At first the movement was slow, and there were repeated pauses. An old
man sitting at his door smoking his pipe, was told by a neighbour that
the mountain was falling. He thought there was plenty of time, and
went indoors to fill his pipe again; but his neighbour ran down the
valley, falling repeatedly by reason of the agitation of the ground,
and escaped with difficulty. When he looked back to the village, the
old man’s house had disappeared. In the space of about three minutes,
the vast mass, separated into two portions, had descended three miles,
sweeping everything before it. The smaller portion took a course
towards the foot of the Righi, destroying the hamlets of Spitzbuhl,
Ober and Unter Rothen. Its velocity was such as to carry enormous
fragments to a great height up the opposite mountain. A peasant who
survived the calamity, was engaged in cutting down a tree near his
house, when a noise like thunder arrested his attention; he felt the
ground tremble under his feet, and he was immediately thrown down by
a current of air. Retaining his presence of mind, a dreadful scene
presented itself; the tree he had been cutting down, his house, and
every familiar object, had disappeared, and an immense cloud of dust
enveloped him.
The ruin effected by the descent of the larger portion was more
terrible. It took the direction of the Lake of Lowertz. Among its first
victims were nine persons belonging to a party which had come from
Berne to climb to the top of the Righi. Besides the village of Goldau,
the adjacent villages of Bussingen and Hussloch, and three-fourths of
the village of Lowertz, were overwhelmed. But the destruction did not
stop here. The larger of the two portions filled up nearly one-fourth
of the Lake of Lowertz. The body of water thus displaced formed a wave
which swept over the little island of Schwanau in the lake, rising to
the height of seventy feet, besides doing a great deal of mischief
along the shore, especially to the village of Seewen.
By this disaster nearly five hundred persons lost their lives, and
damage was done to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand
pounds. Of all the inhabitants, about twenty were taken alive from
the ruins. Two out of a family of seven were saved as by a miracle.
At the moment of the catastrophe the father was standing at his own
door with his wife and three children. Seeing the mass rolling towards
him, he caught up two of the children, bidding his wife follow him
with the third. Instead of doing so, however, she turned back into
the house to fetch the remaining child, Marianne, and Frances Ulrich,
the servant-maid. Frances seized the little girl by the hand, and was
leading her out, when the house, which was of timber, seemed to be torn
from its foundations, and to turn over and over like a ball, so that
she was sometimes on her head and sometimes on her feet. A storm of
dust made the day dark as night. The violence of the shock separated
her from the child, and she hung head downwards. She was squeezed and
bruised a good deal, and her face was much cut and very painful. After
some time she released her right hand, and wiped the blood from her
face. She then heard Marianne groaning, and calling ‘Frances, Frances!’
The child said that she was lying on her back among stones and bushes,
unable to rise; that her hands were at liberty, and that she could see
the daylight and the green fields. Frances had imagined that they were
buried a great depth under ground; and thought that the last day was
come.
After remaining in this state some hours, Frances heard a bell, which
she knew to be that of the village church of Steinen, calling the
survivors to prayer. The little girl was now crying bitterly from pain
and hunger; and the servant-maid tried in vain to comfort her. From
sheer exhaustion, however, the cry became weaker, and then ceased
entirely. Meanwhile, Frances herself was in a most painful position,
hanging with her head downwards, enveloped in the liquid clay, and cold
almost beyond endurance. By persevering in her efforts, she at length
got her legs free, and so obtained partial relief. A silence of some
hours followed. When the dark hours of that terrible night had passed
and morning came, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the child
was not dead, but had fallen asleep. As soon as she awoke, she began
to cry and complain. The church bell now went again for prayers; and
Frances heard also the voice of her master making lamentations over his
loss. He had succeeded in escaping and rescuing the two children he had
with him, though one was for a time partly buried in the fringe of the
landslip. Seeking for the other members of his family, he had found the
lifeless body of his wife with the child she had taken in her arms, at
a distance of more than a quarter of a mile from where his house had
stood. All of her that was visible was one of her feet. While digging
out her body, he heard the cries of little Marianne. The child was at
once disinterred from her living grave; and though one of her legs was
broken, she seemed more anxious for the release of Frances than for
her own comfort. The maid was soon extricated; but she was bruised and
wounded in a frightful manner. For a long time her recovery was very
doubtful. Even after she was out of danger, she was unable to bear
the light, and was for a lengthened period subject to convulsions and
seasons of extreme fear and terror.
A traveller who visited the district about a week after the catastrophe
has given an interesting description of his visit: ‘Picture to yourself
a rude and mingled mass of earth and stone, bristling with the
shattered remains of wooden cottages, and with thousands of heavy trees
torn up by their roots and projecting in all directions. In one part
you might see a range of peasants’ huts, which the torrent of earth
had reached with just force enough to overthrow and break in pieces,
but without bringing soil enough to cover them. In another were mills
broken in pieces by huge rocks, separated from the top of the mountain,
which were even carried high up the Righi on the opposite side. Large
pools of water were formed in different places; and many little
streams, whose usual channels had been filled up, were bursting out in
various places.’
THE WHITEBOYS OF SIXTY YEARS AGO.
There is living in our neighbourhood an old man, the son of a once
famous ‘Whiteboy.’ As such, his bringing-up must have been strangely in
keeping with the moonlighting propensities of the present day, and of
which we unfortunately hear so much. But not so. ‘Barry,’ as we shall
call him, has a horror of Land-leagueism, and will have nothing to do
with it. His experience of the Whiteboys, or Moonlighters of sixty
years ago, is interesting—at least to me; and I hope the following
account will prove so to those who are not quite _au fait_ with the
doings of these confederations in Ireland sixty years ago.
Some time since, on the death of a relative, besides other effects
willed to me, was a box containing several _curios_. Amongst them was
a genuine letter written in 1823 by Captain Rock, in those days the
Moonlight leader of the Whiteboys. Knowing from Barry that his father
had been not only an admirer of Captain Rock, but a follower of his, I
showed him the letter, hoping that in doing so I would also verify its
authenticity. It was as follows:
¹ PEREVIL OF THE PEAK. ¹
_Notis._
Notis to Mistres H—— And all Whoe it May consarn that Whin Capton
Rock and His Adicongs visot you next you Will take Kare to Have
plenti of Mate and Pratees not Forgeting a Smol drop of the
Crater.[1]
Sind—J. ROCK. R.T.L.
_given at our counsil this |
10th day of April 1823._ |
----------------------------+
‘Sure, and that’s a real letter, and no mistake,’ said Barry, handing
it back to me after perusal. ‘I remember when I was a gorsoon [boy],
my father writing letters just like it, when he and the Boys would
meet of nights at our house. Many is the queer thing I heard them
plan, when they thought I was asleep in bed; and though I forgets
most of their doings now, I remembers a few; and I’ll tell them same
to you and welcome, if you likes to hear them. The Whiteboys, and the
Bloodsuckers, and the Molly M‘Guires resembles the Moonlighters of the
present day; though they were not, so to say, as bad entirely, still
they were fidgety creatures enough. ’Tis nigh on sixty years since my
father died, and I was a tidy bit of a lad then. He was a follower of
Captin Rock, the leader of what we called one kind of Whiteboys, in
those days. Captin Rock was, you know, only an imaginary name, just as
Captin Moonlight is in these times. I would not say as the Whiteboys
in my father’s time was as bad as those as followed them. _They_ said
nothing against paying the rent; and a good drop of the _crater_ would
do wonders with Captin Rock and his followers. Sure, ’twas hard in name
he was, as my father used to say, and not in nature.
‘The Bloodsuckers, who came next, were frightful creatures. They were
so called because they took money to inform. ’Twas the price of blood,
you see.
‘The famine of 1845 had a demoralising effect on the people, and many
and many the poor creature breaking stones on the roadside had a
pistol or some weapon of defence hid in the heap beside them. There
was one gentleman you would like to hear about, maybe, who met with
great troubles at the hands of the Boys. I knew him well, for many a
pocketful of apples he gave me; and he was as hard-working and honest a
creature as you’d meet with in a day’s walk. The Boys had no ill-will
against himself personally; but they thought to frighten him from
taking a farm as was “useful to them,”’ said Barry, with a knowing
wink. ‘The first thing they did was to send him a threatening letter.
Then a man as I knew full well—for many’s the time he and my poor
father laid their plans together—he was turned off to shoot him. He
stood inside the road-wall where there was an old archway half built
up—a mighty convenient place, as he afterwards said, to rest a gun on.
But for all that, he didn’t fire the shot that night, for reasons which
you’ll hear presently. The Boys were so disappointed, that two of them
went at dusk one evening to the gentleman’s own hall door and knocked.
Sure enough, just as they thought, he opened it himself for them. On
doing so, he saw the two Boys, one with a pistol, the other with a
blunderbuss.
“Come out; you are wanted,” says they to him.
“Yes,” replied he; “but wait till I get my hat.”
“Don’t mind your hat,” was the answer; “you’ll do for us without it.”
‘Just then the Missis came into the hall, and hearing the noise, off
they went.
‘Weeks afterwards, these men told the Master (as I shall call him,
seeing I never likes to mention names) that had he gone in for his hat
as he wanted to, they’d have shot him dead just where he stood, for
they would have been afraid he was going for help.
“Why didn’t you shoot me the night you were behind the old archway on
the old Moiveen road?” he asked one of them.
“The night was cold,” replied the Boy; “and the drop of the _crater_ as
the Captin sint me was that strong that it set me to sleep. I axes your
pardon now for going to shoot you at all, for you are such a ‘dacent’
[plucky] man, you might be one of the Boys yourself. And to show you I
has no ill-will agin you, if there is any little job as you wants done
before marning” (meaning murder, of course), “I’ll do it for you meself
and welcome.”
‘However, this didn’t see the poor Master at the end of his troubles;
there was more before him. A short time after, as the man was ploughing
in the field, four of the Boys came and told him to stand aside. Then
two of them held him, while the other two put a bullet through the head
of each horse, and the poor creatures died the same night. The Boys
broke the plough afterwards and warned the man away. They tied notices
on it forbidding any one to plough for the Master till he gave up the
idea of taking the farm, as Captin Rock wanted it for his own use.
‘But the Master, he was an iligant man surely. Many’s the time, gorsoon
though I was, I’d have given my two eyes to help him; but though I
was no Whiteboy, and I hated their dirty work, I was the son of one,
and you know, “There is honour among thieves.”—Well, as I was saying,
the Master was an iligant, foine man. Being a bit handy, he mended
his plough, took it in his own hands, and with his loaded gun laid
across it, did all the ploughing himself. Maybe you won’t hardly credit
me when I tell you that he did most of the work with a mule; and
sometimes, to help the poor baste, when the ground was light, he yoked
himself with her, whilst an old man who lived with the Master guided
the plough. After this, the Boys, seeing they could not frighten him,
let him alone.
‘When the Bloodsuckers had had their day, next came the Molly M‘Guires.
’Twas them as had the big blunderbuss called “Roaring Mag,” which
maybe you have heard tell of. There was an Englishman who came over
to Ireland and laid down a weir to catch our salmon; but the Molly
M‘Guires would not have any foreigners come a-fishing to our shores, so
they cut away the nets and destroyed the weir. Whenever they performed
a bould feat such as this, they made poetry of it, writing it out, and
giving a copy to the principal Molly M‘Guire Boys. ’Tis many a year ago
since four of the Boys, long since dead, wrote the piece I allude to;
and I doubt if there is any one alive but meself who could repeat it
for you; but I always had a good mimory,’ concluded Barry proudly.
MOLLY M‘GUIRE.
WRITTEN AND COMPOSED FOR THE
BOYS, BY FOUR OF ’EM.
_approved of |
by our counsil_ |
----------------+
Sind—MOLLY M‘GUIRE.
’Twas of a Sunday morning,
All by the break of day,
When Molly M‘Guire and her army
Came sailing down the say.
She heard ‘Tom Spratt’s’ got down a weir
The salmon to insnare.
But soon she did them liberate,
Once more to sport and play.
When Molly M‘Guire came into the weir,
The salmon to her did say:
‘If you don’t us liberate,
We’ll surely die this day.’
But Molly bein’ a commander bold,
She soon did give them orders
The salmon to liberate.
Pat Munster the spy
He scampered the police to bring down,
Sayin’, there is an armed party
Come sailin’ to this town
With their guns and bagnots screwed and fixed,
Besides the ‘Roaring Mag;’[2]
For they surely will cut down the weir;
They seem to be all mad.
The sargint cries: ‘Come on, me boys;
We’ll fire at them some shots.’
But Molly M‘Guire made them soon retire,
Her army stood so brave.
She chases the poliss to their dens,
Like dogs that lost their tails;
For Molly M‘Guire will rise the hire,
An’ cut away the weirs.
‘That’s a fine piece of poetry, isn’t it?’ asked Barry, as he concluded
this extraordinary medley, which cannot, I fear, be dignified by the
name of rhyme, much less poetry. ‘A grain of powder and shot and a
glass or two of the _crater_ would make a Molly M‘Guire your friend
for life, maybe. Sure, and many’s the curious thing I’ve known, and
many’s the plan made in my hearing by the Boys and my father; but
I would never tell on them, though I never had ought to do with
their intrigues, as I calls them. But though my poor father was a
real Whiteboy, he never had, as I knows of, the dark deeds on his
conscience that some of them Moonlighters of the present days has.
These is no times to be talking, leastways I keeps my thoughts to
meself; but as you seemed anxious-like to hear of them that went before
the Moonlighters, I am glad to oblige you. I have been able to do that
without mentioning names; and there isn’t many alive who could tell you
as well as meself of the doings in Old Oireland of sixty years ago.’
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Irish poteen whisky.
[2] The big blunderbuss taken in Clare.
CONCISE AND TO THE POINT.
Spartan brevity of speech is still sometimes amusingly illustrated. A
most worthy man, unaccustomed to public speaking, being suddenly called
upon to address a Sunday school, rose to his feet, and, after vainly
struggling for utterance, at last hoarsely muttered: ‘Dear children,
don’t ever play with powder.’—The following gallant toast was lately
given at a military dinner in Carolina: ‘The ladies—our arms their
protection—their arms our reward.’
‘Don’t eat stale Q-cumbers. They will W up,’ is the terse advice of
some wit.—Announcements on shop-signs expressed in the succinct style
of one connected with a certain restaurant in New York, should serve
as startling advertisements: ‘Lunch, 75 cents; square meal, 1 dollar;
perfect gorge, 1 dollar 25 cents.’—In the same city, a shopkeeper
is said to have stuck upon his door this laconic advertisement: ‘A
boy wanted.’ On going to his shop next morning, he beheld a smiling
little urchin in a basket, with the following pithy label: ‘Here he
is!’—A penny-a-liner would hardly find much employment on the Kansas
paper which informed the public that ‘Mr Blank of Missouri got to
owning horses that didn’t belong to him, and the next thing he knew
he couldn’t get his feet down to the ground.’ Lynched, probably.—A
Western writer, speaking of a new play just written by a gentleman of
Cincinnati, says: ‘The unities are admirably observed; the dullness
which commences with the first act, never flags for a moment until the
curtain falls.’
The characteristics of several nations have been summed up in the
following concise form: The first thing a Spaniard does on founding
a colony is to build a gallows; a Portuguese, to build a church; an
Englishman, a drinking-booth; and a Frenchman, a dancing-floor.
A cobbler visited one of the large manufactories the other day, and
for the first time in his life saw shoes made by machinery. ‘What do
you think of that?’ asked the foreman.—‘It beats awl,’ was the laconic
and significant reply.—A ‘sensible’ woman, as Dr Abernethy would have
called her, was discovered by a shy man, who made her a rather original
proposal. He bought a wedding ring, and sent it to the lady, inclosing
a sheet of notepaper with the brief question, ‘Does it fit?’ By return
of post he received for answer: ‘Beautifully.’
It is related that Makart, the great Viennese painter, is even more
taciturn than Von Moltke, the man who is silent in seven languages.
An American, who had been told that the best way to get on friendly
terms with the artist would be to play chess with him at the café to
which he resorted nightly, watched his opportunity, and, when Makart’s
opponent rose, slipped into his chair. At last his dream was about
to be realised, he was to spend an evening in Makart’s society. The
painter signed to him to play, and the game began, and went on with no
other sound than the moving of the pieces. At last the American made
the winning move, and exclaimed, ‘Mate!’ Up rose Makart in disgust and
stalked out, saying angrily to a friend who asked why he left so early:
‘Oh, I can’t stand playing with a chatterbox!’
The expressions used by some boys and girls if written as pronounced
would look like a foreign language. Specimens of boys’ conversation
like the following may be called shorthand talking: ‘Warejego
lasnight?’ ‘Hadder skate.’—‘Jerfind the ice hard’ngood?’ ‘Yes;
hard’nough.’—‘Jer goerlone? ‘No; Bill’n Joe wenterlong.’—‘Howlate
jerstay?’ ‘Pastate.’—‘Lemmeknow wenyergoin, woneher? I wanter
go’nshowyer howto skate.’—‘H—m, ficoodn’ skate better’n you I’d sell
out ’nquit.’ ‘Well, we’ll tryerace ’nseefyercan.’
The well-known answer of the Greeks to the Persian king before the
battle of Thermopylæ, was rivalled by the despatch of General Suvaroff
to the Russian Empress: ‘Hurrah! Ismail’s ours!’ The Empress returned
an answer equally brief: ‘Hurrah! Field-Marshal!’
The message from Lord Charles Beresford to his wife from the fort near
Metemmeh was pithy enough: ‘Quite well and cheerful. Privations have
been severe; thirst, hunger, battles desperate; but things look better.’
There are some quaint and pithy epistles on record. Quin, when offended
by Rich, went away in resentment and wrote: ‘I am at Bath.’ The answer
was as laconic, though not quite so civil: ‘Stay there.’
Sibbald, the editor of the _Chronicles of Scottish Poetry_, resided
in London for three or four years, during which time his friends in
Scotland were ignorant not only of his movements, but even of his
address. In the longrun, his brother, a Leith merchant, contrived to
get a letter conveyed to him, the object of which was to inquire into
his circumstances and to ask where he lived. His reply ran as follows:
‘DEAR BROTHER—I live in So-ho, and my business is so-so.—Yours, JAMES
SIBBALD.’
Concise and to the point was the curious letter sent by a farmer
to a schoolmaster as an excuse for his son’s absence from school:
‘Cepatomtogoatatrin.’ This meant, kep’ at ’ome to go a-taterin’
(gathering potatoes). A Canadian freshman once wrote home to his
father: ‘DEAR PAPA—I want a little change.’ The fond parent replied by
the next post: ‘DEAR CHARLIE—Just wait for it. Time brings change to
every one.’
Briefer than these was an epistle of Emile de Girardin to his second
wife, with whom he lived on most unfriendly terms. The house was large
enough to permit them to dwell entirely separate from one another. One
day, Madame de Girardin had an important communication to make to her
husband. Taking a small sheet of paper she wrote: ‘The Boudoir to the
Library: Would like to go to Switzerland.’—M. de Girardin, imitating
her concise style, responded: ‘The Library to the Boudoir: Go.’ That
was all.
One of the most laconic wills on record ran thus: ‘I have nothing; I
owe a great deal—the rest I give to the poor.’—A similar terse epitaph
to the following would have suited that will-maker: ‘Died of thin
shoes, January 1839.’
PARTED.
Once more my hand will clasp your hand;
Your loved voice I shall hear once more;
But we shall never see the land,
The pleasant land we knew of yore;
Never, on any summer day,
Hear the low music of its streams,
Or wander down the leafy way
That leadeth to the land of dreams.
Still, borne upon the scented air,
The songs of birds rise clear and sweet,
As when I gathered roses there,
And heaped their glories at your feet;
And still the golden pathway lies
At eve across the western sea,
And lovers dream beneath those skies,
Which shine no more for you and me.
No more, ah, nevermore! and yet
They seem so near, those summer days,
When Hope was like a jewel set
To shine adown Time’s misty ways;
I sometimes dream that morning’s light
Will bring them back to us once more,
And that ’tis but one long dark night
Since we two parted by the shore.
We parted with soft words and low,
And ‘Farewell till to-morrow,’ said;
From sea and sky, the sunset’s glow
A golden halo round you shed;
Then as you went, I heard you sing,
‘Haste thee, sweet morrow:’ parting thus,
How could we dream that life would bring
Not any morrow there for us?
We parted, and that last farewell
Its shadow on our life-path cast;
And Time’s relentless barriers fell
Between us and our happy past;
And now we meet when cares and tears
Have dulled the parting and the pain,
But never can the weary years
Bring back our golden dreams again.
D. J. ROBERTSON.
* * * * *
Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.
* * * * *
_All Rights Reserved._
* * * * *
[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.
Page 627: Luée to Lucé—“earth at Lucé”.]