as we attended to the signal; smoking always out of the pipe he made
his own of, and warming himself till day dawned before the fire, and
then going no one living knows where: but there was not the least mark
of him to be found in the morning; and ’tis as true, nurse Doyle, and
honest people, as you are all here sitting before me and by the side
of me, that the family continued thriving, and my father and brothers
rising in the world while ever he came to us. When we observed this,
we used always look for the very moment to see when the arm would
come, and then we’d instantly fly off with ourselves to our rest. But
before we found the luck, we used sometimes sit still and not mind the
arm, especially when a neighbour would be with my father, or that two
or three or four of them would have a drop among them, and then they
did not care for all the arms, hairy or not, that ever were seen. No
one, however, dared to speak to it or of it insolently, except,
indeed, one night that Davy Kennane—but he was drunk—walked over and
hit it a rap on the back of the wrist: the hand was snatched off like
lightning; but every one knows that Davy did not live a month after
this happened, though he was only about ten days sick. The like of
such tricks are ticklish things to do.
“As sure as the red man would put in his arm for a sign through the
hole in the door, and that we did not go and open it to him, so sure,
some mishap befell the cattle: the cows were elf-stoned, or
overlooked, or something or another went wrong with them. One night my
brother Dan refused to go at the signal, and the next day, as he was
cutting turf in Crogh-na-drimina bog, within a mile and a half of the
house, a stone was thrown at him which broke fairly, with the force,
into two halves. Now, if that had happened to hit him he’d be at this
hour as dead as my great great grandfather. It came whack slap against
the spade he had in his hand, and split at once in two pieces. He took
them up and fitted them together, and they made a perfect heart. Some
way or the other he lost it since, but he still has the one which was
shot at the spotted milch cow, before the little man came near us.
Many and many a time I saw that same; ’tis just the shape of the ace
of hearts on the cards, only it is of a dark red colour, and polished
up like the grate that is in the grand parlour within. When this did
not kill the cow on the spot, she swelled up; but if you took and put
the elf-stone under her udder, and milked her upon it to the last
stroking, and then made her drink the milk, it would cure her, and she
would thrive with you ever after.
“But, as I said, we were getting on well enough as long as we minded
the door and watched for the hairy arm, which we did sharp enough when
we found it was bringing luck to us, and we were now as glad to see
the little red gentleman, and as ready to open the door to him, as we
used to dread his coming at first and be frightened of him. But at
long last we throve so well that the landlord—God forgive him—took
notice of us, and envied us, and asked my father how he came by the
penny he had, and wanted him to take more ground at a rack-rent that
was more than any Christian ought to pay to another, seeing there was
no making it. When my father—and small blame to him for
that—refused to lease the ground, he turned us off the bit of land we
had, and out of the house and all, and left us in a wide and wicked
world, where my father, for he was a soft innocent man, was not up to
the roguery and trickery that was practised upon him. He was taken
this way by one and that way by another, and he treating them that
were working his downfall. And he used to take bite and sup with them,
and they with him, free enough as long as the money lasted; but when
that was gone, and he had not as much ground, that he could call his
own, as would sod a lark, they soon shabbed him off. The landlord died
not long after; and he now knows whether he acted right or wrong in
taking the house from over our heads.
“It is a bad thing for the heart to be cast down, so we took another
cabin, and looked out with great desire for the Fir Darrig to come to
us. But ten o’clock came and no arm, although we cut a hole in the
door just the _moral_ (model) of the other. Eleven o’clock!—twelve
o’clock!—no, not a sign of him: and every night we watched, but all
would not do. We then travelled to the other house, and we rooted up
the hearth, for the landlord asked so great a rent for it from the
poor people that no one could take it; and we carried away the very
door off the hinges, and we brought every thing with us that we
thought the little man was in any respect partial to, but he did not
come, and we never saw him again.
“My father and my mother, and my young sister, are since dead, and my
two brothers, who could tell all about this better than myself, are
both of them gone out with Ingram in his last voyage to the Cape of
Good Hope, leaving me behind without kith or kin.”
Here young Ellen’s voice became choked with sorrow, and bursting into
tears, she hid her face in her apron.
FIR DARRIG means the red man, and is a member of the fairy
community of Ireland, who bears a strong resemblance to the
Shakspearian Puck, or Robin Goodfellow. Like that merry goblin
his delight is in mischief and mockery; and this Irish spirit
is doubtless the same as the Scottish _Red Cap_; which a writer
in the Quarterly Review (No. XLIV. p. 358,) tracing national
analogies, asserts, is the Robin Hood of England, and the Saxon
spirit Hudkin or Hodekin, so called from the hoodakin or little
hood wherein he appeared, a spirit similar to the Spanish
Duende. The Fir Darrig has also some traits of resemblance in
common with the Scotch Brownie, the German Kobold (particularly
the celebrated one, Hinzelman,) the English Hobgoblin (Milton’s
“Lubber Fiend”) and the Follet of Gervase of Tilbury, who says
of the Folletos, “Verba utique humano more audiunter et
effigies non comparent. De istis pleraque miracula memini me in
vita abbreviata et miraculis beatissimi Antonii
reperisse.”—_Otia Imperialia._
The red dress and strange flexibility of voice possessed by the
Fir Darrig form his peculiar characteristics; the latter,
according to Irish tale-tellers, is like the sound of the
waves; and again it is compared to the music of angels; the
warbling of birds, &c.; and the usual address to this fairy is,
Do not mock us. His entire dress, when he is seen, is
invariably described as crimson: whereas, Irish fairies
generally appear in a black hat, a green suit, white stockings,
and red shoes.
TREASURE LEGENDS.
“Bell, book, and candle, shall not drive me back
When gold and silver becks me to come on.”
_King John._
“This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so.”
_Winter’s Tale._
DREAMING TIM JARVIS.
XXXIV.
Timothy Jarvis was a decent, honest, quiet, hard-working man, as every
body knows that knows Balledehob.
Now Balledehob is a small place, about forty miles west of Cork. It is
situated on the summit of a hill, and yet it is in a deep valley; for
on all sides there are lofty mountains that rise one above another in
barren grandeur, and seem to look down with scorn upon the little busy
village which they surround with their idle and unproductive
magnificence. Man and beast have alike deserted them to the dominion
of the eagle, who soars majestically over them. On the highest of
those mountains there is a small, and as is commonly believed,
unfathomable lake, the only inhabitant of which is a huge serpent,
who has been sometimes seen to stretch its enormous head above the
waters, and frequently is heard to utter a noise which shakes the very
rocks to their foundation.
But, as I was saying, every body knew Tim Jarvis to be a decent,
honest, quiet, hard-working man, who was thriving enough to be able to
give his daughter Nelly a fortune of ten pounds; and Tim himself would
have been snug enough besides, but that he loved the drop sometimes.
However, he was seldom backward on rent-day. His ground was never
distrained but twice, and both times through a small bit of a mistake;
and his landlord had never but once to say to him—“Tim Jarvis, you’re
all behind, Tim, like the cow’s tail.” Now it so happened that, being
heavy in himself, through the drink, Tim took to sleeping, and the
sleep set Tim dreaming, and he dreamed all night, and night after
night, about crocks full of gold and other precious stones; so much
so, that Norah Jarvis his wife could get no good of him by day, and
have little comfort with him by night. The gray dawn of the morning
would see Tim digging away in a bog-hole, may be, or rooting under
some old stone walls like a pig. At last he dreamt that he found a
mighty great crock of gold and silver—and where do you think? Every
step of the way upon London-bridge, itself! Twice Tim dreamt it, and
three times Tim dreamt the same thing; and at last he made up his mind
to transport himself, and go over to London, in Pat Mahoney’s
coaster—and so he did!
Well, he got there, and found the bridge without much difficulty.
Every day he walked up and down looking for the crock of gold, but
never the find did he find it. One day, however, as he was looking
over the bridge into the water, a man, or something like a man, with
great black whiskers, like a Hessian, and a black cloak that reached
down to the ground, taps him on the shoulder, and says he—“Tim
Jarvis, do you see me?”
“Surely I do, sir,” said Tim; wondering that any body should know him
in that strange place.
“Tim,” says he, “what is it brings you here in foreign parts, so far
away from your own cabin by the mine of gray copper at Balledehob?”
“Please your honour,” says Tim, “I’m come to seek my fortune.”
“You’re a fool for your pains, Tim, if that’s all,” remarked the
stranger in the black cloak; “this is a big place to seek one’s
fortune in, to be sure, but it’s not so easy to find it.”
Now Tim, after debating a long time with himself, and considering, in
the first place, that it might be the stranger who was to find the
crock of gold for him; and in the next, that the stranger might direct
him where to find it, came to the resolution of telling him all.
“There’s many a one like me comes here seeking their fortunes,” said
Tim.
“True,” said the stranger.
“But,” continued Tim, looking up, “the body and bones of the cause for
myself leaving the woman, and Nelly, and the boys, and travelling so
far, is to look for a crock of gold that I’m told is lying somewhere
hereabouts.”
“And who told you that, Tim?”
“Why then, sir, that’s what I can’t tell myself rightly—only I dreamt
it.”
“Ho, ho! is that all, Tim!” said the stranger, laughing; “I had a
dream myself; and I dreamed that I found a crock of gold, in the Fort
field, on Jerry Driscoll’s ground at Balledehob; and by the same
token, the pit where it lay was close to a large furze bush, all full
of yellow blossom.”
Tim knew Jerry Driscoll’s ground well; and, moreover, he knew the Fort
field as well as he knew his own potato garden; he was certain, too,
of the very furze bush at the north end of it—so, swearing a bitter
big oath, says he—
“By all the crosses in a yard of check, I always thought there was
money in that same field!”
The moment he rapped out the oath, the stranger disappeared, and Tim
Jarvis, wondering at all that had happened to him, made the best of
his way back to Ireland. Norah, as may well be supposed, had no very
warm welcome for her runaway husband—the dreaming blackguard, as she
called him—and so soon as she set eyes upon him, all the blood of her
body in one minute was into her knuckles to be at him; but Tim, after
his long journey, looked so cheerful and so happy-like, that she could
not find it in her heart to give him the first blow! He managed to
pacify his wife by two or three broad hints about a new cloak and a
pair of shoes, that, to speak honestly, were much wanting for her to
go to chapel in; and decent clothes for Nelly to go to the patron with
her sweetheart, and brogues for the boys, and some corduroy for
himself. “It wasn’t for nothing,” says Tim, “I went to foreign parts
all the ways; and you’ll see what’ll come out of it—mind my words.”
A few days afterwards Tim sold his cabin and his garden, and bought
the Fort-field of Jerry Driscoll, that had nothing in it, but was full
of thistles, and old stones, and blackberry bushes; and all the
neighbours—as well they might—thought he was cracked!
The first night that Tim could summon courage to begin his work, he
walked off to the field with his spade upon his shoulder; and away he
dug all night by the side of the furze bush, till he came to a big
stone. He struck his spade against it, and he heard a hollow sound;
but as the morning had begun to dawn, and the neighbours would be
going out to their work, Tim, not wishing to have the thing talked
about, went home to the little hovel, where Norah and the children
were huddled together under a heap of straw; for he had sold every
thing he had in the world to purchase Driscoll’s field, though it was
said to be “the back-bone of the world, picked by the devil.”
It is impossible to describe the epithets and reproaches bestowed by
the poor woman on her unlucky husband for bringing her into such a
way. Epithets and reproaches, which Tim had but one mode of answering,
as thus:—“Norah, did you see e’er a cow you’d like?”—or, “Norah,
dear, hasn’t Poll Deasy a feather-bed to sell?”—or, “Norah honey,
wouldn’t you like your silver buckles as big as Mrs. Doyle’s?”
As soon as night came Tim stood beside the furze bush, spade in hand.
The moment he jumped down into the pit he heard a strange rumbling
noise under him, and so, putting his ear against the great stone, he
listened, and overheard a discourse that made the hair on his head
stand up like bulrushes, and every limb tremble.
“How shall we bother Tim?” said one voice.
“Take him to the mountain, to be sure, and make him a toothful for the
_ould sarpint_; ’tis long since he has had a good meal,” said another
voice.
Tim shook like a potato-blossom in a storm.
“No,” said a third voice; “plunge him in the bog, neck and heels.”
Tim was a dead man, barring the breath.[31]
[31] “I’non mori, e non rimasi vivo:
Pensa oramai per te, s’hai fior d’ingegno
Qual io divenni d’uno e d’altro privo.”
Dante, _Inferno_, canto 34.
“Stop!” said a fourth; but Tim heard no more, for Tim was dead
entirely. In about an hour, however, the life came back into him, and
he crept home to Norah.
When the next night arrived, the hopes of the crock of gold got the
better of his fears, and taking care to arm himself with a bottle of
potheen, away he went to the field. Jumping into the pit, he took a
little sup from the bottle to keep his heart up—he then took a big
one—and then, with desperate wrench, he wrenched up the stone. All at
once, up rushed a blast of wind, wild and fierce, and down fell
Tim—down, down and down he went—until he thumped upon what seemed to
be, for all the world, like a floor of sharp pins, which made him
bellow out in earnest. Then he heard a whisk and a hurra, and
instantly voices beyond number cried out—
“Welcome, Tim Jarvis, dear!
Welcome, down here!”
Though Tim’s teeth chattered like magpies with the fright, he
continued to make answer—“I’m he-he-har-ti-ly ob-ob-liged to-to you
all, gen-gen-tlemen, fo-for your civility to-to a poor stranger like
myself.” But though he had heard all the voices about him, he could
see nothing, the place was so dark and so lonesome in itself for want
of the light. Then something pulled Tim by the hair of his head, and
dragged him, he did not know how far, but he knew he was going faster
than the wind, for he heard it behind him, trying to keep up with him
and it could not. On, on, on, he went, till all at once, and suddenly,
he was stopped, and somebody came up to him, and said, “Well, Tim
Jarvis, and how do you like your ride?”
“Mighty well! I thank your honour,” said Tim; “and ’twas a good beast
I rode, surely!”
There was a great laugh at Tim’s answer; and then there was a
whispering, and a great cugger mugger, and coshering; and at last, a
pretty little bit of a voice said, “Shut your eyes, and you’ll see,
Tim.”
“By my word, then,” said Tim, “that is the queer way of seeing; but
I’m not the man to gainsay you, so I’ll do as you bid me, any how.”
Presently he felt a small warm hand rubbed over his eyes with an
ointment, and in the next minute he saw himself in the middle of
thousands of little men and women, not half so high as his brogue,
that were pelting one another with golden guineas and lily white
thirteens[32], as if they were so much dirt. The finest dressed and
the biggest of them all went up to Tim, and says he, “Tim Jarvis,
because you are a decent, honest, quiet, civil, well-spoken man,” says
he, “and know how to behave yourself in strange company, we’ve altered
our minds about you, and will find a neighbour of yours that will do
just as well to give to the old serpent.”
[32] An English shilling was thirteen pence, Irish currency.
“Oh, then, long life to you, sir!” said Tim, “and there’s no doubt of
that.”
“But what will you say, Tim,” inquired the little fellow, “if we fill
your pockets with these yellow boys? What will you say, Tim, and what
will you do with them?”
“Your honour’s honour, and your honour’s glory,” answered Tim, “I’ll
not be able to say my prayers for one month with thanking you—and
indeed I’ve enough to do with them. I’d make a grand lady, you see, at
once of Norah—she has been a good wife to me. We’ll have a nice bit
of pork for dinner; and, may be, I’d have a glass, or may be two
glasses; or sometimes, if ’twas with a friend, or acquaintance, or
gossip, you know, three glasses every day; and I’d build a new cabin;
and I’d have a fresh egg every morning, myself, for my breakfast; and
I’d snap my fingers at the ‘squire, and beat his hounds, if they’d
come coursing through my fields; and I’d have a new plough; and Norah,
your honour, would have a new cloak, and the boys would have shoes and
stockings as well as Biddy Leary’s brats—that’s my sister that
was—and Nelly would marry Bill Long of Affadown; and, your honour,
I’d have some corduroy for myself to make breeches, and a cow, and a
beautiful coat with shining buttons, and a horse to ride, or may be
two. I’d have every thing,” said Tim, “in life, good or bad, that is
to be got for love or money—hurra-whoop!—and that’s what I’d do.”
“Take care, Tim,” said the little fellow, “your money would not go
faster than it came, with your hurra-whoop.”
But Tim heeded not this speech: heaps of gold were around him, and he
filled and filled away as hard as he could, his coat and his waistcoat
and his breeches pockets; and he thought himself very clever,
moreover, because he stuffed some of the guineas into his brogues.
When the little people perceived this, they cried out—“Go home, Tim
Jarvis, go home, and think yourself a lucky man.”
“I hope, gentlemen,” said he, “we won’t part for good and all; but may
be ye’ll ask me to see you again, and to give you a fair and square
account of what I’ve done with your money.”
To this there was no answer, only another shout—“Go home, Tim
Jarvis—go home—fair play is a jewel; but shut your eyes, or ye’ll
never see the light of day again.”
Tim shut his eyes, knowing now that was the way to see clearly; and
away he was whisked as before—away, away he went till he again
stopped all of a sudden.
He rubbed his eyes with his two thumbs—and where was he? Where, but
in the very pit in the field that was Jer Driscoll’s, and his wife
Norah above with a big stick ready to beat “her dreaming blackguard.”
Tim roared out to the woman to leave the life in him, and put his
hands in his pockets to show her the gold; but he pulled out nothing
only a handful of small stones mixed with yellow furze blossoms. The
bush was under him, and the great flag-stone that he had wrenched up,
as he thought, was lying, as if it was never stirred, by his side: the
whisky bottle was drained to the last drop; and the pit was just as
his spade had made it.
Tim Jarvis, vexed, disappointed, and almost heart-broken, followed his
wife home: and, strange to say, from that night he left off drinking,
and dreaming, and delving in bog holes, and rooting in old caves. He
took again to his hard-working habits, and was soon able to buy back
his little cabin and former potato garden, and to get all the
enjoyment he anticipated from the fairy gold.
Give Tim one, or at most two glasses of whisky punch (and neither
friend, acquaintance, nor gossip can make him take more,) and he will
relate the story to you much better than you have it here. Indeed, it
is worth going to Balledehob to hear him tell it. He always pledges
himself to the truth of every word with his fore-fingers crossed; and
when he comes to speak of the loss of his guineas, he never fails to
console himself by adding—“If they stayed with me I wouldn’t have
luck with them, sir; and father O’Shea told me ’twas as well for me
they were changed, for if they hadn’t, they’d have burned holes in my
pocket, and got out that way.”
I shall never forget his solemn countenance, and the deep tones of his
warning voice, when he concluded his tale, by telling me, that the
next day after his ride with the fairies, Mick Dowling was missing,
and he believed him to be given to the _sarpint_ in his place, as he
had never been heard of since. “The blessing of the saints be between
all good men and harm,” was the concluding sentence of Tim Jarvis’s
narrative, as he flung the remaining drops from his glass upon the
green sward.
RENT-DAY.
XXXV.
“Oh ullagone, ullagone! this is a wide world, but what will we do in
it, or where will we go?” muttered Bill Doody, as he sat on a rock by
the Lake of Killarney. “What will we do? to-morrow’s rent-day, and Tim
the Driver swears if we don’t pay up our rent, he’ll cant every
_ha’perth_ we have; and then, sure enough, there’s Judy and myself,
and the poor little _grawls_,[33] will be turned out to starve on the
high road, for the never a halfpenny of rent have I!—Oh hone, that
ever I should live to see this day!”
[33] Children.
Thus did Bill Doody bemoan his hard fate, pouring his sorrows to the
reckless waves of the most beautiful of lakes, which seemed to mock
his misery as they rejoiced beneath the cloudless sky of a May
morning. That lake, glittering in sunshine, sprinkled with fairy isles
of rock and verdure, and bounded by giant hills of ever-varying hues,
might, with its magic beauty, charm all sadness but despair; for alas,
“How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest, agree!”
Yet Bill Doody was not so desolate as he supposed; there was one
listening to him he little thought of, and help was at hand from a
quarter he could not have expected.
“What’s the matter with you, my poor man?” said a tall portly-looking
gentleman, at the same time stepping out of a furze-brake. Now Bill
was seated on a rock that commanded the view of a large field. Nothing
in the field could be concealed from him, except this furze-brake,
which grew in a hollow near the margin of the lake. He was, therefore,
not a little surprised at the gentleman’s sudden appearance, and
began to question whether the personage before him belonged to this
world or not. He, however, soon mustered courage sufficient to tell
him how his crops had failed, how some bad member had charmed away his
butter, and how Tim the Driver threatened to turn him out of the farm
if he didn’t pay up every penny of the rent by twelve o’clock next
day.
“A sad story indeed,” said the stranger; “but surely, if you
represented the case to your landlord’s agent, he won’t have the heart
to turn you out.”
“Heart, your honour! where would an agent get a heart!” exclaimed
Bill. “I see your honour does not know him: besides, he has an eye on
the farm this long time for a fosterer of his own; so I expect no
mercy at all at all, only to be turned out.”
“Take this, my poor fellow, take this,” said the stranger, pouring a
purse-full of gold into Bill’s old hat, which in his grief he had
flung on the ground. “Pay the fellow your rent, but I’ll take care it
shall do him no good. I remember the time when things went otherwise
in this country, when I would have hung up such a fellow in the
twinkling of an eye!”
These words were lost upon Bill, who was insensible to every thing but
the sight of the gold, and before he could unfix his gaze, and lift up
his head to pour out his hundred thousand blessings, the stranger was
gone. The bewildered peasant looked around in search of his
benefactor, and at last he thought he saw him riding on a white horse
a long way off on the lake.
“O’Donoghue, O’Donoghue!” shouted Bill; “the good, the blessed
O’Donoghue!” and he ran capering like a madman to show Judy the gold,
and to rejoice her heart with the prospect of wealth and happiness.
The next day Bill proceeded to the agent’s; not sneakingly, with his
hat in his hand, his eyes fixed on the ground, and his knees bending
under him; but bold and upright, like a man conscious of his
independence.