THE GLADSTONE BLACKBIRD.--MANY FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE.
There were three or four hillocks in the field near the schoolhouse,
that grew nothing but bushes and briars, and in these hillocks linnets
and goldfinches would build their nests. I never robbed any of these
nests, and the birds seemed to understand that I would not hurt or harm
them. The mother would sit there hatching, she looking at me and I
looking at her, and would not fly away unless I stretched out my hand
to catch her. I was great at finding birds’ nests, and occasionally
of a Sunday I’d go into the neighboring woods looking for them. One
Sunday I went to Starkey’s wood at Cregane, about a mile outside the
town. I entered it, there near where the Jackey-boys lived. I went
through the line of trees that run into Ownaheencha cross, till I came
to another ditch. Then I leaped into a meadow, and as I leaped, a big
blackbird began to screech and run fluttering, clattering and crying
“chuc-chuc-chuc chuc-chuc.” I must have leaped on the bird’s wing; I
must have wounded her some way, when she could not fly; so I thought,
and so I ran after her to catch her. But the rogue could fly, though
she never went more than a few yards ahead of me. At the end of the
field I thought I had her cornered, but she rose up and flew over the
ditch into the next field. I retraced my steps to the place where I
leaped into the field. I looked to see if I would find any feathers or
any sign of my having leaped upon the bird, and on looking I found in
the side of the ditch a nest with five young ones in it, with their
mouths wide open to receive the food they thought their father or
mother was going to give them. I did a very cruel thing that day: I
robbed that nest; I took it away with me. On my way home Captain Wat.
Starkey met me; Corley Garraviagh was wheeling him in a hand carriage;
I had the nest on my head. “Those are my birds you have,” he said.
“Where did you get them?” I didn’t mind him, but walked on.
I suppose they were his birds, for those English land-robbers of
Ireland claim dominion of “all the birds in the air, and all the fishes
in the sea.”
That bird whose nest I robbed has often reminded me of Gladstone,
the Prime Minister of England, and the prime hypocrite Governor of
Ireland. Or, more correctly speaking, I should say this Gladstone,
Prime Minister of England, in his government of Ireland, has often
reminded me of that blackbird. The ruse she played to get me away from
her nest is the ruse he has played to get Irishmen away from the work
that would rob him of Ireland. Irishmen in the hands of English jailers
are snatched away from them in the heart of England; English castles
are blown down; English governors of Ireland are slain; there is terror
in England--terror in the hearts of Englishmen. Gladstone chuckles
“chuc-chuc-chuc-chuc, I’ll give you Home Rule for Ireland.” Irishmen
listen to him; they follow him; he flies away from them; his eyesight
gets bad, and he is blind to all his promises of Home Rule for Ireland.
Irishmen are divided; the work that struck terror into the heart of the
Englishman is abandoned by them; his eyesight is restored to him, and
he is now writing Bible history. His “chuc chuc-chuc” is so much akin
to my blackbird’s “chuc-chuc-chuc” that I christen her the “Gladstone
blackbird.”
But the resemblance holds good only as regards the use of the cry. The
objects and purposes of its use are different. The poor bird cried
“chuc, chuc,” to save her children from destruction. Gladstone cried
“chuc, chuc,” to keep the children of Ireland in the hands of their
destroyer.
And how many are the storied memories that possess me now in connection
with that road I traveled the day I robbed the blackbird’s nest! It
was on that road I shook hands with Daniel O’Connell; it was on that
road Cliona, the fairy queen, used to enlist lovers; that was the road
I traveled going to the fair of Newmill, and the road I traveled the
day I went to Lord Carberry’s funeral. I have spoken of the Jackey-boys
living on that roadside. Who were they? They were boys of the name of
O’Mahony, “rough and ready roving boys, like Rory of the Hill.” They
had a farm of land; they had a fishing boat, and they had the name of,
one way or another, getting the better of any of the English garrison
party that would do them a wrong. Two of them were out on the seacliffs
one day, robbing an eagle’s nest. A rope was tied to a pannier; one of
them went into the pannier; the other let the pannier slide down till
it was at the nest. The young ones were put into the pannier, and on
the way up the mother eagle attacked the robber. The pannier got some
jostling; the rope got jagged against the crags, and one of its strands
got broken. The brother in the basket below cried out to the brother on
the cliff above, “Dar fia! Shawn, ’ta ceann do na stroundee bristeh”
(By this and by that, Jack, one of the strands is broken). “Coimead thu
fein go socair,” said the other. “Ni’l aon bao’al ort, chun go brisig
an tarna strounda.” (Keep quiet; there is no fear of you till the
second strand breaks.)
That Starkey road is the road on which I met Daniel O’Connell. Yes;
there were crowds of people on it the day he was coming from the
Curragh meeting in Skibbereen, in the year 1843. Through the crowd of
people, between the legs of some of them, I made my way to the carriage
the liberator was in. I was raised up, and had a hearty shake hands
with him.
It was the road Cliona, the fairy queen used to travel. Yes, and her
fairy home of Carrig-Cliona is quite convenient to it. But I don’t
know whether she is living still. When I was in Ireland a year ago, it
looked to me as if the Irish fairies were dead too. In those early days
of mine this Cliona used to “show” herself on moonlight nights, robed
in sunlight splendor. Every young man she’d meet between the cross
of Barnamarrav and the Castle of Rathabharrig would be subjected to
examination by her, and if she found him to her liking, he was taken to
her cave, or put under an obligation to meet her a certain night in
the future. Before that certain night came the young man was dead; and,
of course, the pith of this fairy story is, that the fairy queen took
him away with her. She hugged to death every one she fell in love with.
The Irish poets prayed for deliverance from her fatally bewitching
influence. It was of her the poet, in the poem of “O’Donovan’s
daughter,” hymned the prayer:
“God grant! ’tis no fay from Cnoc Aoibhin that woos me,
God grant! ’tis not Cleena the queen, that pursues me.”
I said that the road of Cliona’s travels was the road I used to travel
going to the fair of Newmill. Is there anything in that recollection
that would make any kind of an interesting story? There is, and it is
this.
At the fair at Newmill there used to be faction fights, and there used
to be companies of policemen under the command of Gore Jones. The
policemen would be encamped in a field near by--in the field next to
the fair. Their arms would be stacked there. In the evening a fight
would commence among the factions. The police would not stir. Gore
Jones would not give them any orders to rush in and make peace while
the fight was going on. But when the fight was over, he’d rush into
the fair field with his men and arrest all who had any signs of blood
on them. They were handcuffed and taken to the jail of Ross, and then
their families and their friends were kept for days and weeks after,
going around to the different landlord magistrates making interest and
influence to get them out of jail. That was all a trick of the English
government in Ireland, a trick to bring the people whom England had
robbed and plundered, more and more under compliment and obligation to
those landlord magistrates who were living in possession of the robbery
and plunder. They gain their point when they can keep the people always
begging and praying to them for some little favor. You now understand
why it is that when I am speaking to the Irish people at home and
abroad about my recollections, I consider it an interesting thing to
them to speak of the fair of Newmill.
What else is that I brought in? Yes, my Blackbird road was the road we
traveled the day I went to Lord Carbery’s funeral. I have a purpose,
too, in speaking of that. It must be some time about the year 1844.
With four or five other boys, I mootched from school that day and went
to Rath-a-Bharrig, or Castlefreke, as it is christened in the language
of the plundering Frekes. Before the Cromwellian time, it, and the land
around it belonged to the Barrys, of the Norman time.
When we got to the wake-house we did not get in; in fact we kept away
from it, because as we ran away from school we did not want to let
our fathers see us, so I went over to the lake to look at the swans.
I found a swan’s nest with three eggs in it--the largest eggs that
ever I saw. I had to put my two hands around one of them, taking it
up, showing it to my companions. When the bells rang for the funeral
service to move, I took my position behind a big tree in view of the
avenue the people would pass through. I watched for my father, and when
I saw him, with a piece of white calico around his hat, I got mad,
for I knew my father was mad at being subjected to such humiliation,
and at being obliged to wear such a menial garb of mourning at such
a funeral. The word had been sent around by the gentry that all the
tenants on the Carbery estate were to attend the lord’s funeral, and
though my father was not paying rent directly to the Carbery lord,
still, as his holding was looked upon as the Carbery property, he
attended. I will give explanation on this subject by and by.
It appears to me in writing these pages that I am very anxious to get
out of my childhood, and out of my boyhood days, and as I cannot get
back to them once I get out, nor see any use in singing:
“Would I were a boy again,”
I will remain a boy as long as I can.
I was naturally very quiet and gentle when a boy--just as I am
to-day--except when I was put to it, and when I was forced to be
otherwise. I had five or six boxing bouts with schoolfellows--with
Mike Crone, Micky Feen, Stephen Lovejoy, Pat Callanan and Paak
Cullinane--but I never struck the first blow. Paak Cullinane and I
were among the boys who went up to the Ardagh road bowling. He and I
were made markers. On one occasion I thought he marked the throw of
one of his friends a foot ahead of where the bowl stopped. I objected,
and without his saying a word, the first thing he did was to give me a
thump in the face.
He had the name of being the best boxer in the school, and could with
impunity strike any one he got vexed with, but when he struck me,
I struck back, and the fight had to be stopped, to stop the blood
that was running from his nose. The fight with Mike Crone ended by my
getting a lump on the forehead that made me give up the contest, and
the other three were drawn battles.
But I never had any fight or falling-out with any of the girls of
my acquaintance. They were all very fond of me, and when my mother
would keep me in, to learn my lessons, I’d hear Mary Hurley and
Ellen Fitzpatrick and Menzie Crone and Ponticilia Barrett come as a
delegation from the girls outside, asking her to let Jer. come out to
play with them.
You never saw any illuminations at the bottom of the sea. I saw them,
and I used to take those girls to see them. Bounding our fields, was
the strand. This strand was about a half a mile wide, every way; it had
a sandy bottom, in which cockles had their home. There was no water in
the strand, when the tide was out. But when the tide was coming in, or
going out, and when the water would be about twelve inches deep, as
pretty a sight as you could see would be to walk through that water,
and see “the cockles lighting.” The sun should be shining, and you
should walk the strand with your face to the sun, so that your shadow
would fall behind you. Then every home of a cockle would be lighted:
you’d see through the cockle’s chamber door,--through a little hole
that a knitting needle would fill--the light down in the sand, like a
little taper burning. ’Twas a pretty picture; I’d go a mile off to-day
to see it again. But those days are passed and gone.
Nor, can I ever again, see the sun dancing on an Easter Sunday morning
as it used to dance when I was a boy, over the general rejoicing on
that day. It was to be seen through burned glass, and on Saturday night
I’d have my glass burned, ready to look at the sun next morning, if the
morning was fine.
Our Pagan sires, our strifes would shun,
They saw their heaven, through the sun,
Their God smiled down on every one
In Ireland over the water.
Those are lines I wrote when in an English prison years ago. I suppose
I was thinking of our Pagan fathers, who, it is said, worshipped the
sun. Irish historians--historians of the Catholic church in Ireland
tell us, that Saint Patrick, and other Apostles of Christianity,
allowed many of the harmless habits and customs of the Irish people
to remain with them; that they did not insist on the abolition of
some practices that tended to the worship of a Supreme Being, and it
is as reasonable as anything else to suppose that our Pagan fathers,
in worshipping the sun, was only worshipping the Supreme Power that
put that sun in the heavens. It was, and is to-day, the most visible
manifestation of the Great God of the Universe.
On the eve of La Sowna, November day--and on the eve of La
Bealtheine--May day, there are practices carried on in Ireland that
must have come down to our people from times anterior to the time of
Saint Patrick. I remember Jemmie Fitzpatrick taking me with him up
to his farm in Ardagh one May evening, to bless the growing crops.
I carried the little sheaves of straw that he had prepared for the
occasion. When he came to the grounds, he took one of the sheaves and
lit it. Then, we walked around every field, he, as one sheaf would burn
out, taking another from me, and lighting it. This, no doubt, is some
relic that comes down to us from those times that poets and historians
tell us the Baal-fires were lighted throughout the land.
Speaking of Patrick’s day celebrations, I don’t know that I have the
enthusiasm regarding them to-day that I had in my schooldays.
Many and many a time I drew the blood from my fingers to paint
the section red part of the crosses that I used to be making for
the celebration of the day. The green color I’d get, by gathering
pennyleaves in the garden, and bruising out the juice of them, and the
yellow color would come to me from the yolk of an egg. If I hadn’t a
compass to make my seven circle cross, I’d make a compass out of a
little goulogue sprig of a whitethorn tree--fastening a writing pen to
one leg of it. John Cushan, the master, would not let the boys make the
crosses at school.
And often that school time of mine comes up to me, when I hear friends
in New York talking of their schooldays in Ireland--when I hear, as
I heard the other night, Pat Egan asking Pat Cody and John O’Connor,
if they remembered the time when they were carrying the sods of turf
under their arms to school. That was jokingly cast at them, as kind of
aspachaun; but I remember that I, myself, often carried the sods of
turf under my arm to school; and if there is any fire in anything I
write in this book, I suppose that is how it comes.