“And now, Mickey Brennan, it’s not but I have a grate regard for you,
for troth you’re a dacint boy, and a dacint father and mother’s child;
but you see, avick, the short and the long of it is, that you needn’t be
looking after my little girl any more.”
Such was the conclusion of a long and interesting harangue pronounced
by old Brian Moran of Lagh-buoy, for the purpose of persuading his
daughter’s sweetheart to waive his pretensions--a piece of diplomacy
never very easy to effect, but doubly difficult when the couple so
unceremoniously separated have laboured under the delusion that they were
born for each other, as was the ease in the affair of which our story
tells; and certainly, whatever Mr Michael Brennan’s other merits may have
been, he was very far from exhibiting himself as a pattern of patience on
the occasion.
“Why, thin, Brian Moran!” he outrageously exclaimed, “in the name of
all that’s out of the way, will you give me one reason, good, bad, or
indifferent, and I’ll be satisfied?”
“Och, you unfortunate gossoon, don’t be afther axing me,” responded Brian
dolefully.
“Ah, thin, why wouldn’t I?” replied the rejected lover. “Aren’t we
playing together since she could walk--wasn’t she the light of my eyes
and the pulse of my heart these six long years--and when did one of
ye ever either say or sign that I was to give over until this blessed
minute?--tell me that.”
“Widdy Eelish!” groaned the closely interrogated parent; “’tis true
enough for you. Botheration to Peggy, I wish she tould you herself. I
knew how it ’ud be; an’ sure small blame to you; an’ it’ll kill Meny out
an’ out.”
“Is it that I amn’t rich enough?” he asked impetuously.
“No, avich machree, it isn’t; but, sure, can’t you wait an’ ax Peggy.”
“Is it because there’s any thing against me?” continued he, without
heeding this reference to the mother of his fair one--“Is it because
there’s any thing against me, I say, now or evermore, in the shape of
warrant, or summons, or bad word, or any thing of the kind?”
“Och, _forrear, forrear_!” answered poor Brian, “but can’t you ax Peggy!”
and he clasped his hands again and again with bitterness, for the young
man’s interest had been, from long and constant habit, so interwoven
in his mind with those of his darling Meny, that he was utterly unable
to check the burst of agony which the question had excited. The old
man’s evident grief and evasion of the question were not lost upon his
companion.
“I’m belied--I know I am--I have it all now,” shouted he, utterly losing
all command of himself. “Come, Brian Moran, this is no child’s play--tell
me at once who dared to spake one word against me, an’ if I don’t drive
the lie down his throat, be it man, woman, or child, I’m willing to lose
her and every thing else I care for!”
“No, then,” answered Brian, “the never a one said a word against you--you
never left it in their power, avich; an’ that’s what’s breaking my heart.
Millia murther, it’s all Peggy’s own doings.”
“What!” he replied--“I’ll be bound Peggy had a bad dhrame about the
match. Arrah, out with it, an’ let us hear what Peggy the Pishogue has to
say for herself--out with it, man; I’m asthray for something to laugh at.”
“Oh, whisht, whisht--don’t talk that way of Peggy any how,” exclaimed
Brian, offended by this imputation on the unerring wisdom of his
helpmate. “Whatever she says, doesn’t it come to pass? Didn’t it rain
on Saturday last, fine as the day looked? Didn’t Tim Higgins’s cow die?
Wasn’t Judy Carney married to Tom Knox afther all? Ay, an’ as sure as
your name is Mickey Brennan, what she says will come true of yourself
too. _Forrear, forrear!_ that the like should befall one of your dacint
kin!”
“Why, what’s going to happen me?” inquired he, his voice trembling a
little in spite of all his assumed carelessness: for contemptuously as he
had alluded to the wisdom of his intended mother-in-law, it stood in too
high repute not to create in him some dismay at the probability of his
figuring unfavourably in any of her prognostications.
“Don’t ax me, don’t ax me,” was the sorrowing answer; “but take your
haste out of the stable at once, and go straight to Father Coffey; and
who knows but he might put you on some way to escape the bad luck that’s
afore you.”
“Psha! fudge! ’pon my sowl it’s a shame for you, Brian Moran.”
“Divil a word of lie in it,” insisted Brian; “Peggy found it all out last
night; an’ troth it’s troubling her as much as if you were her own flesh
and blood. More betoken, haven’t you a mole there under your ear?”
“Well, and what if I have?” rejoined he peevishly, but alarmed all the
while by the undisguised pity which his future lot seemed to call forth.
“What if I have?--hadn’t many a man the same afore me?”
“No doubt, Mickey, agra, and the same bad luck came to them too,” replied
Brian. “Och, you unfortunate ignorant crathur, sure you wouldn’t have me
marry my poor little girl to a man that’s sooner or later to end his days
on the gallows!”
“The gallows!” he slowly exclaimed. “Holy Virgin! is that what’s to
become of me after all?” He tried to utter a laugh of derision and
defiance, but it would not do; such a vaticination from such a quarter
was no laughing matter. So yielding at last to the terror which he had
so vainly affected to combat, he buried his face in his hands, and threw
himself violently on the ground; while Brian, scarcely less moved by the
revelation he had made on the faith of his wife’s far-famed sagacity,
seated himself compassionately beside him to administer what consolation
he could.
Mickey Brennan, in the parlance of our country, was a snug gossoon,
well to do in the world, had a nice bit of land, a comfortable house,
good crops, a pig or two, a cow or two, a sheep or two, a handsome
good-humoured face, a good character; and, what made him more
marriageable than all the rest, he had the aforementioned goods all to
himself, for his father and mother were dead, and his last sister had
got married at Shrove-tide. With all these combined advantages he might
have selected any girl in the parish; but his choice was made long years
before: it was Meny Moran or nobody--a choice in which Meny Moran herself
perfectly concurred, and which her father, good, easy, soft-hearted
Brian, never thought of disputing, although he was able to give her a
fortune probably amounting to double what her suitor was worth. But was
the fair one’s mother ever satisfied when such a disparity existed?
Careful creatures! pound for pound is the maternal maxim in all ages and
countries, and to give Peggy Moran her due, she was as much influenced by
it as her betters, and murmured loud and long at the acquiescence of her
husband in such a sacrifice. She murmured in vain, however: much as Brian
deferred to her judgment and advice in all other matters, his love for
his fond and pretty Meny armed him with resolution in this. When she wept
at her mother’s insinuations, he always found a word of comfort for her;
and if words wouldn’t do, he managed to bring Mickey and her together,
and left them to settle the matter after their own way--a method which
seldom failed of success. But Peggy was not to be baulked of her will.
What! she whose mere word could make or break any match for five miles
round, to be forbidden all interference in her own daughter’s: it was not
to be borne. So at last she applied herself in downright earnest to the
task. She dreamed at the match, tossed cups at it, saw signs at it: in
fine, called her whole armoury of necromancy into requisition, and was
rewarded at last by the discovery that the too highly-favoured swain was
inevitably destined to end his days on the gallows--a discovery which, as
has been already seen, fulfilled her most sanguine wishes.
Whatever may be the opinion of other and wiser people on the subject, in
the parish of Ballycoursey or its vicinity it was rather an ugly joke to
be thus devoted to the infernal gods by a prophetess of such unerring
sagacity as Peggy Moran, or, as she was sometimes styled with reference
to her skill in all supernatural matters, Peggy the Pishogue--that
cognomen implying an acquaintance with more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in philosophy; and most unquestionably it was no
misnomer: the priest himself was not more deeply read in his breviary
than was she in all the signs and omens whereby the affairs of this
moving world are shadowed and foretokened--nothing was too great or
too small for her all-piercing ken--in every form of augury she was
omniscient, from cup-tossing up to necromancy--in vain the mystic
dregs of the tea-cup assumed shapes that would have puzzled Doctor
Wall himself: with her first glance she detected at once the true
meaning of the hieroglyphic symbol, and therefrom dealt out deaths,
births, and marriages, with the infallibility of a newspaper--in vain
Destiny, unwilling to be unrolled, shrouded itself in some dream that
would have bothered King Solomon. Peggy no sooner heard it than it was
unravelled--there was not a ghost in the country with whose haunts
and habits she was not as well acquainted as if she was one of the
fraternity--not a fairy could put his nose out without being detected by
her--the value of property was increased tenfold all round the country by
the skill with which she wielded her charms and spells for the discovery
of all manner of theft. But I must stop; for were I to recount but half
her powers, the eulogium would require a _Penny Journal_ for itself, and
still leave matter for a supplement. It would be a melancholy instance
indeed of Irish ingratitude if for all these superhuman exertions she
was not rewarded by universal confidence. To the credit of the parish
be it said that no such stigma was attached to it: nothing could equal
the estimation in which all her words and actions were held by her
neighbours--nothing but the estimation in which they were held in her own
household by her husband and daughter.
Such being the gifted personage who had foretold the coming disasters of
Mickey Brennan, it is not to be wondered at that the matter created a
sensation, particularly as sundry old hags to whom she had imparted her
discovery were requested to hush it up for the poor gossoon’s sake. His
friends sorrowed over him as a gone man, for not the most sceptical among
them ventured to hazard even a doubt of Peggy’s veracity--in fact, they
viewed the whole as a matter requiring consolation and sympathy rather
than as a scrutiny into the sources of her information, which by common
consent were viewed as indubitable, while some, more compassionate than
the rest, went so far as to declare “that since the thing could not be
avoided, and Mickey, poor fellow, must be hanged, they hoped it might be
for something dacint, not robbing, or coining, or the like.”
The hardest task of all is to describe the feelings of poor Brennan
himself on the occasion; for much as he had affected to disparage the
sybilline revelations of the wierd woman of Ballycoursey, there was not
one in the neighbourhood who was more disposed to yield them unlimited
credence in any case but his own; and even in his own case he was not
long enabled to struggle against conviction. Let people prate as they
may about education and its effects, it will require a period of more
generations than one to root the love of the marvellous out of the hearts
of our countrymen; and until that be effected, every village in the
land will have its wise woman, and with nine-tenths of her neighbours
what she says will be regarded as gospel. Some people of course will
laugh to scorn such an assertion, and more will very respectfully beg
leave to doubt it, but still it is true; and in the more retired inland
villages circumstances are every day occurring far more extravagant than
anything detailed in this story, as is very well known to all who are
much conversant with such places. But to return to the doomed man:--How
could he be expected to bear up against this terrible denunciation, when
all the consolation he could receive from his nearest and dearest was
that “it was a good man’s death?” Death! poor fellow, he had suffered
the pains of a thousand deaths already, in living without the hope of
ever being the husband of his Meny. Death, instant and immediate, would
have been a relief to him; and it was not long until, by his anxiety to
obtain that relief, he afforded an opportunity to Peggy of displaying
her own reliance on the correctness of her prognostications. Goaded into
madness by his present sufferings and his fears for the future, he made
an attempt upon his life by plunging into an adjacent lake when no one,
as he thought, was near to interrupt his intentions. It was not so,
however--a shepherd had observed him, but at such a distance that before
help could be obtained to rescue him he was to all appearance lifeless.
The news flew like wildfire: he was dead, stone dead, they said--had lain
in the water ten minutes, half an hour, half the day, since last night;
but in one point they all concurred--dead he was; dead as St Dominick.
“Troth he’s not,” was Peggy’s cool rejoinder. “Be quiet, and I’ll engage
he’ll come to. _Nabocklish_, he that’s born to be hanged will never be
drowned. Wait a while an’ hould your tongues. _Nabocklish_, I tell you
he’ll live to spoil a market yet, an’ more’s the pity.”
People shook their heads, and almost began to think their wise woman had
made a mistake, and read hemp instead of water. It was no such thing,
however: slowly and beyond all hopes, Brennan recovered the effects of
his rash attempt, thereby fulfilling so much of his declared destiny,
and raising the reputation of Mrs Moran to a point that she never had
attained before. That very week she discovered no less than six cases
of stolen goods, twice detected the good people taking unauthorised
liberties with their neighbours’ churns, and spaed a score of fortunes,
at the very least; and he, poor fellow, satisfied at last that Fortune
was not to be bilked so easily, resigned himself to his fate like a man,
and began to look about him in earnest for some opportunity of gracing
the gallows without disgracing his people.
And Meny--poor heart-stricken Meny--loving as none but the true and
simple-minded can love, the extent of her grief was such as the true and
simple-minded only can know; and yet there was worse in store for her.
Shortly after this consummation of her mother’s fame, a whisper began to
creep through the village--a whisper of dire import, portending death
and disaster on some luckless wight unknown--“Peggy Moran has something
on her mind.” What could it be? Silent and mysterious she shook her head
when any one ventured to question her--the pipe was never out of her
jaw unless when she slept or sat down to her meals--she became as cross
as a cat, which to do her justice was not her wont, and eschewed all
sorts of conversation, which most assuredly was not her wont either. The
interest and curiosity of her neighbours was raised to a most agonising
pitch--every one trembled lest the result should be some terrible
revelation affecting himself or herself, as the case might be: it was the
burden of the first question asked in the morning, the last at night.
Every word she uttered during the day was matter of speculation to an
hundred anxious inquirers; and there was every danger of the good people
of Ballycoursey going absolutely mad with fright if they were kept any
longer in the dark on the subject.
At length there was a discovery; but, as is usually the case in all
scrutinies into forbidden matters, it was at the cost of the too-daring
investigator. Peggy and Brian were sitting one night before the fire,
preparing for their retirement, when a notion seized the latter to probe
the sorrows of his helpmate.
“’Deed it well becomes you to ax,” quoth the wierd woman in answer to his
many and urgent inquiries; “for Brian, achorra machree, my poor ould man,
there’s no use in hiding it--it’s all about yourself.”
“No, then!” exclaimed the surprised interrogator; “the Lord betune us an’
harm, is it?”
“’Deed yes, Brian,” responded the sybil with a melancholy tone, out of
the cloud of smoke in which she had sought to hide her troubles. “I’m
thinking these last few days you’re not yourself at all at all.”
“Tare an ounties! maybe I’m not,” responded he of the doubtful identity.
“Do you feel nothing on your heart, Brian achree?”
“I do; sure enough I do,” gasped poor Brian, ready to believe anything of
himself.
“Something like a _plurrisy_, isn’t it?” inquired the mourner.
“Ay, sure enough, like a plurrisy for all the world, Lord betune us an’
harm!”
“An’ you do be very cold, I’ll engage, these nights, Brian?” continued
she.
“Widdy Eelish! I’m as could as ice this minute,” answered Brian, and his
teeth began to chatter as if he was up to his neck in a mill-pond.
“An’ your appetite is gone entirely, achra?” continued his tormentor.
“Sorra a word o’ lie in it,” answered the newly discovered invalid,
forgetful however that he had just finished discussing a skib of potatoes
and a mug of milk for his supper.
“And the cat, the crathur, looked at you this very night after licking
her paw.”
“I’ll engage she did. Bad luck to her,” responded Brian, “I wouldn’t put
it beyant her.”
“Let me feel your pulse, asthore,” said Peggy in conclusion; and Brian
submitted his trembling wrist to her inspection, anxiously peering into
her face all the while to read his doom therein. A long and deep sigh
broke from her lips, along with a most voluminous puff of smoke, as she
let the limb drop from her hold, and commenced rocking herself to and
fro, uttering a low and peculiar species of moan, which to her terrified
patient sounded as a death summons.
“Murther-an’-ages, Peggy, sure it’s not going to die I am!” exclaimed
Brian.
“Och, widdy! widdy!” roared the afflicted spouse, now giving full vent
to her anguish, “it’s little I thought, Brian asthore machree, when I
married you in your beauty and your prime, that I’d ever live to cry
the keen over you--ochone, ochone! ’tis you was the good ould man in
airnest--och! och!”
“Arrah, Peggy!” interposed the object of her rather premature
lamentations.
“Oh, don’t talk to me--don’t talk to me. I’ll never hould up my head
again, so I won’t!” continued the widow that was to be, in a tone that
quickly brought all the house about her, and finally all the neighbours.
Great was the uproar that ensued, and noisy the explanations, which,
however, afforded no small relief to the minds of all persons not
immediately concerned in the welfare of the doomed Brian. Peggy was
inconsolable at the prospect of such a bereavement. Meny clung in despair
to the poor tottering old man, her grief too deep for lamentation,
while he hobbled over his prayers as fast and as correctly as his utter
dismay would permit him. Next morning he was unable to rise, refused
all nourishment, and called vehemently for the priest. Every hour he
became worse; he was out of one faint into another; announced symptoms of
every complaint that ever vexed mankind, and declared himself affected
by a pain in every member, from his toe to his cranium. No wonder it
was a case to puzzle the doctor. The man of science could make nothing
of it--swore it was the oddest complication of diseases that ever he
had heard of--and strongly recommended that the patient be tossed in a
blanket, and his wife treated to a taste of the horse-pond. Father Coffey
was equally nonplussed.
“What ails you, Brian?”
“An all-overness of some kind or other, your reverence,” groaned the
sufferer in reply, and the priest had to own himself a bothered man.
Nothing would induce him to rise--“where’s the use in a man’s gettin’ up,
an’ he goin’ to die?” was his answer to those who endeavoured to rouse
him--“isn’t it a dale dacinter to die in bed like a Christian?”
“God’s good!--maybe you won’t die this time, Brian.”
“Arrah, don’t be talking--doesn’t Peggy know best?” And with this
undeniable assertion he closed all his arguments, receiving consolation
from none, not even his heart-broken Meny. Despite of all his entreaties
to be let die in peace, the doctor, who guessed how matters stood, was
determined to try the effects of a blister, and accordingly applied one
of more than ordinary strength, stoutly affirming that it would have the
effect of the patient being up and walking on the morrow. A good many
people had gathered into his cabin to witness the cure, as they always
do when their presence could be best dispensed with; and to these Peggy,
with tears and moans, was declaring her despair in all remedies whatever,
and her firm conviction that a widow she’d be before Sunday, when Brian,
roused a little by the uneasy stimulant from the lethargy into which they
all believed him to be sunk, faintly expressed his wish to be heard.
“Peggy, agra,” said he, “there’s no denyin’ but you’re a wonderful woman
entirely; an’ since I’m goin’, it would be a grate consolation to me if
you’d tell us all now you found out the sickness was on me afore I knew
it myself. It’s just curiosity, agra--I wouldn’t like to die, you see,
without knowin’ for why an’ for what--it ’ud have a foolish look if any
body axed me what I died of, an’ me not able to tell them.”
Peggy declared her willingness to do him this last favour, and,
interrupted by an occasional sob, thus proceeded:--
“It was Thursday night week--troth I’ll never forget that night, Brian
asthore, if I live to be as ould as Noah--an’ it was just after my first
sleep that I fell draiming. I thought I went down to Dan Keefe’s to buy
a taste ov mate, for ye all know he killed a _bullsheen_ that day for
the market ov Moneen; an’ I thought when I went into his house, what did
I see hangin’ up but an ugly _lane_ carcase, an’ not a bit too fresh
neither, an’ a strange man dividin’ it with a hatchet; an’ says he to me
with a mighty grum look,
“‘Well, honest woman, what do you want?--is it to buy bullsheen?’
“‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but not the likes of that--it’s not what we’re used to.’
“‘Divil may care,’ says he; ‘I’ll make bould to cut out a rib for you.’
“‘Oh, don’t if you plase,’ says I, puttin’ out my hand to stop him; an’
with that what does he do but he lifts the hatchet an’ makes a blow at my
hand, an’ cuts the weddin’ ring in two on my finger?”
“Dth! dth! dth!” was ejaculated on all sides by her wondering auditory,
for the application of the dream to Brian was conclusive, according to
the popular method of explaining such matters. They looked round to
see how he sustained the brunt of such a fatal revelation. There he
was sitting bolt upright in the bed, notwithstanding his unpleasant
incumbrance, his mouth and eyes wide open.
“Why, thin, blur-an’-ages, Peggy Moran,” he slowly exclaimed, when he and
they had recovered a little from their surprise, “do you mane to tell me
that’s all that ailed me?”
Peggy and her coterie started back as he uttered this extraordinary
inquiry, there being something in his look that portended his intention
to leap out of bed, and probably display his indignation a little too
forcibly, for, quiet as he was, his temper wasn’t proof against a
blister; but his bodily strength failed him in the attempt, and, roaring
with pain, he resumed his recumbent position. But Peggy’s empire was
over--the blister had done its business, and in a few days he was able
to stump about as usual, threatening to inflict all sorts of punishments
upon any one who dared to laugh at him. A laugh is a thing, however, not
easy to be controlled, and finally poor Brian’s excellent temper was
soured to such a degree by the ridicule which he encountered, that he
determined to seek a reconciliation with young Brennan, pitch the decrees
of fate to Old Nick, and give Father Coffey a job with the young couple.
To this resolution we are happy to say he adhered: still happier are we
to say, that among the county records we have not yet met the name of
his son-in-law, and that unless good behaviour and industry be declared
crimes worthy of bringing their perpetrator to the gallows, there is very
little chance indeed of Mickey Brennan fulfilling the prophecy of Peggy
the Pishogue.