William Carleton, the Irish novelist, was born in Co. Tyrone
on February 20, 1794. His father was a small farmer, the
father of fourteen children, of whom William was the youngest.
After getting some education, first from a hedge schoolmaster,
and then from Dr. Keenan of Glasslough, Carleton set out for
Dublin and obtained a tutorship. In 1830 he collected a number
of sketches, and these were published under the title of
"Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry," and at once
enjoyed considerable popularity. In 1834 came "Tales of
Ireland," and from that time forward till his death Carleton
produced with great industry numerous short stories and
novels, though none of his work after 1848 is worthy of his
reputation. "The Black Prophet" was published in 1847, and
Carleton believed rightly that it was his best work. It was
written in a season of unparalleled scarcity and destitution,
and the pictures and scenes represented were those which he
himself witnessed in 1817 and 1822. Many of Carleton's novels
have been translated into French, German, and Italian, and
they will always stand for faithful and powerful pictures of
Irish life and character. Carleton died in Dublin on January
30, 1869.
_I.--The Murders in the Glen_
The cabin of Donnel M'Gowan, the Black Prophet, stood at the foot of a
hill, near the mouth of a gloomy and desolate glen.
In this glen, not far from the cabin, two murders had been committed
twenty years before. The one was that of a carman, and the other a man
named Sullivan; and it was supposed they had been robbed. Neither of the
bodies had ever been found. Sullivan's hat and part of his coat had been
found on the following day in a field near the cabin, and there was a
pool of blood where his foot-marks were deeply imprinted. A man named
Dalton had been taken up under circumstances of great suspicion for this
latter murder, for Dalton was the last person seen in Sullivan's
company, and both men had been drinking together in the market. A
quarrel had ensued, blows had been exchanged, and Dalton had threatened
him in very strong language.
No conviction was possible because of the disappearance of the body, but
Dalton had remained under suspicion, and the glen, with its dark and
gloomy aspect, was said to be haunted by Sullivan's spirit, and to be
accursed as the scene of crime and supernatural appearances.
Within M'Gowan's cabin, which bore every mark of poverty and
destitution, a young girl about twenty-one, of tall and slender figure,
with hair black as the raven's wing, and eyes dark and brilliant,
wrangled fiercely with an older woman, her stepmother. From words they
passed to a fearful struggle of murderous passion.
Presently, Sarah, the younger of the two, started to her feet, and fled
out of the house to wash her hands and face at the river that flowed
past. Then she returned, and spoke with frankness and good nature.
"I'm sorry for what I did. Forgive me, mother! You know I'm a hasty
divil--for a divil's limb I am, no doubt of it. Forgive me, I say! Do
now; here, I'll get something to stop the blood!"
She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat upon an old
chest that stood in the corner of the hut. By stretching herself up to
her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that
had been undisturbed for years, and while doing so, knocked down some
metallic substance which fell on the floor.
"Murdher alive, mother!" she exclaimed. "What is this? Hallo, a
tobaccy-box! An' what's this on it? Let me see. Two letters--a 'P' and
an 'M.' 'P.M.'--arrah, what can that be for? Well, divil may care. Let
it lie on the shelf there. Here now, none of your cross looks. I say,
put these cobwebs to your face, and they'll stop the bleedin'. And now
good-night to you, an' let that be a warnin' to you not to raise your
hand to me again."
The girl went off to spend the night at a dance and a wake, and the
stepmother having dressed her wound as well as she could, sat down by
the fire and began to ruminate.
Presently she took up the tobacco-box, and looking at it carefully,
clasped her hands.
"It's the same!" she exclaimed. "Oh, merciful God, it's thrue--it's
thrue! I know it by the broken hinge an' the two letters! Saviour of
life, how will this end, and what will I do? But, anyway, I must hide
this, and put it out of his reach."
She accordingly went out and thrust the box up under the thatch of the
roof so that it was impossible to suspect that the roof had been
disturbed.
_II.--The Prophet Schemes_
That same evening Donnel was overtaken on the road from Ballynafail, the
market-town, by Jerry Sullivan, a struggling farmer, and they proceeded
together to the latter's house.
"This woful saison, along wid the low prices and the high rents, houlds
out a black and terrible look for the counthry, God help us!" said
Sullivan.
"Ay," returned the Black Prophet, "if you only knew it. Isn't the
Almighty, in His wrath, this moment proclaimin' it through the heavens
and the airth? Look about you, and say what is it you see that doesn't
foretell famine. Doesn't the dark, wet day, an' the rain, rain, rain
foretell it? Doesn't the rottin' crops, the unhealthy air, an' the green
damp foretell it? Doesn't the sky without a sun, the heavy clouds, an'
the angry fire of the west foretell it? Isn't the airth a page of
prophecy, an' the sky a page of prophecy, where every man may read of
famine, pestilence, an' death?"
"The time was," said Sullivan, "an' it's not long since, when I could
give you a comfortable welcome as well as a willin' one; but now 'tis
but poor and humble tratement I can give you. But if it was betther, you
should just be as welcome to it, an' what more can you say?"
"Well," replied the other, "what more can you say, indeed? I'm thankful
to you, Jerry, an' I'll accept your kind offer."
The night had set in when they reached the house, where the traces of
poverty were as visible upon the inmates as upon the furniture.
Sullivan was strangely excited--he had discovered a stolen interview
outside between his eldest daughter and young Condy Dalton.
Mave Sullivan--a young creature of nineteen, of rare natural beauty and
angelic purity--turned deadly pale when her father spoke.
"Bridget," Sullivan said, turning to his wife, "I tell you that I came
upon that undutiful daughter of ours coortin' wid the son of the man
that murdhered her uncle, my only brother--coortin' wid a fellow that
Dan M'Gowan here knows will be hanged yet, for he's jist afther tellin'
him so."
"You're ravin', Jerry," exclaimed his wife. "You don't mean to tell me
that she'd spake to, or make any freedoms whatsomever wid young Condy
Dalton? Hut, no, Jerry; don't say that, at all events!"
But Sullivan's indignation passed quickly to alarm and distress, for his
daughter tottered, and would have fallen to the ground if Donnel had not
caught her.
"Save me from that man!" she shrieked at Donnel, clinging to her mother.
"Don't let him near me! I can't tell why, but I am deadly afraid of
him!"
Her parents, already sorry for their harsh words, tried their utmost to
console her.
"Don't be alarmed, my purty creature," said the Black Prophet softly. "I
see a great good fortune before you. I see a grand and handsome husband,
and a fine house to live in. Grandeur and wealth is before her, for her
beauty an' her goodness will bring it all about."
When the family, after the father had offered up a few simple prayers,
retired to rest, Sullivan took down his brother's old great coat, and
placed it over M'Gowan, who was already in bed. But the latter
immediately sat up and implored him to take it away.
Next morning before departing, Donnel repeated to Mave Sullivan his
prophecy of the happy and prosperous marriage.
But Mave, who knew where her affection rested, found no comfort in these
predictions, for the Daltons were pressed as hard by poverty as their
neighbours.
As for Donnel M'Gowan, cunning and unscrupulous, his plan was to secure
Mave for young Dick o' the Grange, a small landowner, and a profligate.
To do this he relied on the help of his daughter Sarah and was
disappointed. For Sarah was to find Mave Sullivan her friend, and she
renounced her father's scheme, so that no harm happened to the girl.
_III.--The Shadow of Crime_
With famine came typhus fever, and the state of the country was
frightful beyond belief. Thousands were reduced to mendicancy, numbers
perished on the very highways, and the road was literally black with
funerals. Temporary sheds were erected near the roadsides, containing
fever-stricken patients who had no other home.
Under the ravening madness of famine, legal restraints and moral
principles were forgotten, and famine riots broke out. For, studded over
the country were a number of farmers with bursting granaries, who could
afford to keep their provisions in large quantities until a year of
scarcity and high prices arrived; and the people, exasperated beyond
endurance, saw long lines of provision carts on their way to the
neighbouring harbours for exportation.
Such was the extraordinary fact!
Day after day, vessels laden with Irish provisions, drawn from a
population perishing with actual hunger, and with pestilence which it
occasioned, were passing out of our ports, whilst other vessels came in
freighted with our provisions sent back, through the charity of England,
to our relief.
Goaded by suffering, hordes of people turned out to intercept meal-carts
and provision vehicles, and carts and cars were stopped on the highways,
and the food which they carried openly taken away.
Sarah M'Gowan herself went to the Daltons, where typhus and starvation
were doing their worst, to render what service she could, and Mave
Sullivan would have done the same but for the entreaties of her parents,
who feared the terrible fever.
The Black Prophet alone went on his way unmoved, scheming to accomplish
his vile ends. It was not enough for him that Mave was to be abducted;
he had also planned a robbery for the same night, and was further
resolved to procure the conviction of old Condy Dalton for the almost
forgotten murder of Sullivan in the glen.
M'Gowan was driven to this last step by his own disturbed mind. The
disappearance of the tobacco-box troubled him, for on seeking it under
the thatch it was no longer there, and the discovery by his wife of a
skeleton buried near their cabin caused him still greater uneasiness.
Then Sarah had followed him one night, when he was walking in his sleep,
to the secret grave of the murdered man, and though the Prophet did not
say anything on that occasion to incriminate himself, he was vexed by
the occurrence.
So, on the information of Donnel M'Gowan, and a man called Roddy Duncan,
who was deep in the Prophet's subtle villainies, the skeleton was dug
up, and old Condy Dalton arrested.
"It's the will of God!" replied the old man, when the police-officers
entered his unhappy dwelling, and charged him with the murder of
Bartholomew Sullivan. "It's God's will, an' I won't consale it any
longer. Take me away. I'm guilty--I'm guilty!"
Sarah was ministering to the Daltons at the very time when her father
was informing against old Condy, and was present when the police took
him away in custody. Shortly afterwards, when she had left the house,
she was struck down by typhus.
In a shed that simply consisted of a few sticks laid up against the side
of a ditch, with the remnant of some loose straw for bedding, Mave
Sullivan found the suffering girl, with no other pillow than a sod of
earth.
"Father of mercy!" thought Mave, "how will she live--how can she live
here? An' is she to die in this miserable way in a Christian land?"
Sarah lay groaning with pain, and then raving in delirium.
"I won't break my promise, father, but I'll break my heart; an' I can't
even give her warning. Ah, but it's treachery, an' I hate that. No, no;
I'll have no hand in it--manage it your own way!"
"Dear Sarah, don't you know me?" said Mave tenderly. "Look at me--I am
Mave Sullivan, your friend that loves you."
"Who is that?" Sarah asked, starting a little. "I never had anyone to
take care o' me--nor a mother; many a time--often--often--the whole
world--some one to love me. Oh, a dhrink! Is there no one to give me a
dhrink? I'm burning, I'm burning! Mave Sullivan, have pity on me--I
heard some one name her--I'll die without you give me a dhrink!"
Mave hastily fetched some water, and in the course of two or three days
Sarah's situation, thanks to the attention of Mave and her neighbours,
was changed for the better, and she was conveyed home to the Prophet's
cabin on a litter--only to die in a few days.
It was the knowledge of what she owed Mave that forced Sarah to
frustrate her father's plot for Mave's ruin.
The robbery was no more successful than the abduction, for Roddy Duncan
withdrew from it, and Donnel M'Gowan learnt that the house to be
plundered was well guarded.
_IV.--An Amazing Witness_
The court was crowded when Cornelius Dalton was put to the bar charged
with the wilful murder of Bartholomew Sullivan, by striking him on the
head with a walking stick, and when the old man stood up all eyes were
turned on him. It was clear that there was an admission of guilt in his
face, for instead of appearing erect and independent, he looked around
with an expression of remorse and sorrow, and it was with difficulty
that he was prevailed upon to plead "not guilty."
The first witness called was Jeremiah Sullivan, who deposed that at one
of the Christmas markets in 1798 he was present when an altercation took
place between his late brother Bartle and the prisoner. They were both
drinking, and their friends separated them. He never saw his brother
alive afterwards. He then deposed to the finding of his brother's coat
and hat, crushed and torn.
The next witness was Roddy Duncan, who deposed that on the night in
question he was passing on a car and saw a man drag something heavy,
like a sack. He then called out was that Condy Dalton? And the reply
was, "It is, unfortunately!" upon which he wished him good-night.
Next came the Prophet. He said he was on his way through Glendhu, when
he came to a lonely spot where he found the body of Bartholomew
Sullivan, and beside it a grave dug two feet deep. He then caught a
glimpse of the prisoner, Condy Dalton, among the bushes, with a spade in
his hand. He shouted out and, getting no answer, was glad to get off
safe.
On the cross-examination, he said "the reason why he let the matter rest
until now was that he did not wish to be the means of bringin' a
fellow-creature to an untimely death. His conscience, however, always
kept him uneasy, and many a time of late the murdhered man appeared to
him, and threatened him for not disclosing what he knew."
"You say the murdered man appeared to you. Which of them?"
"Peter Magennis--what am I sayin'? I mean Bartle Sullivan."
The counsel for the defence requested the judge and jury to make a note
of Peter Magennis, and then asked the Prophet what kind of a man Bartle
Sullivan was.
"He was a very remarkable man in appearance; stout, with a long face,
and a scar on his chin."
"And you saw that man murdered?"
"I seen him dead after havin' been murdhered."
"Do you think, now, if he were to rise again from the grave that you
would know him?"
Then the counsel turned round, spoke to some person behind, and a
stranger advanced and mounted a table confronting the Black Prophet.
"Whether you seen me dead or buried is best known to yourself," said the
stranger. "All I can say is that here I am, Bartle Sullivan, alive an'
well."
Hearing the name, crowds pressed forward, recognising Bartle Sullivan,
and testifying their recognition by a general cheer.
There were two persons present, however, Condy Dalton and the Prophet,
on whom Sullivan's appearance produced very opposite effects.
Old Dalton at first imagined himself in a dream, and it was only when
Sullivan, promising to explain all, came over and shook hands with him,
and asked his pardon, that the old man understood he was innocent.
The Prophet looked with mortification rather than wonder at Sullivan;
then a shadow settled on his countenance, and he muttered to himself, "I
am doomed! Something drove me to this."
The trial was quickly ended. Sullivan's brother and several jurors
established his identity, and Condy Dalton was discharged.
The judge then ordered the Prophet and Roddy Duncan to be taken into
custody, and an indictment of perjury to be prepared at once. The graver
charge of murder was, however, brought against M'Gowan, the murder of a
carman named Peter Magennis, and the following day he found himself in
the very dock where Dalton had stood.
_V.--Fate: the Discoverer_
The trial of Donnel M'Gowan brought several strange things to light. It
was proved that the Prophet's real name was McIvor, that he had a wife
living, and that this wife was a sister to the murdered carman, Peter
Magennis. After the murder, McIvor fled to America with his daughter,
and his wife lost sight of him. She had only returned to these parts
recently, and she identified the skeleton of her brother because of a
certain malformation of the foot.
Then a pedlar, known in the neighbourhood as Toddy Mack, deposed that he
had given Magennis a steel tobacco-box with the letters "P. M." punched
on it.
It was Roddy Duncan who had seen this tobacco-box put under the thatch,
and he, knowing nothing of its history, had given it to Sarah M'Gowan,
who equally ignorant, had given it to a young man who called himself
Hanlon, but was in fact the son of Magennis.
On the night of the murder the unhappy woman, whom Sarah called
stepmother, and who lived with the Black Prophet, saw the tobacco-box in
M'Gowan's hands, and it contained a roll of bank-notes. When she asked
how he came by it, he gave her a note, and said, "There's all the
explanation you can want."
The chain of circumstantial evidence was sufficient to establish the
Prophet's guilt, and the judge passed the capital sentence.
The Prophet heard his doom without flinching, and only turned to the
gaoler to say, "Now that everything is over, the sooner I get to my cell
the betther. I have despised the world too long to care a single curse
what it says or thinks about me."
Sarah, who heard of her father's fate while she lay dying, tended by
Mave Sullivan and her newly-discovered mother, sent the condemned man a
last message. "Say that his daughter, if she was able, would be with him
through shame, an' disgrace, an' death; that she'd scorn the world for
him; an' that because he said once in his life that he loved her, she'd
forgive him all a thousand times, an' would lay down her life for him."
The acquittal of old Condy Dalton, who for years had tortured himself
with remorse, believing he had killed Sullivan, and never understanding
the disappearance of the body, and the resurrection of honest Bartle
Sullivan, filled all the countryside with delight.
Thanks to the money of his friend, Toddy Mack, Dalton was once more
re-established in a farm that he had been compelled to relinquish, and
when sickness and the severity of winter passed away Mave and young
Condy Dalton were happily married.
Roddy Duncan was transported for perjury. Bartle Sullivan, on the first
social evening that the two families, the Sullivans and the Daltons,
spent together after the trial, cleared up the mystery of his
disappearance.
"I remimber fightin'," he said, "wid Condy on that night, and the
devil's own battle it was. We went into a corner of the field near the
Grey Stone to decide it. All at wanst I forgot what happened, till I
found myself lyin' upon a car wid the McMahons that lived ten or twelve
miles beyond the mountains. Well, I felt disgraced at bein' beaten by
Con Dalton, and as I was fond of McMahon's sister, what 'ud you have us
but off we went together to America, for, you see, she promised to marry
me if I'd go. Well, she an' I married when we got to Boston, and Toddy
here, who took to the life of a pedlar, came back with a good purse and
lived wid us. At last I began to long for home, and so we all came
together. An', thank God, we were all in time to clear the innocent, and
punish the guilty; ay, an' reward the good, too, eh, Toddy?"
* * * * *