of his happy Restoration to the throne of these Realms of his late
Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. My father was a small farmer,
who fed his pigs and tended his potato gardens at the foot of the
Wicklow Mountains, about twelve miles from the famous city of Dublin.
His name was O' something, which it concerns you not to know, youngster,
and he had the misfortune to be a Papist. I say the misfortune; for in
those days, O well-a-day, as in these too, and more's the shame, to be a
Papist meant being a poor, unfortunate creature continually Hunted up
and down, Harassed and Harried far worse than any leathern-skinned Beast
of Venery that the Gentlemen Blacks pursue in Charlwood Chase. He had
suffered much under the iron rule" (these were not exactly Mother Drum's
words, for her language was anything, as a rule, but well chosen; but I
have polished up her style a little,) "of the cruel Usurper, Oliver
Cromwell; that is to say the Redcoated Ironsides of that Bad Man had on
three several occasions burnt his Shelling to the ground, stolen his
Pigs, and grubbed up his potato ground. Once had they ran away with his
wife, (my dear Mother), twice had they half-hanged him to a tree-branch,
and at divers intervals had they tortured him by tying lighted matches
between his fingers. When, however, His Sacred Majesty was happily
restored there were hopes that the poor Romanists would enjoy a little
Comfort and Tranquillity; but these Fond aspirations were speedily and
cruelly dashed to the ground; for the Anglican Bishops and Clergy being
put into possession of the Sees and Benefices of which they had been so
long deprived, occupied themselves much more with Hounding Down those
who did not live by the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, than in
preaching Peace and Goodwill among all men. So the Papists had a worse
time of it than ever. My Father, honest man, tried to temporise between
the two parties, but was ever in danger of being shot by his own friends
as a Traitor, even if he escaped half-hanging at the hands of the
Protestants as a Recusant. Well, after all, Jack high or Jack low, the
days must come to an end, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter must
follow upon one another, and boys and girls were born to my father, and
the pigs littered, and were sold at market, and the potatoes grew and
were eaten whether Oliver Cromwell, or his son Dickon, or Charles
Stuart--I beg pardon, His Sacred Majesty--was uppermost. Thus it was I
came into the world in the Restoration year.
"I was a bold, strapping, fearless kind of a girl, much fonder of
Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and
Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know
the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by
an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour.
But Betty--I was christened Elizabeth--was always gammocking and
tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or
demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing plaintive ballads to
herself to the music of the Irish Harp, which, in my time, almost every
Farmer's Daughter could Play. Before I was seven years old I could feed
the pigs and dig up the potato ground. Before I was ten, I could catch a
colt and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his
mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was
twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs,
ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack
on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or
playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a
pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the
lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of
Swords. Those who knew me used to call me 'Brimstone Betty;' and in my
own family I went by the name of the 'Bold Dragoon,' much to the
miscontentment of my father, who tried hard to bring me to a more
feminine habit of Body and frame of mind, both by affectionate
expostulation, and by assiduous larruping with a stirrup leather. But
'twas all of no use. At sixteen I was the greatest Tearcoat of the
Country side; and Father Macanasser, the village priest, gave it as his
opinion that I must either be married, or sent to Dublin into decent
service, or go to Ruination.
"It chanced that one fine summer day, I was gammocking in a hayfield
with another lass, a friend of mine, whom I had made almost as bold as
myself. We had a cudgel apiece, and were playing at single-stick, in our
mad-cap fashion, laughing and screaming like Bedlamites, meanwhile. Only
a hedge separated us from the high-road to Dublin, which ran up hill,
and by and by came toiling up the hill, sticking every other minute in a
rut, or jolting into a hole--for the roads were in infamous condition
about here, as, indeed, all over the kingdom of Ireland--a grand coach,
all over painting and gilding, drawn by six grey horses, with flowing
manes and tails. The two leading pair had postilions in liveries of blue
and silver, and great badges of coats-of-arms, and the equipage was
further attended by a couple of outriders or yeomen-prickers in the same
rich livery, but with cutlasses at their sides, petronels in their
holsters, and blunderbusses on their hips, to guard against Tories and
Rapparees, who then infested the land, and cared little whether it was
Daylight or Moonlight--whether it was in the Green tree or the Dry that
they went about their thievish business. The personage to whom this
grand coach belonged was a stout, Majestic old Gentleman with a
monstrous black periwig, a bright star on his breast, and a broad blue
ribbon crossing his plum-coloured velvet doublet. He had dismounted from
his heavy coach, while the horses were fagging up hill, and by the help
of a great crutch-staff of ebony, ornamented with silver, was toiling
after them. Hearing our prattling and laughing, he looked over the hedge
and saw us in the very thick of our mimic Combat. This seemed to divert
him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at
us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth,
rather shamefaced than otherwise among the haycocks, he bade us with
cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so
sparring at one another, till his sides shook again. But all the fire
was taken out of our combat, by the presence of so unwonted a
Spectator, and after a brief lapse we dropped cudgels, and stood staring
and blushing, quite dashed and confused. Then he beckoned us towards him
in a most affable manner, and we came awkwardly and timorously, yet
still with great curiosity to know what was to follow, through a gap in
the hedge, and so stood before him in the road. And then cries out one
of the Yeomen-Prickers--'Wenches! drop your best curtsey to his Grace
the Duke of O----.' It was, indeed, that famous nobleman, lately Lord
Lieutenant, and still one of the highest, mightiest, and most puissant
Princes in the Kingdom of Ireland. To be brief, he put a variety of
questions to us, respecting our belongings, and at my answers seemed
most condescendingly pleased, and at those of my playmate (whose name
was Molly O'Flaherty, and who had red hair, and a cast in her eye), but
moderately pleased. On her, therefore, he bestowed a gold piece, and so
dismissed her; telling her to take care of what her Tom Boy pranks
might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was
good enough to say that I was a spirited lass fit for better things, and
that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in
Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my
condition in life. Whereupon he was assisted to his seat by one of four
running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach
and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes
came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump of
gallant cavaliers in buff coats, bright corslets, and embroidered
bandoliers over them, wearing green plumes in their hats, and
flourishing their broadswords in the sunshine. These were the gentlemen
of his bodyguard. They questioned me as to my converse with his Grace,
and when I told them, laughed and said that I was in luck.
"The Duke of O---- meant me no harm, and I am sure did me none; and yet,
my dear, I must date all my misfortunes from the time I was introduced
to his Grace. You see that these gentlefolks have so much to think of,
and are not in the habit of troubling their heads much as to what
becomes of a poor peasant girl, after the whim which may have led them
to patronize her has once passed over. My mother made me a new linsey
woolsey petticoat, and a snood of scarlet frieze, and I was as fine as
ninepence, with the first pair of stockings on that ever I had worn in
my life, when I was taken to Dublin to a grand house by the Quay side,
to be presented to his Grace. He had almost forgotten who I was, when
his Groom of the Chamber procured us an audience. Then he remembered how
he had laughed at my gambols with Molly O'Flaherty in the hayfield, and
how they amused him, and how he thought my Romping ways might divert My
Lady Duchess his Consort, who was a pining, puling, melancholic
Temperament, and much afflicted with the Vapours, for want of something
to do. So he was pleased to smile upon me again, and to give my mother
five pounds, and to promise that I should be well bestowed in his
household as a waiting-woman, or Bower-maiden, or some such like
capacity; and then he made me a present, as though I were a puppy-dog,
to Her Grace the Duchess, and having affairs of state to attend to,
thought no more about 'Brimstone Betty.' My sprightly ways and random
talk amused her Grace for awhile; but she had too many gewgaws and
playthings, and I found, after not many days, that my popularity was on
the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the
attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and
a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon.
So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a
young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House,
and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and thence
to the servant's hall, and thence, after a very brief lapse, to the
kitchen, where I was very little better than a Scullish and
Plate-washer, and not half so well entreated as Cicely of the Cinders is
here. I pined and fretted; but time went on, and to my misfortune I was
growing taller and shapelier. I had a very clear skin, and very black
hair and eyes, and, though I say it that shouldn't, as neat a leg and
foot as you would wish to see in a summer's day, and the men folk told
me that I was comely. They only told me so, the false perfidious hounds,
for my destruction.
"Well, child, you are too young to understand these things; and I hope
that when you grow up, you will not do to poor forlorn girls as I was
done by. A dicing soldier fellow that was a hanger-on at my Lord Duke's
house, and was called Captain, ran away with me. Of course I was at once
discarded from the Great House as a good-for-nothing Light o' love, and
was told that if ever I presumed to show my face on the Quay-side again
I should be sent to the Spinning House, and whipped. They had better
have taken care of me while I was with them. The Captain dressed me up
in fine clothes for a month or so, and gave me paint and patches, and
took me to the Playhouse with a mask on, and then he got stabbed in a
broil after some gambling bout at a China House in Smock Alley, and I
was left in the wide world with two satin sacques, a box of cosmetiques,
a broken fan, two spade guineas, and little else besides what I stood
upright in. Return to my Father and Mother I dared not; for I knew that
the tidings of my misconduct had already been conveyed to them, and had
half broken their hearts, and my offence was one that is unpardonable in
the children of the poorest and humblest of the Irishry. There was
Bitter Bread before me, if I chose to follow, as thousands of poor,
cozened, betrayed creatures before me had done, a Naughty Life; but
this, with unutterable Loathing and Scorn, I cast away from me; and
having, from my Dare-devil Temper, a kind of Pride and High Stomach made
me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They
had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from
a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had
spelt out was a chap-book ballad of Mary Ambree, the female soldier,
that was at the siege of Ghent, and went through all the wars in
Flanders in Queen Bess's time. 'What woman has done, woman can do,'
cries I to myself, surveying my bold and masculine lineaments, my
flashing black eyes, and ruddy tint, my straight, stout limbs, and
frank, dashing gait. Ah! I was very different to the fat, pursy, old
ale-wife who discourses with you now--in the glass. Without more ado I
cut off my long black hair close to my head, stained my hands with
walnut juice, (for they had grown white and soft and plump from idling
about in the Great House), and went off to a Crimp in the Liberty that
was enlisting men (against the law, but here many things are done
against both Law and Prophets), for the King of France's service.
"This was in the year '80, and I was twenty years of age. King Louis had
then no especial Brigade of Irish Troops--that famous corps not being
formed until after the Revolution--and his Scotch Guards, a pinchbeck,
purse-proud set of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among
them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon
betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of
James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when you are going to the
wars; and no name is, perchance, the best of any. As James Moriarty,
after perfecting myself in musket-drill, and the pike-exercise, in our
winter quarters at Dunkirk, I was entered in the Gardes Francais, a
portion of the renowned Maison du Roy, or Household Troops, and as such
went through the second Rhenish campaign, taking my share, and a liberal
one too, in killing my fellow-Christians, burning villages, and
stealing poultry. Nay, through excessive precaution, lest my sex should
be discovered, I made more pretensions than the rest of my Comrades to
be considered a lady-killer, and the Captain of my Company, Monsieur de
la Ribaldiere, did me the honour to say that no Farmer's Daughter was
safe from 'Le Bel Irlandais,' or Handsome Irishman, as they called me.
Heaven help us! From whom are the Farmer's daughters, or the Farmers
themselves safe in war time?
"When peace was declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of
Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger,
nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains.
I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis;
but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was
glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my
Captain, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, to Paris, as his Valet de Chambre,
or of mouldering away, without hope of Promotion, in some country
barrack, to choose the former, and led, for a year or two, a gay, easy
life enough in the French Capital. But, alas! that which I had hidden
from a whole army in the field, I could not keep a secret from one
rubbishing, penniless, popinjay of a Captain in the Gardes Francaises. I
told this miscreant, de la Ribaldiere, that I was a woman; for I was mad
and vain enough to Love him. These are matters again, child, that you
cannot understand; but I have said enough when I declare that if ever
there was power in the Curse of Cromwell to blight a Wicked Man, that
curse ought to light upon Henri de la Ribaldiere.
"I took a disgust to the male attire after this; but being yet in the
prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I
engaged myself to a French mountebank posture-master to dance Corantoes
on the Tight and Slack Rope, accompanying myself meanwhile by reveilles
on the Drum, an instrument in which I had become a proficient. The
Posture Master, finding out afterwards that I was agile and Valiant, not
only at Dancing but at Fighting, must needs have me wield the broadsword
and the quarterstaff against all comers on a public platform; and, as
the Irish Amazon, I achieved great success, and had my Employer not been
a thief, should have gained much money. He was in the habit, not only of
robbing his woman-performers, but of beating them; but I promise you the
first time the villain offered to slash at me with his dog-whip, I had
him under the jaw with my fist in the handsomest manner, and then
tripping up his heels, and hurling him down on his own stage, and
(having a right piece of ashplant in my grip) I did so curry his hide in
sight of a full audience, that he howled for mercy, and the groundlings,
who thought it part of the show, clapped their hands till they were sore
and shouted till they were hoarse. Our engagement came to an end after
this, and in a somewhat disagreeable manner for me; for the
Posture-Master happened to be the by-blow of a Doctor of the Sorbonne,
who was brother to an Abbe, who was brother to an opera-dancer, who had
interest with a cardinal, who was uncle to a gentleman of the Chamber,
who was one of Pere la Chaise's pet penitents; and this Reverend Father,
having the King's ear, denounced me to his Majesty as a Spy, a Heretic,
a Jansenist, a _Coureuse_, and all sorts of things; and by a _lettre de
Cachet_, as they call their warrants, I was sent off to the prison of
the Madelonettes, there to diet on bread and water, to be herded with
the vilest of my sex, to card wool, and to receive, morning and evening,
the Discipline (as they call it) of Leathern thongs, ten to a handful,
and three blood-knots in each. I grew sick of being tawed for offences I
had never committed, and so made bold one morning to try and strangle
the Mother of the Workroom, who sat over us with a rattan, while we
carded wool. Upon which I was bound to a post, and received more
stripes, my lad, in an hour than ever your Schoolmaster gave you in a
week. That same night I tried to burn the prison down; and then they put
me in the dark dungeon called La Grande Force, with six inches of water
in it and any number of rats. I was threatened with prosecution at their
old Bailey, or Chatelet, with the Question (that is, the torture)
ordinary and extraordinary, with the galleys for life as a wind-up, even
if I escaped the gibbet in the place de Greve. Luckily for me, at this
time the Gentleman of the Chamber fell into disgrace with Father la
Chaise for eating a Chicken Sausage in Lent; and to spite him and the
Minister, and the Cardinal and the Opera Dancer, and the Abbe and the
Doctor of the Sorbonne, and the Posture Master all together, His
Reverence, having his Majesty's ear, moves the Most Christian King to
Clemency, and a Royal warrant comes down to the Madelonettes, and I was
sent about my business with strict injunctions not to show myself again
in Paris, under penalty of the Pillory, branding on the cheek with a
red-hot iron, and the galleys in perpetuity.
"I had been nearly ten years abroad, and having, by the charity of some
Ladies of the Irish Convent in Paris, found means to quit France, landed
one morning in the year '90 at Wapping, below London. I had never been
in England before, and mighty little I thought of it when I became
acquainted with that proud, belly-god country. I found that there was
little enough to be done to make a poor Irishwoman able to earn her own
living; and that there was besides a prejudice against natives of
Ireland, both on account of their Extraction and their Religion, which
made the high and mighty English unwilling to employ them, either as
day-labourers or as domestic servants. For awhile, getting into loose
company, I went about the country to wakes and Fairs, picking up a
livelihood by Rope-dancing, back and broadsword fighting, and now and
then sword swallowing and fire eating; but since my misadventure with
the Posture Master I had taken a dislike to the Mountebank life, and
could not settle down to it again. My old love for soldiering revived
again, and being at Plymouth where a Recruiting Party was beating up for
King William's service in his Irish wars, took a convenient opportunity
of quitting my female apparel, resuming that of a man, and listing in
Lord Millwood's Regiment of Foot as a private Fusilier. As I knew my
drill, and made no secret of my having served in the Maison du Roy, I
was looked upon rather as a good prize, for in war time 'tis Soldiers
and Soldiers only that are of real value, and they may have served the
very Devil himself so that they can trail a pike and cast a grenade:
'tis all one to the Recruiting Captain. He wants men--not loblolly
boys--and so long as he gets them he cares not a doit where they come
from.
"I suppose I fought as bravely as my neighbours throughout that last
Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an
effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of
Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had
gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his
days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and
put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half
pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months
they should have sixpence a day, and that after that, unless another war
came, they must shift for themselves. I preferred shifting for myself at
once to having any of their measly doles after valiant and faithful
service; and so, having gathered a very pretty penny out of Plunder
while with King William's army, I became a woman again, and opened a
Coffee House and Spirit Shop at Chelsea. My curious adventures had by
this time come to be pretty well known; and setting up at the sign of
the Amazon's Head, with a picture of myself, in full fighting dress
splitting an Irish Rapparee with my bayonet, I grew into some renown.
The Quality much frequented my house, and some of the book-making
gentlemen about Grub Street were good enough to dish up my exploits in a
shilling pamphlet, called 'The Life of Elizabeth O----, _alias_ James
Moriarty, the new Mary Ambree, or the Grenadier.' At Chelsea I remained
until the year 1704, but lost much by trusting the Quality, and bad
debts among the Gentlemen of the Army. Besides this, I was foolish
enough to get married to a worthless, drunken fellow, my own countryman,
who had been Fence Master in the Life-Guards, and he very speedily ate
me out of House and Home, giving me continual Black Eyes, besides.
"Thus, when the Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English
army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the
Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High
Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish
succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the
army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under
canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again
taking the part of a bold Grenadier. I had become somewhat of a
Character, and (my old proficiency with the Sticks remaining by me) had
earned among the Gentlemen of the Army the cant name of Mother
Drum--that by which, to my sorrow, I am now known. And as Mother Drum,
suttler and baggage-wagon woman in the train of the great John
Churchill, I drank and swore, and sold aquavitae, and plundered when I
could, and was flogged when I was taken in the fact (for the
Provost-Marshal is no respecter of sex), at Blenheim and Ramilies, and
Malplaquet and Oudenarde, and throughout those glorious Campaigns of
which I could talk to you till doomsday. I came back to England at the
Peace of Utrecht, and set up another Tavern, and married another
husband, more worthless and more drunken than the first one, and then
went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a
gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was
sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and
fat and good for nothing, but to throw to the crows as carrion--Mother
Drum, God save us all! as bold as brass, and as tough as leather, and
'the miserablest old 'oman that ever stepped.'"
This last part of her adventures I have not polished up, and they are
Mother Drum's own.
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE BLACKS.