MURTAGH'S STORY CONTINUED--THE PRIEST, EXORCIST, AND THIMBLE-ENGRO--HOW
TO CHECK A REBELLION
'I was telling ye, Shorsha, when ye interrupted me, that I found the
Pope, the rector, the sub-rector and the almoner seated at the table, the
rector with my pack of cards in his hand, about to deal out to the Pope
and the rest, not forgetting himself, for whom he intended all the
trump-cards, no doubt. No sooner did they perceive me than they seemed
taken all aback; but the rector, suddenly starting up with the cards in
his hand, asked me what I did there, threatening to have me well
disciplined if I did not go about my business. "I am come for my pack,"
said I, "ye ould thaif, and to tell his Holiness how I have been treated
by ye." Then, going down on my knees before his Holiness, I said,
"Arrah, now, your Holiness! will ye not see justice done to a poor boy
who has been sadly misused? The pack of cards which that old ruffian has
in his hand are my cards, which he has taken from me in order to chate
with. Arrah! don't play with him, your Holiness, for he'll only chate
ye--there are dirty marks upon the cards which bear the trumps, put there
in order to know them by; and the ould thaif in daling out will give
himself all the good cards, and chate ye of the last farthing in your
pocket; so let them be taken from him, your Holiness, and given back to
me; and order him to lave the room, and then if your Holiness be for an
honest game, don't think I'm the boy to baulk ye. I'll take the ould
ruffian's place, and play with ye till evening, and all night besides,
and divil an advantage will I take of the dirty marks, though I know them
all, having placed them on the cards myself." I was going on in this way
when the ould thaif of a rector, flinging down the cards, made at me as
if to kick me out of the room, whereupon I started up and said, "If ye
are for kicking, sure two can play at that," and then I kicked at his
reverence, and his reverence at me, and there was a regular scrimmage
between us, which frightened the Pope, who, getting up, said some words
which I did not understand, but which the cook afterwards told me were,
"English extravagance, and this is the second edition"; for it seems that
a little time before his Holiness had been frightened in St. Peter's
Church by the servant of an English family, which those thaives of the
English religious house had been endeavouring to bring over to the
Catholic faith, and who didn't approve of their being converted. Och!
his Holiness did us all sore injustice to call us English, and to
confound our house with the other; for however dirty our house might be,
our house was a clane house compared with the English house, and we
honest people compared with those English thaives. Well, his Holiness
was frighted, and the almoner ran out, and brought in his Holiness's
attendants, and they laid hold of me, but I struggled hard, and said, "I
will not go without my pack; arrah, your Holiness! make them give me back
my pack, which Shorsha gave me in Dungarvon times of old," but my
struggles were of no use. I was pulled away and put in the ould dungeon,
and his Holiness went away sore frighted, crossing himself much, and
never returned again.
'In the old dungeon I was fastened to the wall by a chain, and there I
was disciplined once every other day for the first three weeks, and then
I was left to myself, and my chain, and hunger; and there I sat in the
dungeon, sometimes screeching, sometimes holloing, for I soon became
frighted, having nothing in the cell to divert me. At last the cook
found his way to me by stealth, and comforted me a little, bringing me
tidbits out of the kitchen; and he visited me again and again--not often,
however, for he dare only come when he could steal away the key from the
custody of the thief of a porter. I was three years in the dungeon, and
should have gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and his
tidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library, which
were the "Calendars of Newgate," and the "Lives of Irish Rogues and
Raparees," the only English Books in the library. However, at the end of
three years, the ould thaif of a rector, wishing to look at them books,
missed them from the library, and made a perquisition about them, and the
thaif of a porter said that he shouldn't wonder if I had them, saying
that he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others to
my cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how
I came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till
the blood ran down my back; and making some perquisition, they at last
accused the cook of having carried the books to me, and the cook not
denying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that night,
and took me away with him; for he stole the key, and came to me and cut
my chain through, and then he and I escaped from the religious house
through a window--the cook with a bundle, containing what things he had.
No sooner had we got out than the honest cook gave me a little bit of
money and a loaf, and told me to follow a way which he pointed out, which
he said would lead to the sea; and then, having embraced me after the
Italian way, he left me, and I never saw him again. So I followed the
way which the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport called
Chiviter Vik, {303a} terribly foot-foundered, and there I met a sailor
who spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail for
France; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was his
brother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France called
Marseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got a little
money for me and a passport, and I travelled across the country towards a
place they directed me to called Bayonne, from which, they said I might,
perhaps, get to Ireland. Coming, however, to a place called Pau, all my
money being gone, I enlisted into a regiment called the Army of the
Faith, which was going into Spain, for the King of Spain had been
dethroned and imprisoned by his own subjects, as perhaps you may have
heard; and the King of France, who was his cousin, was sending an army to
help him, under the command of his own son, whom the English called
Prince Hilt, {303b} because when he was told that he was appointed to the
command, he clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword. So I enlisted
into the regiment of the Faith, which was made up of Spaniards, many of
them priests who had run out of Spain, and broken Germans, and
foot-foundered Irish, like myself. It was said to be a blackguard
regiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but, 'faith, I saw nothing
blackguardly going on in it, for ye would hardly reckon card-playing and
dominoes, and pitch and toss blackguardly, and I saw nothing else going
on in it. There was one thing in it which I disliked--the priests
drawing their Spanish knives occasionally, when they lost their money.
After we had been some time at Pau, the Army of the Faith was sent across
the mountains into Spain, as the vanguard of the French; and no sooner
did the Spaniards see the Faith than they made a dash at it, and the
Faith ran away, myself along with it, and got behind the French army,
which told it to keep there, and the Faith did so, and followed the
French army, which soon scattered the Spaniards, and in the end placed
the king on his throne again. When the war was over the Faith was
disbanded; some of the foreigners, however, amongst whom I was one, were
put into a Guard regiment, and there I continued for more than a year.
'One day, being at a place called the Escurial, I took stock, as the
tradesmen say, and found I possessed the sum of eighty dollars won by
playing at cards; for though I could not play so well with the foreign
cards as with the pack ye gave me, Shorsha, I had yet contrived to win
money from the priests and soldiers of the Faith. Finding myself
possessed of such a capital, I determined to leave the service and to
make the best of my way to Ireland; so I deserted, but coming in an evil
hour to a place they calls Torre Lodones, I found the priest playing at
cards with his parishioners. The sight of the cards made me stop, and
then, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish
to play, so not being able to speak their language I made signs to them
to let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so I
sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in a
little time had won plenty of their money, but I had better never have
done any such a thing, for suddenly the priest and all his parishioners
set upon me and bate me, and took from me all I had, and cast me out of
the village more dead than alive. Och! it's a bad village that, and if I
had known what it was I would have avoided it, or run straight through
it, though I saw all the card-playing in the world going on in it. There
is a proverb about it, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of the
Moors, which holds good to the present day--it is, that in Torre Lodones
there are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning that
all the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is not
reckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the greatest
thaif of the lot. After being cast out of that village I travelled for
nearly a month, subsisting by begging tolerably well, for though most of
the Spaniards are thaives, they are rather charitable; but though
charitable thaives they do not like their own being taken from them
without leave being asked, as I found to my cost; for on my entering a
garden near Seville, without leave, to take an orange, the labourer came
running up and struck me to the ground with a hatchet, giving me a big
wound in the arm. I fainted with loss of blood, and on my reviving I
found myself in a hospital at Seville, to which the labourer and the
people of the village had taken me. I should have died of starvation in
that hospital had not some English people heard of me and come to see me;
they tended me with food till I was cured, and then paid my passage on
board a ship to London, to which place the ship carried me.
'And now I was in London with five shillings in my pocket--all I had in
the world--and that did not last for long; and when it was gone I begged
in the streets, but I did not get much by that, except a month's hard
labour in the correction-house; and when I came out I knew not what to
do, but thought I would take a walk in the country, for it was
spring-time, and the weather was fine, so I took a walk about seven miles
from London, and came to a place where a great fair was being held; and
there I begged, but got nothing but a halfpenny, and was thinking of
going farther, when I saw a man with a table, like that of mine, playing
with thimbles, as you saw me. I looked at the play, and saw him win
money and run away, and hunted by constables more than once. I kept
following the man, and at last entered into conversation with him, and
learning from him that he was in want of a companion to help him, I
offered to help him if he would pay me; he looked at me from top to toe,
and did not wish at first to have anything to do with me, as he said my
appearance was against me. 'Faith, Shorsha, he had better have looked at
home, for his appearance was not much in his favour: he looked very much
like a Jew, Shorsha. However, he at last agreed to take me to be his
companion, or bonnet, as he called it; and I was to keep a look out and
let him know when constables were coming, and to spake a good word for
him occasionally, whilst he was chating folks with his thimbles and his
pea. So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in many
other fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or, rather, my
master, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and an unkind one,
for do all I could I could never give him pleasure; and he was
continually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting me because I
could not learn his thaives' Latin, and discourse with him in it, and
comparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a pal of his, whom he
said he had parted with in the fair, and of whom he was fond of saying
all kinds of wonderful things, amongst others, that he knew the grammar
of all tongues. At last, wearied with being twitted by him with not
being able to learn his thaives' Greek, I proposed that I should teach
him Irish, that we should spake it together when we had anything to say
in sacret. To that he consented willingly; but, och! a purty hand he
made with Irish, 'faith, not much better than did I with his thaives'
Hebrew. Then my turn came, and I twitted him nicely with dulness, and
compared him with a pal that I had in ould Ireland, in Dungarvon times of
yore, to whom I teached Irish, telling him that he was the broth of a
boy, and not only knew the grammar of all human tongues, but the dialects
of the snakes besides; in fact, I tould him all about your own sweet
self, Shorsha, and many a dispute and quarrel had we together about our
pals, which was the cleverest fellow, his or mine.
'Well, after having been wid him about two months, I quitted him without
noise, taking away one of his tables, and some peas and thimbles: and
that I did with a safe conscience, for he paid me nothing, and was not
over free with the meat and the drink, though I must say of him that he
was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a
power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a
certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of which
he was very proud, so much so that he once told me that when he had saved
a certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, and
enter Parliament, into which he said he could get at any time, through
the interest of a friend of his, a Tory Peer, my Lord Whitefeather, with
whom he said he had occasionally done business. With the table and other
things which I had taken I commenced trade on my own account, having
contrived to learn a few of his tricks. My only capital was the change
for half-a-guinea, which he had once let fall, and which I picked up,
which was all I could ever get from him, for it was impossible to stale
any money from him, he was so awake, being up to all the tricks of
thaives, having followed the diving trade, as he called it, for a
considerable time. My wish was to make enough by my table to enable me
to return with credit to ould Ireland, where I had no doubt of being able
to get myself ordained as priest; and, in troth, notwithstanding I was a
beginner, and without any companion to help me, I did tolerably well,
getting my meat and drink, and increasing my small capital, till I came
to this unlucky place of Horncastle, where I was utterly ruined by the
thaif in the rider's dress. And now, Shorsha, I am after telling you my
history; perhaps you will now be telling me something about yourself?'
I told Murtagh all about myself that I deemed necessary to relate, and
then asked him what he intended to do; he repeated that he was utterly
ruined, and that he had no prospect before him but starving, or making
away with himself. I inquired, 'How much would take him to Ireland, and
establish him there with credit?' 'Five pounds,' he answered, adding,
'but who in the world would be fool enough to lend me five pounds, unless
it be yourself, Shorsha, who, may be, have not got it; for when you told
me about yourself, you made no boast of the state of your affairs.' 'I
am not very rich,' I replied, 'but I think I can accommodate you with
what you want. I consider myself under great obligations to you,
Murtagh; it was you who instructed me in the language of Oilein nan
Naomha, which has been the foundation of all my acquisitions in
philology; without you I should not be what I am--Lavengro! which
signifies a philologist. Here is the money, Murtagh,' said I, putting my
hand into my pocket and taking out five pounds; 'much good may it do
you.' He took the money, stared at it, and then at me. 'And you mane to
give me this, Shorsha?' 'It is not mine to give,' said I; 'it is yours.'
'And you give it me for the gratitude you bear me?' 'Yes,' said I; 'and
for Dungarvon times of old.' 'Well, Shorsha,' said he, 'you are a broth
of a boy, and I'll take your benefaction--five pounds! Och, Jasus!' He
then put the money in his pocket, and springing up, waved his hat three
times, uttering some old Irish cry; then, sitting down, he took my hand
and said, 'Sure, Shorsha, I'll be going thither; and when I get there, it
is turning over another leaf I will be; I have learnt a thing or two
abroad; I will become a priest; that's the trade, Shorsha! and I will cry
out for repale; that's the cry, Shorsha! and I'll be a fool no longer.'
'And what will you do with your table?' said I. ''Faith, I'll be taking
it with me, Shorsha; and when I gets to Ireland I'll get it mended, and I
will keep it in the house which I shall have; and when I looks upon it, I
will be thinking of all I have undergone.' 'You had better leave it
behind you,' said I; 'if you take it with you you will, perhaps, take up
the thimble trade again before you get to Ireland, and lose the money I
am after giving you.' 'No fear of that, Shorsha; never will I play on
that table again, Shorsha, till I get it mended, which shall not be till
I am a priest, and have a house in which to place it.'
Murtagh and I then went into the town, where we had some refreshment
together, and then parted on our several ways. I heard nothing of him
for nearly a quarter of a century, when a person who knew him well,
coming from Ireland, and staying at my humble house, told me a great deal
about him. He reached Ireland in safety, soon reconciled himself with
his Church and was ordained a priest; in the priestly office he acquitted
himself in a way very satisfactory, upon the whole, to his superiors,
having, as he frequently said, learned wisdom abroad. The Popish Church
never fails to turn to account any particular gift which its servants may
possess; and discovering soon that Murtagh was endowed with considerable
manual dexterity--proof of which he frequently gave at cards, and at a
singular game which he occasionally played with thimbles--it selected him
as a very fit person to play the part of exorcist; and accordingly he
travelled through a great part of Ireland, casting out devils from people
possessed, which he afterwards exhibited, sometimes in the shape of
rabbits, and occasionally birds and fish. There is a holy island in a
lake in Ireland, to which the people resort at a particular season of the
year. Here Murtagh frequently attended, and it was here that he
performed a cure which will cause his name long to be remembered in
Ireland, delivering a possessed woman of two demons, which he brandished
aloft in his hands, in the shape of two large eels, and subsequently
hurled into the lake, amidst the shouts of an enthusiastic multitude.
Besides playing the part of an exorcist, he acted that of a politician
with considerable success; he attached himself to the party of the sire
of agitation--'the man of paunch,' and preached and halloed for repeal
with the loudest and best, as long as repeal was the cry; as soon,
however, as the Whigs attained the helm of Government, and the greater
part of the loaves and fishes--more politely termed the patronage of
Ireland--was placed in the disposition of the priesthood, the tone of
Murtagh, like that of the rest of his brother saggarts, was considerably
softened; he even went so far as to declare that politics were not
altogether consistent with sacerdotal duty; and resuming his exorcisms,
which he had for some time abandoned, he went to the Isle of Holiness,
and delivered a possessed woman of six demons in the shape of white mice.
He, however, again resumed the political mantle in the year 1848, during
the short period of the rebellion of the so-called Young Irelanders. The
priests, though they apparently sided with this party, did not approve of
it, as it was chiefly formed of ardent young men, fond of what they
termed liberty, and by no means admirers of priestly domination, being
mostly Protestants. Just before the outbreak of this rebellion, it was
determined between the priests and the ---, that this party should be
rendered comparatively innocuous by being deprived of the sinews of
war--in other words, certain sums of money which they had raised for
their enterprise. Murtagh was deemed the best qualified person in
Ireland to be entrusted with the delicate office of getting their money
from them. Having received his instructions, he invited the leaders to
his parsonage amongst the mountains, under pretence of deliberating with
them about what was to be done. They arrived there just before
nightfall, dressed in red, yellow, and green, the colours so dear to
enthusiastic Irishmen; Murtagh received them with great apparent
cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them
the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion
of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that
consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders,
though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of
cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited
every mark of having seen some very long service. On one of his guests
making some remarks on the 'ancientness' of its appearance, Murtagh
observed that there was a very wonderful history attached to that pack;
it had been presented to him, he said, by a young gentleman, a disciple
of his, to whom, in Dungarvon times of yore, he had taught the Irish
language, and of whom he related some very extraordinary things; he added
that he, Murtagh, had taken it to ---, where it had once the happiness of
being in the hands of the Holy Father; by a great misfortune, he did not
say what, he had lost possession of it, and had returned without it, but
had some time since recovered it; a nephew of his, who was being educated
at --- for a priest, having found it in a nook of the college, and sent
it to him.
Murtagh and the leaders then played various games with this pack, more
especially one called by the initiated 'blind hookey,' the result being
that at the end of about two hours the leaders found they had lost
one-half of their funds; they now looked serious, and talked of leaving
the house, but Murtagh begging them to stay supper, they consented.
After supper, at which the guests drank rather freely, Murtagh said that,
as he had not the least wish to win their money, he intended to give them
their revenge; he would not play at cards with them, he added, but at a
funny game of thimbles, at which they would be sure of winning back their
own; then, going out, he brought in a table, tall and narrow, on which
placing certain thimbles and a pea, he proposed that they should stake
whatever they pleased on the almost certainty of finding the pea under
the thimbles. The leaders, after some hesitation, consented, and were at
first eminently successful winning back the greater part of what they had
lost; after some time, however, Fortune, or, rather, Murtagh, turned
against them, and then, instead of leaving off, they doubled and trebled
their stakes, and continued doing so until they had lost nearly the whole
of their funds. Quite furious, they now swore that Murtagh had cheated
them, and insisted on having their property restored to them. Murtagh,
without a word of reply, went to the door, and shouting into the passage
something in Irish, the room was instantly filled with bogtrotters, each
at least six feet high, with a stout shillealah in his hand. Murtagh,
then turning to his guests, asked them what they meant by insulting an
anointed priest; telling them that it was not for the likes of them to
avenge the wrongs of Ireland. 'I have been clane mistaken in the whole
of ye,' said he; 'I supposed ye Irish, but have found to my sorrow that
ye are nothing of the kind; purty fellows to pretend to be Irish, when
there is not a word of Irish on the tongue of any of ye, divil a
ha'porth; the illigant young gentleman to whom I taught Irish in
Dungarvon times of old, though not born in Ireland, has more Irish in him
than any ten of ye. He is the boy to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, if
ever foreigner is to do it.' Then, saying something to the bogtrotters,
they instantly cleared the room of the young Irelanders, who retired
sadly disconcerted; nevertheless, being very silly young fellows, they
hoisted the standard of rebellion; few, however, joining them, partly
because they had no money, and partly because the priests abused them
with might and main, their rebellion ended in a lamentable manner,
themselves being seized and tried, and though convicted, not deemed of
sufficient importance to be sent to the scaffold, where they might have
had the satisfaction of saying--
'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.'
My visitor, after saying that of the money won Murtagh retained a
considerable portion, that a part went to the hierarchy for what were
called church purposes, and that the --- took the remainder, which it
employed in establishing a newspaper, in which the private characters of
the worthiest and most loyal Protestants in Ireland were traduced and
vilified, concluded his account by observing that it was the common
belief that Murtagh, having by his services, ecclesiastical and
political, acquired the confidence of the priesthood and favour of the
Government, would, on the first vacancy, be appointed to the high office
of Popish Primate of Ireland.