ask us whether we’d like
to let the old man, or whoever he was, in—having always a heart as
soft as a mealy potato before the voice of sorrow. When Tim pulled
back the bolt that did the door, in marched a little bit of a
shrivelled, weather-beaten creature, about two feet and a half high.
“We were all watching to see who’d come in, for there was a wall
between us and the door; but when the sound of the undoing of the bolt
stopped, we heard Tim give a sort of a screech, and instantly he
bolted in to us. He had hardly time to say a word, or we either, when
the little gentleman shuffled in after him, without a God save all
here, or by your leave, or any other sort of thing that any decent
body might say. We all, of one accord, scrambled over to the farthest
end of the room, where we were, old and young, every one trying who’d
get nearest the wall, and farthest from him. All the eyes of our body
were stuck upon him, but he didn’t mind us no more than that
frying-pan there does now. He walked over to the fire, and squatting
himself down like a frog, took the pipe that my father dropped from
his mouth in the hurry, put it into his own, and then began to smoke
so hearty, that he soon filled the room of it.
“We had plenty of time to observe him, and my brothers say that he
wore a sugar-loaf hat that was as red as blood: he had a face as
yellow as a kite’s claw, and as long as to-day and to-morrow put
together, with a mouth all screwed and puckered up like a
washerwoman’s hand, little blue eyes, and rather a highish nose; his
hair was quite gray and lengthy, appearing under his hat, and flowing
over the cape of a long scarlet coat, which almost trailed the ground
behind him, and the ends of which he took up and planked on his knees
to dry, as he sat facing the fire. He had smart corduroy breeches, and
woollen stockings drawn up over the knees, so as to hide the
kneebuckles, if he had the pride to have them; but, at any rate, if he
hadn’t them in his knees he had buckles in his shoes, out before his
spindle legs. When we came to ourselves a little we thought to escape
from the room, but no one would go first, nor no one would stay last;
so we huddled ourselves together and made a dart out of the room. My
little gentleman never minded any thing of the scrambling, nor hardly
stirred himself, sitting quite at his ease before the fire. The
neighbours, the very instant minute they got to the door, although it
still continued pelting rain, cut gutter as if Oliver Cromwell himself
was at their heels; and no blame to them for that, any how. It was my
father, and my mother, and my brothers, and myself, a little
hop-of-my-thumb midge as I was then, that were left to see what would
come out of this strange visit; so we all went quietly to the
_labbig_,[30] scarcely daring to throw an eye at him as we passed the
door. Never the wink of sleep could they sleep that live-long night,
though, to be sure, I slept like a top, not knowing better, while they
were talking and thinking of the little man.
[30] _Labbig_—bed, from _Leaba_.—Vide O’BRIEN and O’REILLY.
“When they got up in the morning, every thing was as quiet and as tidy
about the place as if nothing had happened, for all that the chairs
and stools were tumbled here there, and every where, when we saw the
lad enter. Now, indeed, I forget whether he came next night or not,
but any way, that was the first time we ever laid eye upon him. This I
know for certain, that, about a month after that he came regularly
every night, and used to give us a signal to be on the move, for ’twas
plain he did not like to be observed. This sign was always made about
eleven o’clock; and then, if we’d look towards the door, there was a
little hairy arm thrust in through the key-hole, which would not have
been big enough, only there was a fresh hole made near the first one,
and the bit of stick between them had been broken away, and so ’twas
just fitting for the little arm.