mighty inconvanient--afther losing two or three grinders in a row--to
manage the hard oaten bread that they use there; for which rason, God be
good to his sowl that first invented the phaties, anyhow, because a
man can masticate them without a tooth, at all at all. I'll engage,
if larned books were consulted, it would be found out that he was
an Irishman. I wonder that neither Pastorini nor Columbkill mentions
anything about him in their prophecies concerning the church; for my own
part, I'm strongly inclinated to believe that it must have been Saint
Patrick himself; and I think that his driving all kinds of venomous
reptiles out of the kingdom is, according to the Socrastic method of
argument, an undeniable proof of it. The subject, to a dead certainty,
is not touched upon in the Brehon Code,* nor by any of the three
Psalters,** which is extremely odd, seeing that the earth never produced
a root equal to it in the multiplying force of prolification. It is,
indeed, the root of prosperity to a fighting people: and many a time my
grandfather boasts to this day, that the first bit of bread he ever ett
was a phatie.
* This was the old code of laws peculiar to Ireland before
the introduction of English legislation into it.
** There was properly only two Psalters, those of Tara and
Cashel. The Psalters were collections of genealogical
history, partly in verse; from which latter circumstances
they had their name.
“In mentioning my grandfather's fight with Mucldemurray, I happened to
name them blackguards, the O'Hallaghans: hard fortune to the same
set, for they have no more discretion in their quarrels, than so many
Egyptian mummies, African buffoons, or any other uncivilized animals.
It was one of them, he that's married to my own fourth cousin, Biddy
O'Callaghan, that knocked two of my grinders out, for which piece of
civility I had the satisfaction of breaking a splinter or two in his
carcase, being always honestly disposed to pay my debts.
“With respect to the O'Hallaghans, they and our family, have been next
neighbors since before the Flood--and that's as good as two hundred
years; for I believe it's 198, any how, since my great grandfather's
grand-uncle's ould mare was swept out of the 'Island,' in the dead of
the night, about half an hour after the whole country had been ris out
of their beds by the thunder and lightning. Many a field of oats and
many a life, both of beast and Christian, was lost in it, especially of
those that lived on the bottoms about the edge of the river: and it was
true for them that said it came before something; for the next year was
one 'of the hottest summers ever remembered in Ireland.
“These O'Hallaghans couldn't be at peace with a saint. Before they
and our faction, began to quarrel, it's said that the O'Donnells,
or Donnells, and they had been at it,--and a blackguard set the same
O'Donnells were, at all times--in fair and market, dance, wake, and
berrin, setting the country on fire. Whenever they met, it was heads
cracked and bones broken; till by degrees the O'Donnells fell away, one
after another, from fighting, accidents, and hanging; so that at last
there was hardly the name of one of them in the neighborhood. The
O'Hallaghans, after this, had the country under themselves--were the
cocks of the walk entirely;--who but they? A man darn't look crooked at
them, or he was certain of getting his head in his fist. And when they'd
get drunk in a fair, it was nothing but 'Whoo! for the O'Hallaghans!'
and leaping yards high off the pavement, brandishing their cudgels over
their heads, striking their heels against their hams, tossing up their
hats; and when all would fail, they'd strip off their coats, and trail
them up and down the street, shouting, 'Who dare touch the coat of an
O'Hallaghan? Where's the blackguard Donnells now?'--and so on, till
flesh and blood couldn't stand it.
“In the course of time, the whole country was turned against them; for
no crowd could get together in which they didn't kick up a row, nor a
bit of stray fighting couldn't be, but they'd pick it up first; and if a
man would venture to give them a contrary answer, he was sure to get the
crame of a good welting for his pains. The very landlord was timorous
of them; for when they'd get behind in their rint, hard fortune to the
bailiff, or proctor, or steward, he could find, that would have anything
to say to them. And the more wise they; for maybe, a month would hardly
pass till all belonging to them in the world would be in a heap of
ashes: and who could say who did it? for they were as cunning as foxes.
“If one of them wanted a wife, it was nothing but find out the purtiest
and the richest farmer's daughter in the neighborhood, and next march
into her father's house, at the dead hour of night, tie and gag every
mortal in it, and off with her to some friend's place in another part of
the country. Then what could be done? If the girl's parents didn't like
to give in, their daughter's name was sure to be ruined; at all events,
no other man would think of marrying her, and the only plan was, to make
the best of a bad bargain; and God He knows, it was making a bad
bargain for a girl to have any matrimonial concatenation with the same
O'Hallaghans; for they always had the bad drop in them, from first to
last, from big to little--the blackguards! But wait, it's not over with
them yet.
“The bone of contintion that got, between them and our faction was this
circumstance; their lands and ours were divided by a river that ran down
from the high mountains of Slieve Boglish, and, after a coorse of eight
or ten miles, disembogued itself, first into George Duffy's mill-dam,
and afterwards into that superb stream, the Blackwater, that might be
well and appropriately appellated the Irish Niger. This river, which,
though small at first, occasionally inflated itself to such a gigantic
altitude, that it swept away cows, corn, and cottages, or whatever else
happened to be in the way, was the march ditch, or merin between our
farms. Perhaps it is worth while remarking, as a solution for natural
philosophers, that these inundations were much more frequent in winter
than in summer; though, when they did occur in summer, they were truly
terrific.
“God be with the days, when I and half a dozen gorsoons used to go out,
of a warm Sunday in summer, the bed of the river nothing but a line of
white meandering stones, so hot that you could hardly stand upon, them,
with a small obscure thread of water creeping invisibly among them,
hiding itself, as it were, from the scorching sun; except here and
there, that you might find a small crystal pool where the streams had
accumulated. Our plan was to bring a pocketful of roche lime with us,
and put it into the pool, when all the fish used to rise on the instant
to the surface, gasping with open mouth for fresh air, and we had only
to lift them out of the water; a nate plan which, perhaps, might be
adopted successfully, on a more extensive scale, by the Irish fisheries.
Indeed, I almost regret that I did not remain in that station of life,
for I was much happier then than ever I was since I began to study and
practice larning. But this is vagating from the subject.
“Well, then, I have said that them O'Hallaghans lived beside us, and
that this stream divided our lands. About half a quarter--i. e.,
to accommodate myself to the vulgar phraseology--or, to speak more
scientifically, one-eighth of a mile from our house was as purty a hazel
glen as you'd wish to see, near half a mile long--its developments and
proportions were truly classical. In the bottom of this glen was a small
green island, about twelve yards, diametrically, of Irish admeasurement,
that is to say, be the same more or less; at all events, it lay in the
way of the river, which, however, ran towards the O'Hallaghan side, and,
consequently, the island was our property.
“Now, you'll observe, that this river had been, for ages, the merin
between the two farms, for they both belonged to separate landlords,
and so long as it kept the O'Hallighan side of the little peninsula in
question there could be no dispute about it, for all was clear. One wet
winter, however, it seemed to change its mind upon the subject; for it
wrought and wore away a passage for itself on our side of the island,
and by that means took part, as it were, with the O'Hallighans leaving
the territory which had been our property for centhries, in their
possession. This was a vexatious change to us, and, indeed, eventually
produced very feudal consequences. No sooner had the stream changed
sides, than the O'Hallaghans claimed the island as theirs, according
to their tenement; and we, having had it for such length of time in our
possession, could not break ourselves of the habitude of occupying it.
They incarcerated our cattle, and we incarcerated theirs. They summoned
us to their landlord, who was a magistrate; and we summoned them to
ours, who was another. The verdicts were north and south. Their landlord
gave it in favor of them, and ours in favor of us. The one said he had
law on his side; the other, that he had proscription and possession,
length of time and usage.
“The two squires then fought a challenge upon the head of it, and what
was more singular, upon the disputed spot itself; the one standing on
their side, the other on ours; for it was just twelve paces every way.
Their friend was a small, light man, with legs like drumsticks; the
other was a large, able-bodied gentleman, with a red face and hooked
nose. They exchanged two shots, only one of which--the second--took
effect. It pastured upon their landlord's spindle leg, on which he held
it out, exclaiming, that while he lived he would never fight another
challenge with his antagonist, 'because,' said he, holding out his own
spindle shank, 'the man who could hit that could hit anything.'
[Illustration: PAGE 725-- The man who could hit that could hit anything]
“We then were advised, by an attorney, to go to law with them; and they
were advised by another attorney to go to law with us: accordingly,
we did so, and in the course of eight or nine years it might have been
decided, but just at the legal term approximated in which the decision
was to be announced, the river divided itself with mathematical
exactitude on each side of the island. This altered the state and law of
the question in toto; but, in the meantime, both we and the O'Hallaghans
were nearly fractured by the expenses. Now during the lawsuit we usually
houghed and mutilated each other's cattle, according as they trespassed
the premises. This brought on the usual concomitants of various battles,
fought and won by both sides, and occasioned the lawsuit to be dropped;
for we found it a mighty, inconvanient matter to fight it out both ways;
by the same a-token that I think it a proof of stultity to go to law
at all at all, as long as a person is able to take it into his own
management. For the only incongruity in the matter is this: that, in
the one case, a set of lawyers have the law in their hands, and, in the
other, that you have it in your own; that's the only difference, and
'tis easy knowing where the advantage lies.
“We, however, paid the most of the expenses, and would have _ped_ them
all with the greatest integrity, were it not that our attorney, when
about to issue an execution against our property, happened somehow to be
shot, one evening, as he returned home from a dinner which was given
by him that was attorney for the O'Hallaghans. Many a boast the
O'Hallaghan's made, before the quarrelling between us and them
commenced, that they'd sweep the streets with the fighting O'Callaghans,
which was an epithet that was occasionally applied to our family. We
differed, however, materially from them; for we were honorable, never
starting out in dozens on a single man or two, and beating him into
insignificance. A couple, or maybe, when irritated, three, were the most
we ever set at a single enemy, and if we left him lying in a state
of imperception, it was the most we ever did, except in a regular
confliction, when a man is justified in saving his own skull by breaking
one of an opposite faction. For the truth of the business is, that he
who breaks the skull of him who endeavors to break his own is safest;
and, surely, when a man is driven to such an alternative, the choice is
unhesitating.
“O'Hallaghans' attorney, however, had better luck; they were, it is
true, rather in the retrograde with him touching the law charges, and,
of coorse, it was only candid in him to look for his own. One morning,
he found that two of his horses had been executed by some incendiary
unknown, in the coorse of the night; and, on going to look at them,
he found a taste of a notice posted on the inside of the stable-door,
giving him intelligence that if he did not find a _horpus corpus_*
whereby to transfer his body out of the country, he would experience
a fate parallel to that of his brother lawyer or the horses. And,
undoubtedly, if honest people never perpetrated worse than banishing
such varmin, along with proctors, and drivers of all kinds, out of a
civilized country, they would not be so very culpable or atrocious.
* Habeas corpus; the above is the popular pronunciation.
“After this, the lawyer went to reside in Dublin; and the only bodily
injury he received was the death of a land-agent and a bailiff, who
lost their lives faithfully in driving for rent. They died, however,
successfully; the bailiff having been provided for nearly a year
before the agent was sent to give an account of his stewardship--as the
Authorized Version has it.
“The occasion on which the first re-encounter between us and the
O'Hallaghans took place, was a peaceable one. Several of our respective
friends undertook to produce a friendly and oblivious potation between
us--it was at a berrin belonging to a corpse who was related to us both;
and, certainly, in the beginning we were all as thick as whigged milk.
But there is no use now in dwelling too long upon that circumstance;
let it be sufficient to assert that the accommodation was effectuated by
fists and cudgels, on both sides--the first man that struck a blow being
one of the friends that wished to bring about the tranquillity. From
that out the play commenced, and God he knows when it may end; for no
dacent faction could give in to another faction without losing their
character, and being kicked, and cuffed, and kilt, every week in the
year.
“It is the great battle, however, which I am after going to describe:
that in which we and the O'Hallaghans had contrived, one way or other,
to have the parish divided--one-half for them, and the other for us;
and, upon my credibility, it is no exaggeration to declare that the
whole parish, though ten miles by six, assembled itself in the town of
Knockimdowny, upon this interesting occasion. In thruth, Ireland ought
to be a land of mathemathitians; for I am sure her population is well
trained, at all events, in the two sciences of multiplication and
division. Before I adventure, however, upon the narration, I must wax
pathetic a little, and then proceed with the main body of the story.
“Poor Rose O'Hallaghan!--or, as she was designated--_Rose Galh_, or
_Fair Rose_, and sometimes simply, Rose Hallaghan, because the detention
of the big O often produces an afflatus in the pronunciation, that
is sometimes mighty inconvenient to such as do not understand
oratory--besides, that the Irish are rather fond of sending the liquids
in a gutthural direction--Poor Rose! that faction fight, was a black day
to her, the sweet innocent--when it was well known that there wasn't a
man, woman, or child, on either side that wouldn't lay their hands under
her feet. However, in order to _insense_ the reader better into her
character, I will commence a small sub-narration, which will afterwards
emerge into the parent stream of the story.
“The chapel of Knockimdowny is a slated house, without any ornament,
except a set of wooden cuts, painted red and blue, that are placed
_seriatum_ around the square of the building in the internal side.
Fourteen* of these suspind at equal distances on the walls, each set in
a painted frame; these constitute a certain species of country devotion.
It is usual, on Sundays, for such of the congregation as are most
inclined to piety, to genuflect at the first of these pictures, and
commence a certain number of prayers to it after the repetition of
which, they travel on their knees along the bare earth to the second,
where they repate another prayer peculiar to that, and so on, till
they finish the grand _tower_ of the interior. Such, however as are
not especially addictated to this kind, of locomotive prayer, collect
together in various knots through the chapel, and amuse themselves by
auditing or narrating anecdotes, discussing policy, or detraction;
and in case it be summer, and the day of a fine texture, they scatter
themselves into little crowds on the chapel-green, or lie at their
length upon the grass in listless groups, giving way to chat and
laughter.
* These are called the “Fourteen Stations of the Cross.”
“In this mode, laired on the sunny side of the ditches and hedges, or
collected in rings round that respectable character, the Academician of
the village, or some other well-known Senachie, or story-teller, they
amuse themselves till the priest's arrival. Perhaps, too, some walking
geographer of a pilgrim may happen to be present; and if there be, he
is sure to draw a crowd about him, in spite of all the efforts of the
learned Academician to the contrary. It is no unusual thing to see such
a vagrant, in all the vanity of conscious sanctimony, standing in
the middle of the attentive peasants, like the nave and felloes
of a cart-wheel--if I may be permitted the loan of an apt
similitude--repeating some piece of unfathomable and labyrinthine
devotion, or perhaps warbling, from Stentorian lungs, some _melodia
sacra_, in an untranslatable tongue; or, it may be, exhibiting
the mysterious power of an amber bade fastened as a Decade to his
_paudareens_* lifting a chaff or light bit of straw by the force of its
attraction. This is an exploit which causes many an eye to turn from the
bades to his own bearded face, with a hope, as it were, of being able to
catch a glimpse of the lurking sanctimony by which the knave hoaxes them
in the miraculous.
* Pilgrims and other impostors pass these things upon the
people as miracles upon a small scale.
“The amusements of the females are also nearly such as I have drafted
out. Nosegays of the darlings might be seen sated on green banks, or
sauntering about with a sly intention of coming in compact with their
sweethearts, or, like bachelors' buttons in smiling rows, criticising
the young men as they pass. Others of them might be seen screened behind
a hedge, with their backs to the spectators taking the papers off their
curls before small bit of looking-glass placed against the ditch; or
perhaps putting on their shoes and stockings--which phrase can be used
only by the authority of the figure _heusteron proteron_--inasmuch as if
they put on the shoes first, you persave, it would be a scientific job
to get on the stockings after; but it's an idiomatioal expression, and
therefore justifiable. However, it's a general custom in the country,
which I dare to say has not yet spread into large cities, for the young
women to walk bare-footed to the chapel, or within a short distance
of it, that they may exhibit their bleached thread stockings and
well-greased slippers to the best advantage, not pretermitting a
well-turned ankle and neat leg, which, I may fearlessly assert, my fair
country-women can show against any other nation, living or dead.
“One sunny Sabbath, the congregation of Knockimdowny were thus
assimilated, amusing themselves in the manner I have just outlined; a
series of country girls sat on a little green mount, called the Rabbit
Bank, from the circumstance of its having been formerly an open burrow,
though of late years it has been closed. It was near twelve o'clock,
the hour at which Father Luke O'Shaughran was generally seen topping the
rise of the hill at Larry Mulligan's public-house, jogging on his bay
hack at something between a walk and a trot--that is to say, his horse
moved his fore and hind legs on the off side at one motion, and the
fore and hind legs of the near side in another, going at a kind of dog's
trot, like the pace of an idiot with sore feet in a shower--a pace,
indeed, to which the animal had been set for the last sixteen years, but
beyond which, no force, or entreaty, or science, or power, either divine
or human, of his Reverence could drive him. As yet, however, he had not
become apparent; and the girls already mentioned were discussing the
pretensions which several of their acquaintances had to dress or beauty.
“'Peggy,' said Katy Carroll to her companion, Peggy Donohue, 'were you
out* last Sunday?'
* Out.--This expression in remote parts of the country is
understood to mean being at mass.
“'No, in troth, Katty, I was disappointed in getting my shoes from Paddy
Mellon, though I left him the measure for my foot three weeks agone,
and gave him a thousand warnings to make them duck-nebs; but, instead
of that,' said she, holding out a very purty foot, 'he has made them as
sharp in the toe as a pick-axe, and a full mile too short for me. But
why do ye ax was I out, Katty?'
* Paddy Mellon--a short, thick-set man, with gray hair,
which he always kept cropped close--the most famous
shoemaker in the parish: in fact the Drummond of a large
district. No shoes considered worth wearing if he did not
make them. But, having admitted this, I am bound in common
justice and honesty to say that so big a liar never put an
awl into leather. No language could describe his iniquity in
this respect. I myself am a living-witness of this. Many a
trudge has the villain taken out of me in my boyhood, and as
sure as I went on the appointed day--which was always
Saturday--so surely did he swear that they would be ready
for me on that day week. He was, as a tradesman, the most
multifarious and barefaced liar I ever met; and what was the
most rascally trait about him, was the faculty he possessed
of making you believe the lie as readily after the fifteenth
repetition of it, as when it was uttered fresh from his
lips.
“'Oh, nothing,' responded Katty, 'only that you missed a sight, anyway.'
“'What was it Kitty, ahagur?' asked her companion with mighty great
curiosity.
“'Why, nothing less, indeed, nor Rose Cullenan decked out in a white
muslin gown, and a black sprush bonnet, tied under her chin wid a
silk ribbon, no less; but what killed us out and out was--you wouldn't
guess?'
“'Arrah, how could I guess, woman alive? A silk handkerchy, maybe; for I
wouldn't doubt the same Rose but she would be setting herself up for the
likes of such a thing.'
“'It's herself that had, as red as scarlet, about her neck; but that's
not it.'
“'Arrah, Katty, tell it to us at wanst; out with it, ahagur; sure
there's no treason in it, anyhow.'
“'Why, thin, nothing less nor a crass-bar red-and-white
pocket-handkerchy, to wipe her purty complexion wid!'
“To this Peggy replied by a loud laugh, in which it was difficult to say
whether there was more of satire than astonishment.
“'A pocket-handkerchy!' she exclaimed; 'musha, are we alive afther
that, at all at all! Why, that bates Molly M'Cullagh and her red mantle
entirely. I'm sure, but it's well come up for the likes of her, a poor,
imperint crathur, that sprung from nothing, to give herself such airs.'
“'Molly M'Cullagh, indeed,' said Katty, 'why, they oughtn't to be
mintioned in the one day, woman. Molly's come of a dacent ould stock,
and kind mother for her to keep herself in genteel ordher at all times;
she sees nothing else, and can afford it, not all as one as the other
flipe* that would go to the world's end for a bit of dress.'
* Flipe--One who is “flippant”--of which word it is the
substantive, and a good one too.
“' Sure she thinks she's a beauty, too, if you plase,' said Peggy,
tossing her head with an air of disdain; 'but tell us, Katty, how did
the muslin sit upon her at all, the upsetting crathur?'