Part 8 (1/2)
”You did win the palm, Phaddhy, I'll not deny it; but you are the only man that ever bet me at either of the athletics.'
”And I'll say this for yer Reverence, that you are one of the best and most able-bodied gintlemen I ever engaged with. Ah! Father Con, I'm past all that now--but no matter, here's yer Reverence's health, and a shake.
hands; Father Philomy, yer health, docthor: yer strange Reverence's health--Captain Wilson, not forgetting you, sir: Mr. Pettier, yours; and I hope to see you soon with the robes upon you, and to be able to prache us a good sarmon. Parrah More--_wus dha lauv_ (* give me yer hand), you steeple you; and I haven't the smallest taste of objection to what Father Philemy hinted at--yell obsarve. Kitty, you thief of the world, where are you? Your health, avourneen; come here, and give us your fist, Katty: bad manners to me if I could forget you afther all;--the best crathur, your Reverence, under the sun, except when yer Reverence puts yer _comedher_ on her at confession, and then she's a little, sharp or so, not a doubt of it: but no matther, Katty ahagur, you do it all for the best. And Father Philemy, maybe it's myself didn't put the thrick upon you in the Maragy More, about Katty's death--ha, ha, ha! Jack M'Craner, yer health--all yer healths, and yer welcome here, if you war seven times as many. Briney, where are you, ma bouchal? Come up and shake hands wid yer father, as well as another--come up, acushla, and kiss me. Ah, Briney, my poor fellow, ye'll never be the cut of a man yer father was; but no matther, avourneen, ye'll be a betther man, I hope; and G.o.d knows you may asy be that, for Father Philemy, I'm not what I ought to be, yer Reverence; however, I may mend, and will, maybe, before a month of Sundays goes over me: but, for all that, Briney, I hope to see the day when you'll be sitting an ordained priest at my own table; if I once saw that, I could die contented--so mind yer larning, acushla, and, his Reverence here will back you, and make inth.o.r.est to get you into the college. Musha, G.o.d pity them crathurs at the door--aren't they gone yet? Listen to them coughin', for fraid we'd forget them: and throth and they won't be forgot this bout any how--Katty, avourneen, give them every one, big and little, young and ould, their skinful--don't lave a wrinkle in them; and see, take one of them bottles--the crathurs, they're starved sitting there all night in the cowld--and give them a couple of gla.s.ses a-piece--it's good, yer Reverence, to have the poor body's blessing at all times; and now, as I was saying, Here's all yer healths! and from the very veins of my heart yer welcome here.”
Our readers may perceive that Phaddhy
”Was not only blest, but glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious;”
for, like the generality of our peasantry, the _native_ drew to the surface of his character those warm, hospitable, and benevolent virtues, which a purer system of morals and education would most certainly keep in full action, without running the risk, as in the present instance, of mixing bad habits with frank, manly, and generous qualities.
”I'll not go, Con--I tell you I'll not go till I sing another song.
Phaddhy, you're a prince--but where's the use of lighting more candles now, man, than you had in the beginning of the night? Is Captain Wilson gone? Then, peace be with him; it's a pity he wasn't on the right side, for he's not the worst of them. Phaddhy, where are you?”
”Why, yer Reverence,” replied Katty, ”he's got a little unwell, and jist laid down his head a bit.”
”Katty,” said Father Con, ”you had better get a couple of the men to accompany Father Philemy home; for though the night's clear, he doesn't see his way very well in the dark--poor man, his eye-sight's failing him fast.”
”Then, the more's the pity, Father Con. Here, Denis, let yourself and Mat go home wid Father Philemy.”
”Good-night, Katty,” said Father Con--”Good-night: and may our blessing sanctify you all.”
”Good-night, Father Con, ahagur,” replied Katty; ”and for goodness' sake see that they take care of Father Philemy, for it's himself that's the blessed and holy crathur, and the pleasant gintleman out and out.”
”Good-night, Katty,” again repeated Father Con, as the cavalcade proceeded in a body--”Good-night!” And so ended the Station.
THE PARTY FIGHT AND FUNERAL.
We ought, perhaps, to inform our readers that the connection between a party fight and funeral is sufficiently strong to justify the author in cla.s.sing them under the t.i.tle which is prefixed to this story. The one being usually the natural result of the other, is made to proceed from it, as is, unhappily, too often the custom in real life among the Irish.
It has been long laid down as a universal principle, that self-preservation is the first law of nature. An Irishman, however, has nothing to do with this; he disposes of it as he does with the other laws, and washes his hands out of it altogether. But commend him to a fair, dance, funeral, or wedding, or to any other sport where there is a likelihood of getting his head or his bones broken, and if he survive, he will remember you with a kindness peculiar to himself to the last day of his life--will drub you from head to heel if he finds that any misfortune has kept you out of a row beyond the usual period of three months--will render the same service to any of your friends that stand in need of it; or, in short, will go to the world's end, or fifty miles farther, as he himself would say, to serve you, provided you can procure him a bit of decent fighting. Now, in truth and soberness, it is difficult to account for this propensity; especially when the task of ascertaining it is a.s.signed to those of another country, or even to those Irishmen whose rank in life places them too far from the customs, prejudices, and domestic opinions of their native peasantry, none of which can be properly known without mingling with them. To my own knowledge, however, it proceeds in a great measure from education. And here I would beg leave to point out an omission of which the several boards of education have been guilty, and which, I believe, no one but myself has yet been sufficiently acute and philosophical to ascertain, as forming a _sine qua non_ in the national instruction of the lower orders of Irishmen.
The cream of the matter is this:--a species of ambition prevails in the Green Isle, not known in any other country. It is an ambition of about three miles by four in extent; or, in other words, is bounded by the limits of the parish in which the subject of it may reside. It puts itself forth early in the character, and a hardy perennial it is. In my own case, its first development was noticed in the hedge-school which I attended. I had not been long there, till I was forced to declare myself either for the Caseys or the Murphys, two tiny factions, that had split the school between them. The day on which the ceremony of my declaration took place was a solemn one. After school, we all went to the bottom of a deep valley, a short distance from the school-house; up to the moment of our a.s.sembling there, I had not taken my stand under either banner: that of the Caseys was a sod of turf, stuck on the end of a broken fis.h.i.+ng-rod--the eagle of the Murphy's was a Cork red potato, hoisted in the same manner. The turf was borne by an urchin, who afterwards distinguished himself in fairs and markets as a _builla batthah_ (*
cudgel player) of the first grade, and from this circ.u.mstance he was nicknamed _Parrah Rackhan_. (* Paddy the Rioter) The potato was borne by little Mickle M'Phauden Murphy, who afterwards took away Katty Bane Sheridan, without asking either her own consent or her father's. They were all then boys, it is true, but they gave a tolerable promise of that eminence which they subsequently attained.
When we arrived at the bottom of the glen, the Murphys and the Caseys, including their respective followers, ranged themselves on either side of a long line, which was drawn between the belligerent powers with the but-end of one of the standards. Exactly on this line was I placed. The word was then put to me in full form--”Whether will you side with the dacent Caseys, or the blackguard Murphys?” ”Whether will you side with the dacent Murphys, or the blackguard Caseys?” ”The potato for ever!”
said I, throwing up my caubeen, and running over to the Murphy standard.
In the twinkling of an eye we were at it; and in a short time the deuce an eye some of us had to twinkle. A battle royal succeeded, that lasted near half an hour, and it would probably have lasted above double the time, were it not for the appearance of the ”master,” who was seen by a little shrivelled vidette, who wanted an arm, and could take no part in the engagement. This was enough--we instantly radiated in all possible directions, so that by the time he had descended through the intricacies of the glen to the field of battle, neither victor nor vanquished was visible, except, perhaps, a straggler or two as they topped the brow of the declivity, looking back over their shoulders, to put themselves out of doubt as to their visibility by the master. They seldom looked in vain, however, for there he usually stood, shaking at us his rod, silently prophetic of its application on the following day. This threat, for the most part, ended in smoke; for except he horsed about forty or fifty of us, the infliction of impartial justice was utterly out of his power.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PAGE 763-- Usually stood, shaking at us his rod]
But besides this, there never was a realm in which the evils of a divided cabinet were more visible: the truth is, the monarch himself was under the influence of female government--an influence which he felt it either contrary to his inclination or beyond his power to throw off. ”Poor Norah, long may you reign!” we often used to exclaim, to the visible mortification of the ”master,” who felt the benevolence of the wish bottomed upon an indirect want of allegiance to himself. Well, it was a touching scene!--how we used to stand with the waistbands of our small-clothes cautiously grasped in our hands, with a timid show of resistance, our brave red faces s...o...b..red over with tears, as we stood marked for execution! Never was there a finer specimen of deprecation in eloquence than we then exhibited--the supplicating look right up into the master's face--the touching modulation of the whine--the additional tightness and caution with which we grasped the waistbands with one hand, when it was necessary to use the other in wiping our eyes and noses with the polished sleeve-cuff--the sincerity and vehemence with which we promised never to be guilty again, still shrewdly including the condition of present impunity for our offence:--”this--one--time-- master, if ye plaise, sir;” and the utter hopelessness and despair which were legible in the last groan, as we grasp the ”master's” leg in utter recklessness of judgment, were all perfect in their way. Reader, have you ever got a reprieve from the gallows? I beg pardon, my dear sir; I only meant to ask, are you capable of entering into what a personage of that description might be supposed to feel, on being informed, after the knot had been neatly tied under the left ear, and the cap drawn over his eyes, that her majesty had granted him a full pardon? But you remember your own schoolboy days, and that's enough.
The nice discrimination with which Norah used to time her interference was indeed surprising. G.o.d help us! limited was our experience, and shallow our little judgments, or we might have known what the master meant, when with upraised arm hung over us, his eye was fixed upon the door of the kitchen, waiting for Norah's appearance.
Long, my fair and virtuous countrywomen, I repeat it to you all, as I did to Norah--may you reign in the hearts and affections of your husbands (but nowhere else), the grace, ornaments, and happiness of their hearths and lives, you jewels, you! You are paragons of all that's good, and your feelings are highly creditable to yourselves and to humanity.
When Norah advanced, with her brawny, uplifted arm (for she was a powerful woman) and forbidding aspect, to interpose between us and the avenging, terrors of the birch, do you think that she did not reflect honor on her s.e.x and the national character! I sink the base allusion to the _miscaun_* of fresh b.u.t.ter, which we had placed in her hands that morning, or the dish of eggs, or of meal, which we had either begged or stolen at home, as a present for her; disclaiming, at the same time, the rascally idea of giving it as a bribe, or from any motive beneath the most lofty minded and disinterested generosity on our part.