The breeze of the declining March day blew keenly, as I strode across the
extensive fields towards the old burial-ground of Kildinan, in the county
of Cork. On reaching the ancient church, I rested on the broken bank that
enclosed the cemetery, to contemplate the scene before me, and pause upon
the generations of men that have been impelled along the stream of time
towards the voiceless ocean of eternity, since the day on which an altar
was first erected on this desolate spot, in worship of the Deity. The
most accurate observer would scarcely suppose that this enclosure had
ever been a place of interment, save that certain little hillocks of two
or three spans long, and defined by a rude stone, were scattered along
its surface. To a fanciful imagination these would seem to have been
the graves of some pigmy nation, concerning which tradition had lost
all remembrance. But the little sepulchres were the resting-places of
unfortunate babes that die in the birth, or but wake to a consciousness
of life--utter the brief cry of pain, and sleep in death for ever. These
unbaptized ones are never permitted to mingle with Christian clay, and
are always consigned to these disused cemeteries. With this exception,
the old churchyard had long ceased to receive a human tenant, and its
foundation could scarcely be traced beneath the rank grass. The father
of the present proprietor of the land had planted the whole space with
fir-trees, and these flourishing in the rich soil formed by decomposed
human bodies for many a foot beneath, have shot up to an unusual size,
and furnish a proof that even in death man is not wholly useless, and
that, when his labour is ended, his carcase may fertilize the sod
impoverished by his greedy toil. In these tall firs a colony of rooks had
established their airy city, and while these young settlers were building
new habitations, the old citizens of the grove were engaged in repairing
the damage their homes had received from the storms of winter; and the
shrill discordant voices of the sable multitude seemed to mock the repose
of them that occupied the low and silent mansions beneath.
While indulging these _grave_ reflections, I saw a man approach by the
path I lately trod. He was far advanced in the decline of life; his tall
figure, which he supported with a long staff, was wrapped in a blue-grey
coat that folded close under a hair cincture, and the woollen hat,
susceptible of every impression, was drawn over his face, as if to screen
it from the sharp blast that rushed athwart his way. He suddenly stopped,
then fixed his glance upon a certain spot of the burial ground where
stood a blasted and branchless whitethorn, that seemed to have partaken
of the ruin of the ancient fabric, over whose gross-grown foundation it
yet lingered. Then raising his eyes to heaven, he sank upon his knees,
while his lips moved as if in the utterance of some fervid ejaculation.
Surely, thought I, this old man’s elevated devotion, at such a place
and time, proceeds not solely from the ordinary motives that induce the
penitent to pray--some circumstance, some tradition connected with this
ancient place, has wrought his piety to this pitch of enthusiasm. Thus
did my fancy conjecture at the moment, nor was I mistaken.
As the old man rose from his attitude of supplication, I approached and
said, “My friend, I hope you will pardon this intrusion, for your sudden
and impassioned devotion has greatly awakened my curiosity.”
He immediately answered in the Irish tongue, “I was only begging mercy
and pardon for the souls who in the close darkness of the prison-house
cannot relieve themselves, and beseeching that heaven would cease to
visit upon the children the guilt of their fathers. This spot brought to
my memory an act of sacrilege which my forefathers perpetrated, and for
which their descendants yet suffer; and I did not conceive at the moment
that a living being beheld me but God.
“Perhaps,” he continued, “as you seem to be a stranger in these parts,
you have never heard of the Bald Barrys, and the blessed Whitethorn of
Kildinan. It is an old tradition, and you may be inclined to name it a
legend of superstition; but yonder is the whitethorn, blasted and decayed
from the contact of my ancestors’ unholy hands; and here stands the last
of their name, a homeless wanderer, with no other inheritance than this
mark of the curse and crime of his race.” So saying, he pulled off the
old woollen hat, and exhibited his head perfectly smooth and guiltless of
a single hair.
“That old heads should become bald, is no uncommon occurrence,” I
observed, “and I have seen younger heads as hairless as yours.”
“My head,” he returned, “from my birth to this moment, never knew a
single hair; my father and grandfather endured the same privation, while
my great-grandfather was deprived of his long and copious locks in one
tearful moment. I shall tell you the story as we go along, if your course
lies in the direction of this pathway.”
As we proceeded, he delivered the following legend. The old man’s
phraseology was copious and energetic, qualities which I have vainly
striven to infuse into the translation; for an abler pen would fail in
our colder English of doing justice to the very poetical language of the
narrator.
“Many a biting March has passed over the heads of men since Colonel
Barry lived at Lisnegar. He was of the true blood of the old Strongbow
chiefs, who became sovereign princes in the land; and forming alliances
with the ancient owners of the soil, renounced the Saxon connection and
name. This noble family gloried in the title of M’Adam;[3] and the
colonel did not shame his descent. He kept open house for all comers, and
every day an ox was killed and consumed at Lisnegar. All the gentlemen
of the province thronged thither, hunting and hawking, and feasting
and coshering; while the hall was crowded with harpers and pipers,
_caroughs_ and _buckaughs_, and _shanachies_ and story-tellers, who came
and went as they pleased, in constant succession. I myself,” said the
old man, sighing, “have seen a remnant of these good old times, but now
they are vanished for ever; the genius of hospitality has retired from
the chieftain’s hall to the hovel on the moor; and the wanderer turns
with a sigh from lofty groves and stately towers, to the shelter of the
peasant’s shed!
David Barry and his seven brothers lived with M’Adam, and were of his
own name and race; and whether he enjoyed the sport of the chase, or
took the diversion of shooting, or moved among the high and titled of
the land, they always accompanied him, and formed a sort of body-guard,
to share his sports or assert his quarrels. At that time, on the banks
of the Bride, near the ruined tower of Shanacloch, lived a man named
Edmund Barry. A thick and briary covert on his farm had been for many
years the haunt of a fox celebrated all over the south of Ireland for
the extraordinary speed and prowess he evinced in the many attempts made
to hunt him down. Many gallant and noble huntsmen sought the honour of
bearing home his brush, but in vain; and it was a remarkable fact, that
after tiring out both hounds and horses in the arduous pursuit, and
though his flight might extend over a considerable part of the province,
he invariably returned at night to his favourite covert. A treaty of
peace, it would seem, had been tacitly instituted between Edmund Barry
and the fox. Barry’s poultry for a series of years, whether they sought
the banks of the Bride or the neighbourhood of the barn door, never
suffered by the dangerous vicinity: Reynard would mix with Barry’s dogs
and spend an hour of social intercourse with them, as familiarly as if
he belonged to the same species; and Barry gave his wild crafty friend
the same protection and licence that he permitted his own domestic curs.
The fame of this strange union of interests was well known; and to this
day the memory of Barry’s _madra roc_ survives in the traditions of the
country.
One evening as M’Adam and his train returned from a long and unsuccessful
chase of Edmund Barry’s fox, their route lay by the ruins of the ancient
church of Kildinan; near this sacred spot a whitethorn tree had stood,
and its beauty and bloom were the theme of every tongue. The simple
devotee who poured his orisons to God beneath its holy shade believed
that the hands of guardian spirits pruned its luxuriance and developed
its form of beauty--that dews from heaven were sprinkled by angel hands
to produce its rich and beautiful blossoms, which, like those of the
thorn of Glastonbury, loaded the black winds of December with many
a token of holy fragrance, in welcome of the heavenly advent of HIM
who left his Father’s throne to restore to the sons of Adam the lost
inheritance of heaven. M’Adam was charmed with the beauty of the tree,
and little regarding the sanctity or the superstitious awe attached to
its character, was resolved to transfer it to Lisnegar, that his lawn
might possess that rare species of thorn which blooms in beauty when all
its sisters of the field are bare and barren.
Next day, when M’Adam signified his intention of removing the whitethorn
of Kildinan, his people stood aghast at his impiety, and one and all
declared they would suffer a thousand deaths rather than perpetrate so
audacious a sacrilege. Now, M’Adam was a man of high blood and haughty
bearing, and accustomed at all times to the most rigid enforcement of
his commands. When he found his men unhesitatingly refuse to obey him,
his anger sent the glow of resentment to flush his cheek; he spurned the
earth in a paroxysm of rage, exclaiming, ‘Varlets! of all that have eaten
the bread of M’Adam, and reposed under the shadow of his protection, are
there none free from the trammels of superstitious folly, to execute his
commands?’
‘Here are seven of your own name and race,’ cried David Barry, ‘men
sworn to stand and fall together, who obey no commands but yours, and
acknowledge no law but your will. The whitethorn of Kildinan shall leave
its sacred tenement, if strong hands and brave hearts can effect its
removal. If it be profanation to disturb the tree which generations have
reverenced, the curse for sacrilege rests not with us: and did M’Adam
command us to tear the blessed gold from the shrine of a saint, we would
not hesitate to obey--we were but executing the will of our legal chief.’
Such was the flattering unction which the retainers of M’Adam applied
to their souls, as they proceeded to desecrate the spot hallowed by the
reverence of ages, and around whose holy thorn superstition had drawn a
mystic circle, within whose limit human foot may not intrude. Men have
not yet forgotten this lesson of the feudal school; the sack of cities,
the shrieks of women, the slaughter of thousands, are yet perpetrated
without ruth or remorse in obedience to superior command, and the sublime
_Te Deum_ swells to consecrate the savage atrocity.
On that evening M’Adam saw the beautiful whitethorn planted in his lawn,
and many were the thanks and high the reward of the faithful few who
rose superior to the terrors of superstition in the execution of his
commands. But his surprise was great when David Barry broke in upon his
morning’s repose, to announce that the tree had disappeared during the
night, and was again planted where it had stood for ages before, in the
ancient cemetery of Kildinan. M’Adam, conjecturing that this object of
the people’s veneration had been secretly conveyed by them during the
night to its former abode, dispatched his retainers again to fetch it,
with strict injunctions to lie in watch around it till morning. The
brothers, obedient to the call of their chief, brought the whitethorn
back, and having supported its stem, and carefully covered its roots with
rich mould, after the most approved method of planting, prepared to watch
round it all night, under the bare canopy of heaven. The night was long
and dark, and their eyes sleepless; the night-breeze had sunk to repose,
and all nature seemed hushed in mysterious awe. A deep and undefinable
feeling of dread stole over the hearts of the midnight watchers; and
they who could have rejoiced in the din of battle, were appalled by this
fearful calm. Obedience to the commands of M’Adam could not steel their
bosoms against the goadings of remorse, and the ill-suppressed murmur
rose against their sacrilegious chief. As the night advanced, impelled by
some strange fear, they extended their circle round the mysterious tree.
At length David, the eldest and bravest of the brothers, fell asleep. His
short and fitful snatches of repose were disturbed by wild and indistinct
dreams; but as his slumbers settled, those vague images passed away, and
the following vision was presented to the sleeper’s imagination:--
He dreamt that as he was keeping watch where he lay, by the blessed thorn
of Kildinan, there stood before him a venerable man; his radiant features
and shining vesture lighted all the space around, and pierced awful and
far into the surrounding darkness. His hand held a crosier; his head was
crowned with a towering mitre; his white beard descended to the girdle
that encircled his rich pontificals; and he looked, in his embroidered
‘sandal shoon’ and gorgeous array, the mitred abbot of some ancient
monastery, which the holy rage of the Saxon reformation had levelled in
the dust. But the visage of the sainted man was fearfully severe in its
expression, and the sleeping mortal fell prostrate before the unearthly
eye that sent its piercing regards to search his inmost soul.
‘Wretch,’ said the shining apparition, in a voice of thunder, ‘raise thy
head and hear thy doom, and that of thy sacrilegious brothers.’
Barry did raise his head in obedience to the terrific mandate, though his
soul sank within him, before his dreadful voice and eye of terror.
‘Because you,’ continued the holy man, ‘have violated the sanctity of
the place consecrated to God, you and your race shall wander homeless
vagabonds, and your devoted heads, as a sign and a warning to future
times, shall abide the pelting of every storm, and the severity of every
changing season, unprotected by the defence which nature has bestowed
upon all men, till your name and race be faded from the land.’
At this wrathful denunciation the terrified man falls prostrate to
deprecate the fearful malediction, and awakes with a cry of terror which
alarms the listeners. As he proceeds to reveal the terrible vision which
his sleeping eyes beheld, the crash of thunder, the flash of lightning,
and the sweep of the whirlwind, envelope them. As the day dawns, they
are found senseless, at a considerable distance from the spot where
they had lain the preceding night to guard the fatal tree. The thorn
had likewise disappeared; and, strange to relate, the raven hair which
clustered in long ringlets, that any wearer of the ancient _coolin_
might well have envied, no longer adorns their manly heads. The fierce
whirlwind, that in mockery of human daring had tossed them, like the
stubble of the field, had realized the dream of the sleeper, and borne
off their long profuse hair in its vengeful sweep.”
Such was the narrative of the last representative of the “Bald
Barrys.” I bequeath it to the reader without note or comment. He of
course will regard it according to his particular bias--will wonder
how an imaginative people will attribute the downfall of families, or
the entailment of hereditary disease, to the effect of supernatural
intervention; or exclaim, as some very pious and moral men have done, that
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”