Chapter IV: The Constable’s Christmas Collation (1)

To the surprise of the agent, Pat McCarthy returned no answer to his note, and to the surprise of the policeman the last addition to its literary feasts appeared to have temporarily disgusted the aquatic bird, for it vanished from the precincts of the barracks, and was seen no more for a fortnight. For a time this mysterious disappearance somewhat annoyed, even if it did not alarm, the dual conspirators, for there was a bare possibility that some hungry laborer on the estate might have killed the bird and tried to eat it, possibly discovering the lost receipt among the other curiosities absorbed into its digestive interior. But when a week passed, and nothing was heard of either the missing dinner which the Ballyblank constabulary had anticipated blunting their teeth on at Christmas, or of the cerulean document obtained by stratagem and lost by accident, the worthy pair began to breathe more freely. Some tramp or wayfarer, no doubt, had deprived the barracks of its treasure.

On Dec. 16, notice was served on Patrick McCarthy that at the fortnightly sessions to be held at Ballyblank on the first Tuesday after Christmas, it was the intention of George Macgrabb, Esq., J. P., agent to Lord Clonboy, D. L., J. P., etc., to apply for a decree of ejectment against the said Patrick McCarthy for arrears of rent and costs, and the said Patrick McCarthy was required to attend and show cause, if any, why such decree should not be granted. Still no response from the obnoxious tenant.

On Christmas morning the agent drove over to the barracks.

“Constable,” said he, “I expect I shall require your assistance in a day or two. I’ll get the ejectment to-morrow. I haven’t heard a word from McCarthy. I suppose he means to claim the rent, and say the receipt was stolen during your search. It will be useless. Those copies of the _Irish World_ found in his desk have turned every magistrate on the bench against him. They won’t believe him on a million oaths. We landlords stick to each other. I’ll get the decree, and by G--d, I’ll put it in execution in twenty-four hours unless Miss Nelly says she’ll be Mrs. MacG. and Master Harry clears out to America or Hong-Kong. Have every available man ready. McCarthy’s a popular man with the other rapscallions of tenants, and they might show fight. We’ll shoot them down, if they do, the dogs. I’ll telegraph to the county town for more men.”

“It won’t be necessary,” growled Gallagher, showing his teeth like a vicious cat. “They haven’t forgotten Malone’s eviction. By Jupiter, didn’t we scatter the women that day! Killed one. She had twenty grains of buckshot in her. Never fired a cleaner shot in my life. They made a fuss about it, of course. What good did it do the fools? Did it save young Dermody when he kicked so about us turning his old mother out? He’ll remember the taste of my bayonet, if he lives long enough. Then look how the crowds gathered when we executed the writ against O’Brien. Lord! how we peppered them. Do you mind--”

The brutal reminiscences over which both the crowbar heroes sat gloating and smacking their lips were interrupted by the entrance of a sub with a hamper and a note. The constable gazed at both with surprise. To the hamper was attached a card:--

“A Christmas Box--From Harry McCarthy.”

“Don’t touch it! Take it away! It’s dynamite!” screamed the magistrate, with blue lips and pallid features. But at that moment there came from the box a “Quack! Quack!” so loud, so unmistakable, that both Gallagher and Macgrabb exclaimed in one whisper, “The goose! Great Heavens, the goose!”

They opened the basket with trembling fingers, and there, sure enough, as scraggy, as bony, as void of everything but skin and feathers as ever, was Macgrabb’s Christmas peace-offering to the other limb of the law.

The constable turned to the note with dilating eyes. It was some time before he could read its contents:--

_My poor Gallagher_,--I do not wish to deprive you of your
Christmas repast. The thought of your misery, if doomed to a cold
collation of bread and cheese, has overcome my resentment at your
last visit. But I would appeal to you not to sacrifice the bird. It
has been a most interesting visitor to me. It is not so much its
exploring turn of mind that I admire--though certainly it is the
most inquisitive goose I ever saw. During its stay with me I
confined its tours of investigation indoors. It would have been
well for you to have done the same. If you had kept its intellect
employed in the kitchen or the guard-room, and limited its
digestive experiments to crockery ware, old hats, paper collars,
and ink-bottles, as I have done, you would possibly be happier
to-day. Its thirst for knowledge is positively alarming. I
discovered that when I found it making a meal off one of my most
valued surgical books. After that I kept it in my bedroom, and it
has at this moment stowed away in its ravenous recesses a pair of
blankets, three sheets, a choice assortment of carpet and
hearth-rug, and a wash-hand basin. I think it would have been
better for you to have sacrificed a linen-draper’s shop, and kept
your goose at home. When it came round our farm on a voyage of
discovery with a blue rent receipt in its bill, I recognized the
mistake you committed in not treating it as a suspect or a
treason-felony prisoner. I succeeded in rescuing the document,
which it proposed studying, I have no doubt, when it could spare
time from its topographical surveys. I shall have the pleasure of
exhibiting the autograph in which the animal took such an absorbing
interest at the Petty Sessions Court to-morrow to its original
author. My respects to Macgrabb. If you feel no further curiosity
in the goose, perhaps he might be inclined to preserve it in his
ancestral halls. If he wrote a history of its connection with a
strategic stroke of policy he recently indulged in, the perusal
would be both edifying and instructive to his descendants and
dependants, as representative of one of which classes, perhaps
both, I tender you my profound sympathy, and remain,

Yours, as ever,
HARRY MCCARTHY.

P. S.--I am writing a little farce called “The Peeler’s Goose,”
which will be produced at our society rooms shortly. Shall I send
you tickets?

They were two very sickly men who bade each other good day soon after they had mastered the contents of this epistle. Macgrabb did not apply for the decree of ejectment, but Harry McCarthy was there, and told the whole story in his rollicking fashion. He always calls the incident the greatest double surprise in his experience, but admits that he cannot say which was the greater surprise--that which he felt when he encountered Gallagher’s goose, or that which thrilled the peeler when he got it back again.

OUR LAND SHALL BE FREE.

Brightly our swords in the sunlight are gleaming,
Mountain and valley re-echo our tread;
Proudly above us the sunburst is streaming;
Firm is each footstep, erect every head.
Ages of trampled right lend our arms threefold might,
Slaves to the stranger no longer we’ll be;
Soon shall the foeman fly when our fierce battle-cry
Wakens the nation--Our land shall be free!

We think of our kinsmen and brothers still pining
In cold, gloomy dungeons of England afar,
And swiftly strike home with our steel brightly shining,
For know that each blow, comrades, loosens a bar!
What though our force be few, each man is tried and true;
Tried on the mountain or trained to the sea;
On to the contest, then, up with the green again!
Death to the tyrant--Our land shall be free!

The spirit of Brian is hovering o’er us,
The shades of our fathers arise from their graves;
Swiftly we’ll drive the false foemen before us;
While we’ve blood in our veins we will never be slaves!
Erin has bent too long under a load of wrong,
But now she rises erect from her knee,
And, by the God who gave strength to the true and brave,
Death will be ours, or our land shall be free!

England no longer can mock or deride us;
Fain would she bribe, but her temptings are vain;
Factions or chieftains no more can divide us;
True to the cause we shall ever remain.
Yes! to our native land faithful till death we stand;
Freedom for Erin our watchword will be;
Ye who would fain divide, traitors all stand aside,
Soldiers, press onward--Our land shall be free!

PHILIPSON’S PARTY.

Peter Philipson, Jr., chief clerk in the wholesale firm of Philipson Brothers, tallow chandlers and soap-boilers, Limehouse, London, arrived in Ballymurphy, County Cork, on the first day of March, 1880, for the express purpose of collecting the rents on his father’s estate there, which would fall due on the 31st of said month, and also of screwing out of the tenants various arrears which Mr. Gleeson, a former agent, had allowed to accumulate since the purchase of the property some three years previously by the senior Philipson. That enterprising candle manufacturer had invested in land just as he would in grease--with a view to a dividend; and his first action had been to raise the rents all round, a business arrangement which the obstinate farmers refused to view in anything like the cool, matter-of-fact manner in which it was regarded by Old Soapsuds,--which was the very irreverend title those benighted beings bestowed upon one of the most solvent merchants of the city of London. The agent, Mr. Gleeson, had been agent during the regime of the “old stock,” who had got along very comfortably with the tenantry until reverses on the turf and bad luck at the roulette table had forced the last of them to dispose of the estate to the highest bidder, the aforementioned manipulator of tallow and alkali. Mr. Gleeson had protested against the increased rents; he averred positively that it would be impossible to gather them, and, to do him justice, he made no effort in that direction, cheerfully accepting whatever he got, and calmly ignoring the reiterated mandates of the irate Philipson to evict Donovan and sell up Sullivan, and play the deuce generally with the rest of the tenants.

At last the man of soap bars and long dips had dismissed his easy-going agent and sent his son across, armed with plenary powers of eviction, ejectment, and all the multifarious legal weapons in the armory of landlordism. Young Peter felt fully equal to the task of reducing the entire Irish population to meek submission, and wasn’t going to be put down by a score or two beggarly Cork men, don’t you know. Peter was smart; Peter was more than smart, he was the most determined fellah of any fellah he knew. Why, he had been accustomed to deal with rascally workmen who were always wanting more wages, and he had once sacked fifty--fifty in a batch. The beggars were glad to send their wives to beg ’em back. He’d make these Irishmen sit up. He’d show ’em what was what. They had no old slow-coach of a Gleeson to deal with now. They had Peter Philipson--“no-nonsense Peter,” as they called him in the city.

The Manor House was fitted up for his temporary residence. He retained the old housekeeper and the cook and the coachman and a stable boy, only bringing from London with him his body-servant, one John Thomas Jones, a stolid cockney, who bade his relatives a sad adieu under the evident impression that he was about to face perils and catastrophes of the most alarming description among the cannibal Irish. Peter’s first proceeding was to present various letters of introduction to the neighboring landlords and the officers of the adjoining garrison; his next to extend to them an invitation to a soiree or party to be given as a kind of house-warming by him on the 20th of March, by which time he expected to be in a position to tell them that he had brought the recalcitrant occupiers of “his father’s ground” to their proper senses. These social duties performed, Mr. Philipson, Jr., despatched separate missives to each tenant, setting forth the amount of his arrears, including the incoming gale, and demanded a prompt settlement under penalty of immediate law proceedings. That task over, Peter rested upon his oars, purred contentedly to himself for a few days, wrote to his father that he had shaken the beggars up, and indicted a lengthy epistle to the _Limehouse Chronicle_ on the proper method of settling the Irish difficulty.

On the morning of the 19th, Peter was astonished by a visit from his tenantry in a body. His first impression was that they had come to pay up arrears, and he chuckled at a success which he had scarcely expected so soon. On entering the room into which his housekeeper had invited the farmers, he changed his opinion. They hadn’t altogether the look of men who had come in either a penitent or a suppliant mood. Most of them retained their head-gear, and one or two were actually smoking. To say that Peter was amazed at this lack of respect for his presence would be a weak description of his feelings. He was shocked, startled, indignant, and, indeed, a little frightened, into the bargain. Recovering himself, he asked in a voice that sounded as if some of his own soap had got round his tongue, “Well, you’ve come to settle, I suppose?”

“Yes,” replied a sturdy, frieze-coated peasant, advancing from the rest without removing his caubeen. “You’re right; we want a settlement.”

“Ah, I thought I would bring you to your senses,” said Peter with an ill-disguised sneer.

Frieze-coat flushed and retorted, “It seems to me that you’ve got the wrong bull by the tail this time,” at which a broad smile lit up the twenty-odd faces, and there were one or two audible guffaws.

“Wrong bull? Who’s talking about bulls? What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re here to bring _you_ to _your_ senses; not to show that we’ve parted with our own.”

“I--I--” stammered Peter. “Upon my soul, my deah fellah, I don’t understand you.”

“Well, thin, I’ll try to insinse you. You’ve sint us notes askin’ for arrears that we don’t mane to pay. Yer ould father’s been thryin’ to raise rints on us that’s too high as it is. We ped the ould rint as long as we cud, but bad saysons an’ poor crops have med even the ould rint too heavy; so we’ve detarmined, every man, to offer you a fair rint for this gale, Griffith’s valuation, divil a ha’penny more, an’ if you don’t like to take that, troth you may whistle for your rints, for bad luck to the shilling you’ll get, at all, at all.”

Peter turned blue, red, yellow, white, and mottled by turns, and was nearly ten minutes searching for his voice before he found it. When he did get hold of it, he hardly recognized the tones as his own. “This is mo--mo--monstrous,” he ejaculated. “Begone! I shall have bailiffs in every cabin in the parish before the month’s out. I’ll evict--I’ll-I’ll--by Jove! I’ll--I’ll--Look here, go to Hong-Kong out of this!”

“Oh, we’re goin’,” responded the spokesman; “but, before we go, I’d like to give you a little bit of advice. We med you a fair offer, an’ ye’ve only returned abuse. Did you ever hear of Captain Boycott? Well, begorra, before this day-week you’ll think Captain Boycott a happy man to what you’ll be. We’re going to do the most complete, out-an’-out, thunderin’ boycottin’ on you that ever shook a man out of his breeches. Good day, an’ good luck to you. I hope your education in the fine arts of washin’ and cookin’, diggin’ yer own praties an’ lightin’ yer own fires, blackin’ yer own boots, an’ starchin’ yer own shirts, wasn’t neglected in yer youth, for ye’ll need it all, I assure you, on the word of a Sullivan. Come along, boys. Three cheers for the Land League!” A thundering hurrah shook the oaken rafters again and again, as the deputation filed slowly out of the room, and Peter sank into the nearest chair with a dim conviction surging through his brain that there was something wrong somewhere in the terrestrial system, and that Bow Lane, Limehouse, was a far more desirable location for his active genius than Ballymurphy, County Cork.

After half an hour’s diversified meditation, Peter decided that things were not so gloomy, after all. He would see his lawyer, and get out the decrees at once. As for the threat of boycotting, what did he care about that? He had no desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the tenantry, so how the deuce could he suffer by their refusal to speak or deal with him? Ha! ha! by Jove, it was absurd, ridiculously absurd. In his revived spirits Peter actually commenced an original fandango, but was interrupted in his terpsichorean evolutions by the entrance of his man Jones, over whose flabby countenance a facial eclipse had fallen, which at once arrested his master’s attention and his quickstep.

“Eh? Well? What’s up now?” queried Philipson.

“Hup! Heverythinks hup. Missus Moore, she’s hup and ’ooked it. The cook, she’s bin and gone and flued, also, likewise. The coachman and the ’ossler they’ve sloped, an’ the ’osses is a ’avin’ a jubilee on the front lawn. The kitchen fire, it’s gone out, and I do verily believe there ain’t a mossel of coal in the ’ouse. The butcher, ’e’s a bloomer, ’e is. Blow me if that ’ere butcher didn’t turn back with the legs o’ mutton, an’ the rounds o’ beef, an’ the shoulders o’ lamb as was a hordered for the lay-out to-morrow; and the fowl man, ’e did ditto with the turkeys an’ chickens, an’ the grocer, ’e’s another ditto, an’ I’ve come to give my notice. When I engaged to love, ’onor, an’ obey--I mean to brush your clothes an’ do all the other cetrys of a wally de sham--I didn’t bargain, not by no manner of means, for starvation. You may be as much Robinson Keruso as you like, but you don’t lug John Thomas in for Man Friday. Adoo. Fare you well. I’m going back to the roast beef of hold Hengland and Mary Ann Timmons, which, if she could see her faithful Jones a wearin’ to a skeleton she would break her ’art. Good-by, sir.”

Before Peter could gather in the full drift of his servitor’s disjointed sentences, that injured retainer was away, speeding to the nearest railway station with a firm conviction that his life depended on the distance he could place before nightfall between himself and Ballymurphy.

A hasty exploration of the premises convinced his master that he had spoken only too truly. There was not a servant in the house. The fires were all out; the larder was very nearly empty; the nearest provision store was four miles off; if he knew how to harness a horse to the gig he couldn’t do it, for, rejoicing in their unexpected freedom, his equine possessions were gaily gambolling in distant pastures; and Peter groaned as he pictured to himself the visit on the morrow of his invited guests, Captain Devereux and Lieutenant Talbot of the Lancers, the Rev. Jabez Wilkins, with his portly wife and buxom daughters, the neighboring squires from half a dozen estates--a goodly company of fifteen or sixteen in all, with not so much as a scullery maid to attend to their wants, and only three bottles of porter, a box of cigars, and a couple of loaves to feast their appetites!

It was awful. Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage, Casabianca on the burning deck, a Chinese mandarin in a Kearney convention, a fat alderman in a narrow lane with a Texan steer charging on his rear, Jonah in the whale’s belly, or a shipwrecked Mormon missionary contemplating burial in the digestive recesses of a tribe of cannibals may afford striking examples of perturbation of spirits, but Peter felt that day as if he would gladly change lots with any or all of them. What should he do? Would he tie black crape to the front knocker, with a card announcing his premature decease? Would he fly to other and fairer climes, where boycotting was unknown, and butchers, poulterers, grocers, cooks, and housekeepers had feeling hearts within their tender bosoms? Would he poison, hang, shoot, drown, or smother himself?

He didn’t do any of these things. He sought out Frieze-coat Sullivan. With tears in his eyes he besought that red-haired Cork-man to remove the edict which had brought desolation to his hearth and affliction to his soul. Sullivan was as merciful as he was mighty. He relented. He restored to Peter his satellite of the saucepan, his janitor of the stable, his legs of mutton, his groceries, and his peace of mind. The party came off, after all. Peter preserved his credit as a host, but it was at the sacrifice of his laurels as a land-agent.

If any reader desires now to ascertain the stormy depths of a soap-boiler’s soul, he has only do drop into the counting-house of Philipson Brothers, in the East end of London, and ask the manager his candid opinion of the Irish land question. He will probably be consigned to the nearest vat of boiling grease; but he will, at any rate, be firmly convinced that Philipson, Jr., entertains very strong ideas on the subject.

THE FELONS OF OUR LAND.

Fill up once more, we’ll drink a toast
To comrades far away;
No nation on the earth can boast
Of braver hearts than they.
And though they sleep in dungeons deep,
Or flee, outlawed and banned,
We love them yet, we ne’er forget
The felons of our land!

In boyhood’s bloom and manhood’s pride,
Foredoomed by alien laws,
Some on the scaffold proudly died
For holy Ireland’s cause.
And brothers, say, shall we to-day
Unmoved like cowards stand,
While traitors shame and foes defame
The felons of our land?

Some in the convict’s dreary cell
Have found a living tomb,
And some unseen, unfriended, fell
Within its silent gloom.
Yet what care we, although it be
Trod by a ruffian band,
God bless the clay where rest to-day
The felons of our land!

Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown,
Oh, little do we care,
A felon’s cap’s the noblest crown
An Irish head can wear!
And every Gael in Innisfail
Who scorns the serf’s vile brand,
From Lee to Boyne would gladly join
The felons of our land!

AN OFFICIAL VALUATION.

The wearied Sub-Commissioner was waiting for his car,
In the hospitable shelter of a Connemara bar;
And as he contemplated the interminable rain,
On the farm he had to visit he reflected with much pain,
For the roads were very dirty, and the distance very far.

The atmosphere was chilly, and the footway was a swamp,
And the spirits of the barrister (just like the morning) damp,
As he thought of bronchial attacks,
Pneumatic pains, rheumatic racks,
And the other consequences of his valuating tramp.

The lawyers had departed from the village with their spoil,
The landlord, and the agent, and the tenant shirked the toil
Of plodding ’mid the mist and fog,
O’er slimy clay and treacherous bog,
And had left him single-handed to investigate the soil.

His tumbler he replenished and he took another sip,
And as the grateful Jameson was moistening his lip,
His gloomy face relaxed,--indeed, he actually laughed;
He had drawn an inspiration in addition to the draught
That pointed an escape from his anticipated trip.

He whispered to the jarvey--“You remember Murphy’s land;
Do you think that you could manage in my shoes for once to stand?
That is, could you perambulate
Around that gentleman’s estate
In a pair of boots I’ll lend you to accomplish my demand?

“You needn’t spend a week or so, you needn’t spend a day,
But just long enough to gather up some samples of the clay,
Return the muddy boots to me
Unbrushed, because I wish to be
Acquainted with the profits that that soil is fit to pay.”

That carman took instructions, but they say he took no more,
He didn’t take a dozen steps outside the tavern door,
He simply mopped the boots around
The dirtiest adjacent ground,
And returned them to the owner when an hour or so was o’er.

And that smart agriculturist a brief five minutes spent
Examining the Bluchers, and, officially content,
Proceeded the next morning to adjudicate the rent,
Remarking he was satisfied, convinced, and more than sure
That the soil of Mr. Murphy was so miserably poor,
That he must give reductions of some thirty-three per cent.

A BEWILDERED BOYCOTTER.

I’m diminted,--this is awful; so it is
My spirit’s in low water, an’ no wonder;
’Tis worse than whin the price of butter riz
The time I lost my churning through the thunder.
Mickey Flanagan has been an’ paid his rint,
An’ the Laygue that rules this part of Tipperary--
Curse of Cromwell on their bitther hearts of flint!--
Have resolved to boycott him an’ little Mary.

I wouldn’t mind the ould man,--not a jot;
I always looked upon him as a blaggard,
Since his language was so disperately hot,
Once he caught me kissin’ Mary in the haggard.
They might pass their resolutions by the score
About him, and I would niver prove contrary,
But my feelin’s are distracted, sad, an’ sore
Whin I’m called upon to boycott little Mary.

Sure, it’s mostly for her sake I go to mass,
Half a dozen miles across the fields, on Sunday;
An’ if I have to schorn her whin I pass,
Troth I’ll be a ravin’ lunatic on Monday.
Her beseechin’ eyes will follow me all day;
They’ll haunt me in the byre and in the dairy,
An’ I’ll waken in the mornin’, bald or gray,--
Black misfortune! if I boycott little Mary.

If they wanted me to bate a peeler blue,
Ram writs down half a dozen bailiffs’ throttles,
Or immigrate to far-off Timbuctoo,
An’ live on impty oyster shells an’ bottles,
I would do my best endayvors to obey;
But to tear from out my heart that winnin’ fairy
Is beyant me; so I’ll meet my friends an’ say,--
Divil sweep me if I’ll boycott little Mary!

A COMPLAINT OF COERCION.

O Peggy, darlin’, listen to my sorrowful lamint,
And help me to recover from my state of discontint;
There’s an end to fun an’ sportin’ in these black and bitther days,
And we’ll have to drop our coortin’ by the moon’s enchanting rays.
For there isn’t a dacent gossoon,
By the light of that same silver moon,
Found out of his bed,
But will straightway be led
To a cushion of plank,
That of feathers is blank,
An’ he won’t fall in love with too soon.

Now it’s inconvanient, Peggy, to be spoonin’ in the day,
With all your male relations or your neighbors in the way;
Your boy’s poor heart, in lonesomeness, must palpitate and pant
Beneath the cowld inspection of your mother or your aunt;
An’ he’ll have to repress his ould taste
For resting his arm round your waist,
An’ except for a sigh,
Or a glance of your eye,
Or an odd little squeeze
That there’s nobody sees,
His comfort will be of the laste.

Do you mind last winter, Peggy, when the snow was on the ground,
Every night all stiff an’ frozen in the boreen I’d be found?
I didn’t care for painful demonstrations in my toes,
I didn’t feel the icicles that beautified my nose;
I despised my five miles of a thramp
In the dark, widout moon, star, or lamp,
For I knew at its ind
I could always dipind
That some one I’d find
Who had sootherings kind,
To rescue my sperits from damp.

But now, bad fortune, Peggy, if I venture out at all,
The peelers will be afther me with buckshot an’ with ball;
And if I keep purshuing my perambulatin’ course,
I shall find myself a target for the County Kerry force.
An’ some night I’ll be brought in my gore,
Stritched out on an ould cabin door,
With six ounces of lead
Settled inside my head,
An’ my bosom, that’s true
As the saints unto you,
Disarranged by an ounce or two more.

Or I might be taken, Peggy, an’ before a magisthrate,
Be called upon the rayson of my wanderin’s to state;
And it wouldn’t suit your character for me to tell the truth,
That my heart was thirsty, and I sought my girl to quinch its drooth;
So I’d have to tell thunderin’ lies,
And the law has such far-seeing eyes,
’Twould find thim all out,
And there isn’t a doubt
Introduced I would be,
By some dirty J. P.,
To a suit of the Government frieze.

O’NEILL’S ADDRESS.

BENBURB: JUNE 6, 1646.

Gallant sons of Innisfail,
Ye whose stout hearts never quail,
Though no glittering coats of mail
Their proud throbbings hide:
Hark! yon distant sullen hum!
’Tis the rolling of the drum.
See! our Saxon foemen come
In their wrath and pride.

Meet them, comrades, face to face,
Meet them as becomes our race,
Let no shadow of disgrace
Dim our spotless name.
Front to front, unshrinking, stand,
Fire each heart and nerve each hand,
Strike for God and fatherland,
Liberty and fame!

Kinsmen, they are still the same
As when, centuries past, they came
To our shores, and blood and flame
Followed in their track;
By the still uncancelled debt
We were cowards to forget,
By the wrongs we suffer yet,
Drive them headlong back!

As when angry billows leap,
Like proud chargers from the deep,
Heaven’s more mighty tempests sweep
All their wrath to spray,
So their glinting waves of steel
Erin’s whirlwind charge shall feel
Till their serried columns reel,
Scattered in dismay.

Strike, that Ireland’s sons may be
Still unconquered, proud, and free;
Strike, and fear not,--victory
Waits on every blow;
Strike, that we may never roam
Exiles o’er the ocean’s foam;
Strike together, and strike home,
Vengeance on the foe!

THE FENIAN’S DREAM.

CHRISTMAS, 1867.

Through London’s dull and murky air
The merry Christmas bells
Flung out, in cadence rich and rare,
Their sonorous throbs and swells.
To the half-slumbering town they spoke
Of peace and God’s good-will,
And seemed to chase with pealing stroke
The fiends of hate and ill;
But, ah, how cruelly they broke
Around dark Pentonville!

There, ’twixt the bars, the pale moonbeams,
Half timid, forced their way,
And fell in slender, silvery streams,
Down where the convict lay.
They glanced a moment round the place,
Cold, comfortless, and bare,
Then, in a pitying embrace,
Like angel spirits there,
Caressed the careworn, pallid face,
So wan, and yet so fair.

They seemed to whisper softly while
Around his head they strayed,
For o’er the pale, thin lips a smile,
Half joy, half anguish, played;
As if the tender moonbeams sought
Bright tales of hope to tell,
And the day memories, bitter, wrought
Such fancies to dispel;
And so his two dream guardians fought
Within his lonely cell.

His dream was of the loved old land
He never could forget--
The dungeon’s gloom, the convict’s brand,
Had not subdued it yet;
The land of legend and of lay,
Of mountain, stream, and lake,
Of blossomed heath and sheltering bay,
Of forest, glen, and brake,
Where highland sprite and lowland fay
A home forever make.

The land whose children toil and bleed,
And drudge and starve in vain,
For where the peasant sows the seed,
A stranger reaps the grain.
The Isle of Saints--where knaves and spies
Flourish and thrive apace;
Where fortune must be wooed by lies,
Dishonor, and disgrace;
The true man from such saintdom flies,
And cattle take his place.

Land of the green, and of the gray!
For workhouse, tomb, and jail
Are landmarks on thy soil to-day,
And answer, Innisfail,
Tell us which tint thou seest most,
The old one or the new?
The green of which our poets boast,
Or the more sombre hue?
Few wear the green: a countless host
Have donned the gray for you.

Island of verdure, glorious land!
So rich in fertile plains,
Where Nature gives with bounteous hand,
Yet famine ever reigns;
Where through the mellow ripening corn
The balmiest zephyrs sigh,
Where brighter seems each glowing morn,
More radiant each sky;
Where ’tis misfortune to be born,
And happiness to die.

Poor dreaming boy! he softly smiled
To think he played once more,
A happy, bright, and thoughtless child,
Beside the cabin door--
The dear old straw-thatched cabin, where,
Upon his mother’s knee,
He first had learned to lisp a prayer
For Ireland’s liberty,
And ever pregnant seemed the air
With joyous melody.

His fancy changed: the youthful face
In sternness now was set,
His woes had left no coward trace
Upon his spirit yet;
His cold, thin lips were tightly press’d,
His cheeks were all aglow;
Expanded seemed the hollow chest,
His brows contract, as though
Disturbed and broken was his rest
By some nocturnal foe.

He dreamt that in his native land,
Away from this bleak jail,
He stood within a meadow grand,
A shamrock-spangled vale.
Above the scene the sun-rays bright
In glittering grandeur beamed,
Around him in their golden light
Ten thousand bayonets beamed,
And o’er his head, oh, glorious sight!
Green Erin’s banner streamed.

From town and village, hill and glen,
With clamorous fife and drum,
From mountain brake and lowland fen
The mustering legions come;
The war-worn soldier, bronzed and brown,
Has brought his dinted blade;
While quickly from the neighboring town
Flock in the sons of trade;
The farmer flings his good spade down,
And joins the dense brigade.

The fiery Northmen, in whose veins
Still flows the blood of those
Who on a hundred battle-plains
Have conquered Erin’s foes--
The brave descendants of O’Neill,
A stern and fearless band,
A living wall of sparkling steel
Beneath the old flag stand,
And many a Saxon foe shall feel
Tyrconnell’s vengeful hand.

With Ulster’s columns, side by side,
Are Munster’s squadrons massed,
Like tigers into line they glide,
So noiselessly and fast;
Ah! crimsoned soon will be the green
They bear into the fray,
Through England’s host their sabres keen
Shall carve a corse-strewn way,
And Limerick and Skibbereen
Be well avenged to-day.

Proud Leinster, all your chivalry
To arms electric spring;
High ’mid the battle’s revelry
Your stirring shout shall ring;
And many a foe this day shall rue
Your fierce, impetuous might;
The scenes that gallant Wexford knew
Shall be reversed ere night;
The epitaph to Emmet due
Your gleaming swords shall write.

O’Connor’s soul, grim Connaught, lives
Within your ranks this hour;
Before the strength your hatred gives
Well may the despot cower.
Think of your long, black night of tears,
And say, can you forget
The tyrant’s scorn, his jibes and jeers--
That huge, uncancelled debt,
The wrongs of thrice two hundred years
That scourge your province yet?

Hark to that distant rumbling sound!
See, yonder come the foe;
Now be our arms with victory crowned,
The foreign scum laid low.
The stillness and the calm are o’er,
And many a sulphurous cloud,
Betinged with flame and dripping gore,
Shall form a battle-shroud
For those whose tongues may swell no more
The nation’s slogan loud.

Like hostile torrents armies clash,
And steel now crosses steel,
The lurid flames incessant flash,
And volleyed thunders peal;
But backward reel the alien ranks,
With one exultant cry,
Sweep, Irish heroes, on their flanks,
Not vainly will ye die;
Oh, mighty God of battles, thanks,
The craven red-coats fly!

’Tis o’er; the victory is ours;
And though yon darling flag
May float above our castle towers
A torn and tattered rag,
’Tis still our own; and every fold
Preserved us from the strife,
Each shred around that flag-staff rolled
Unpierced by ball or knife,
Is worth a mine of virgin gold--
Aye, worth a hero’s life.

From slimy cell and dungeon damp
Bring forth our prisoned men;
Gather, ye braves, from every camp,
To cheer them home again.
What though to-day they did not bleed
To share our victory,
We reap the harvest of their seed,
So victors still they be;
From faction they our people freed,
And now our land is free.

* * * * *

Oh, Christmas bells of London, wake
The city with your strain;
Your loudest music cannot break
The felon’s rest again.
His dream is o’er; the moonbeams gone,
Nor left a single ray,
For all that but this moment shone
Retreat before the day;
But that last, loving, pitying one
Has borne his soul away.

“Died in his cell”--and nothing more;
’Twas all his comrades heard;
But of the dream he had before
He died,--oh, not a word!
They found him on the coarse straw bed,
A smile upon his face,
And, “Number 28 found dead,”
Was whispered round the place;
And the jail doctor shook his head
And wondered at the case!

THE SPEAKER’S COMPLAINT.[C]

An earthquake is scarcely a joyous event,
’Tis not pleasant to fall from a steeple,
There is not much fun in recovering rent
Where the Land League has hold of the people;
But upheaval of earth
Is good reason for mirth,
’Tis jolly o’er Connaught’s bleak border,
Compared to a seat
Where the Commoners meet
When Mulligan rises to order.

A touch of the measles, neuralgia’s pain,
Catarrhic attacks are not charming,
There are even some Benedicts stoutly maintain
That a bad-tempered woman’s alarming.
Should close diagnosis
Reveal your probocis
To be of your weakness recorder,
You might foolishly curse;
But it’s very much worse
When Mulligan rises to order.

The whoop of a Zulu, the shriek of a shell,
A cats’ chorus in conference meeting,
Are music compared to the agonized yell
Of rage and derision, his greeting;
You go home to your bed
With a pain in your head,
By your pillow stands nightmare a warder;
Your sleep is a blight,
Your comfort takes flight,
Your breathing is tight,
You scratch and you bite,
Or you wake with affright
As you dream through the night
That Mulligan rises to order!

ERIN MACHREE (1798).

The sun had gone down in a halo of glory,
And cast, as it vanished, one lingering ray
On the dark field of battle where, silent and gory,
The brave who had fallen for fatherland lay.
Then close round the fires where the weary were sleeping,
And the angel of death his stern vigil was keeping,
We gathered together in sorrow and weeping
For the brave who had fallen for Erin Machree!

From the first early dawn of the morn we had battled,
Till the mantle of night hid the sun from our gaze;
We shrank not, though balls in one leaden shower rattled,
And the fire of the foe was an endless red blaze.
Like waves ’gainst a rock on the hirelings before us
We charged side by side, with the green banner o’er us,
While the boom of our guns pealed a thundering chorus
That spoke of the wrongs of our Erin Machree!

But vainly our hot blood poured freely as water,
Ah! vainly it crimsoned the emerald plains;
When the bright sun sank down on that black scene of slaughter,
’Twas to rise the next morn on a nation in chains!
Oh! better be laid with the dead or the dying,
The wild winds a requiem over us sighing,
Than linger to see in the bloody dust lying
The shot-shattered banner of Erin Machree!

Yet weep not, though dark be the clouds of our sorrow
With slavery’s midnight surrounding us fast;
Each cloud hath a bright side, each night hath a morrow--
That morning must dawn on our island at last.
Our hopes are undimmed, e’en in dying we breathe them;
Our swords are untarnished, and so we bequeath them
To our sons, who some bright morn will proudly unsheathe them
To strike down the tyrants of Erin Machree!

THAT TRAITOR TIMMINS.

When Earl Spencer accepted the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, eight years ago, he did so with the avowed resolution to unearth every secret conspiracy, existing or contemplated. To accomplish this object, he decided on employing the services of trusty Bow Street runners and Scotland Yard spotters in addition to the staff of spies regularly attached to the castle. To Col. Brackenbury at first, and subsequently to Mr. Jenkinson, was entrusted the organization and control of the combined detective forces.

Among the experienced officers from Scotland Yard attached to the staff of the head inquisitor was that famous plain-clothes inspector, Joshua Timmins. Timmins by himself might have been an acquisition to Jenkinson’s battalion, but, alas! Timmins brought with him to Dublin his impressionable soul, and he was likewise accompanied by his wife, who is fully acquainted with his possession of the impressionable soul aforesaid. She is, in short, of a jealous disposition,--intensely jealous--the concentrated essence of sublimated jealousy--a Mount Vesuvius, patent torpedo, wild-cat, eighty-one-ton gun, cyclone-earthquake combination of suspicion and doubt.

She would lie awake all night to catch the ejaculations an occasional nightmare might wring from the dreaming Timmins; she would loosen all the buttons on his cuffs and collar, to ascertain if they would get a renewed tenure from any rival fingers; she would strengthen his constitution every morning by making him eat two or three strong onions, in the hope that their powerful odor would keep predatory bees in petticoats from sipping the honey off his lips; and she would affix surreptitious pins in the back of his waistcoat and round his coat-collar as a sort of _chevaux-de-frise_ to repel illegal embraces. Of course she Grahamized his letters, and when, now and then, the postman’s rat-tat aroused the happy pair from late slumbers, it was quite an exciting and picturesque, though rather chilling, spectacle, to witness the pair--he with one trousers’ leg on the wrong limb and the other thrown over his shoulder; she with her hair in curl-papers, and a miscellaneous collection of petticoats, blankets, and bed-quilts hanging promiscuously about her--careering down the stairs in a mad steeplechase to that winning post, the door.

Sometimes they would run a dead heat, and a confused mixture of night-dresses, and slippers, and bare arms, and loud voices would burst out upon the bewildered postman, and his whole delivery would be snatched from his hand, and, before he could recover his breath, the amazing kaleidoscope would disappear with a bang, and nothing would remain to remind him of it save perhaps the tail of a masculine robe of slumber which had been caught in the door, or some strange article of feminine toilet which had been shed upon the front steps.

Then the government messenger would awake the echoes with extra professional solos on the knocker and improvised overtures on the bell, but he had invariably to wait for his confiscated missives till one or other of the staircase competitors had donned the habiliments of civilization. The mail Mercury, half an hour behind time, would proceed on his route with official expressions of opinion not to be found in any postal manual.

Of course, the lady had some excuse for these symptoms of a weakness not phenomenal in her sex. In his bachelor days Timmins had been a sad fellow. Long before the term “masher” had been incorporated into our rich language, Constable Timmins had been a masher of the mashiest type. London constables are proverbially easy victims to Cupid’s darts and cold victuals, but Timmins was by far the most susceptible martyr to Love’s young dream in the entire A division.

He didn’t confine his amorous proclivities to cooks or housemaids either. A landlady was not beyond the range of his passionate ardor, and there is a romantic tradition in the force that he once proposed to a maiden lady of property, and was kicked down-stairs by her stony-hearted brother. He was madly smitten by a new object of adoration about every five minutes. He was a rejected and blighted being on an average twice a week. An introduction to any member of the fairer sex, from a school-girl to an octogenarian, was followed in a quarter of an hour or so by an offer of his hand and heart. He wasn’t in the least particular as to face, figure, fortune, rank, age, or color. If rejected, he loafed around for a couple of days, heaving out fog signals in the way of sighs, and looking as melancholy as an owl in a shower-bath. If accepted, he left the fair one with vows of eternal constancy, and forgot all about her before he had turned the first corner.

In this manner he had vowed undying love to two hundred and seventeen cooks, forty-three chambermaids, nineteen housekeepers, and four washerwomen, before he met his fate in Julia, the present Mrs. Timmins.

His rash matrimonial pledges forced him to change his beat at frequent intervals. Eleven spinsters were on the lookout for him in Berkeley Square, so that was forbidden territory to him. Sixteen breach of promise actions were threatened from Tottenham Court road, and he dare not pass that classic ground even on top of an omnibus, except on a wet day, when he could hide himself under an umbrella. A squadron of big brothers and a linked battalion of stern fathers around Sydenham wanted to know his intentions, and he could only venture through that popular London suburb in an effort to beat the record on a bicycle.

No wonder that he hailed with delight the chance of escape from all these horrors which a trip to Ireland afforded him. But, alas! he brought across the channel with him that inflammable bosom that had been kindled so often with the warmth of love’s flickering torch. He had not been in Dublin a week before he had pledged his no longer youthful affections to one of the lay figures on which the monster house of Todd, Burns & Co. display their unparalleled sacrifices--“Original price, 2 guineas; selling off for 17s. 6d.!!”

The evening was wet. It was also dusky. Timmins was arrayed to conquer in a swallow-tailed coat and a lavender cravat. This was one of the elaborate costumes by which the London detective fondly hoped to win the confidence of the Irish conspirators and worm himself into their secrets. To preserve this gorgeous get-up, he sheltered it from the pelting rain in the hospitable doorway of Todd, Burns & Co.

By and by he became aware of the presence of a female form divine. (It was the wirework arrangement on which the two-guinea sacrifice was hung, but it was too dark for Timmins to notice the label.) He could not see her face, but her figure was perfection. He felt an exquisite thrill under his left-hand waistcoat pocket.

He slid a little nearer to the charming stranger. He ventured a modest observation about the rain. No reply. “Sweet, shy, blushing creature!” he murmured, and approached a foot or so closer. Then he began to hold forth about weather in general, Italian sunsets, Swiss snow-storms, mists on the Scottish mountains, fogs in the London slums, moonlight effects on the helmets of the police, tempests, cyclones, tornadoes, water-spouts, frozen gas-meters, and other beauties of nature. Still no response.

“Ah, poor soul! She trembles at a voice which, no doubt, wakens reciprocal echoes in her bosom. Let me reassure her.” And he edged up alongside the silent object of his thoughts, and launched out into a disquisition about love at first sight, and sudden sympathies, and electric affinities, and he quoted Byron and Moore, and finally, in a stage whisper, asked, “Couldst thou, fair unknown, share with a kindred spirit the joys, the hopes, the aspirations, and all that sort of thing, of this brief life? Wouldst thou venture with a responsive soul to dare the scorn and sneers, the proud man’s hate, the rich man’s contumely, and the other goings on of the ’igh and ’aughty? Willest thou fly with me to sunnier climes?--we’ll take the tramcar to Harold’s Cross or Inchicore. Why art thou silent, beauteous being? Behold me, dearest Belinda, or Evangeline, or Kate, or Mary, or Jemima, or Sarah Jane, or whatever thy sweet name may be--behold me at thy feet!”

And he flopped down upon his knees, but in doing so knocked over the bemantled framework, and his head got entangled in the wire and tapes of which it was constructed, and he put one foot through a sheet of plate-glass and tied the other up in a “choice assortment of all-wool shirts at half a crown, reduced from four shillings.” When a policeman was called in, and he was given into custody for an audacious attempt at robbery, his cup of bitterness was so full that he spilled some of it in the shape of tears.

The incident became known. Jenkinson sent for the tender-hearted Timmins, and gave him to understand that dry goods stores were not the most likely places to find Invincibles, and that the dude who couldn’t tell the difference between a milliner’s dummy and a sprightly Irish colleen would be as likely as not to arrest a tobacconist’s negro on a charge of dynamite conspiracy. Under all the circumstances, he thought it better for the amorous Timmins to return to London, where drapers’ figures are less attractive than in the Irish metropolis.

This is the true and circumstantial history of the catastrophe which shortened the stay of the lynx-eyed Timmins in the Emerald Isle, albeit those wonderfully informed London journals, the _Standard_ and _Daily Telegraph_, published paragraphs to the effect that Timmins’ unsleeping vigilance had made him such a marked man that it was deemed advisable to remove him from the sphere of danger. Mrs. T. knows better, and Timmins himself has registered an awful vow never to let loose the torrents of his policeman’s soul again except in the glare of broad noonday, or at least beneath the effulgence of a three-thousand-candle-power electric light.

BALFOUR’S WISH.

When members have taken their usual places,
And, insult to Bradlaugh, the prayers have been read,
The exiles of Erin, with pitiless faces,
Fling queries by scores at the Sassenach’s head;
And as, one by one, question follows on question,
Lost Balfour, still farther and farther at sea,
In agony mental that spoils his digestion,
But murmurs, “I wish I were out in Fiji!”

“Can you tell me,” asks one, in a deep tone of thunder,
“How much buckshot is fatal, administered where?”
“Don’t you know,” cries another, in accents of wonder,
“The average size of potatoes in Clare?”
A third seeks a legal opinion, without
Even gratitude proffered by way of a fee,
And a youth wants to know has the premier the gout,
While Balfour would fain be exiled to Fiji.

Affairs of the person, affairs of the State,
Affairs of the church, and affairs of the bar,
What should be a sub-constable’s average weight?
Does he ever indulge in the national car?
Is he properly versed in diseases of cattle?
Is it whiskey he swigs when he’s out on a spree?
And he moans as the queries about his ears rattle,
“Great God, how I wish I were out in Fiji!”

OUR CAUSE.

Seven hundred years of blood and tears, of famine and of chains,
Of outlaws on the mountain path and victims on the plains,
Of blazing homes and bleeding hearts to glut a tyrant’s rage,
Of every crime that ever time recorded in his page,
Have failed to quench the burning sparks of freedom that illume,
With radiance bright, the centuried night of fettered Ireland’s gloom:
Nor guile nor force could stay its course beyond a moment’s pause,
For ever still, through good or ill, marched on the glorious cause!

Its heroes flung their naked breasts on Strongbow’s hireling spears,
And Essex saw them shatter his proud line of cavaliers,
And what though Cromwell’s fraud and craft had blunted Irish swords,
They still could deal rude blows of steel on William’s German hordes.
The after years beheld, ’tis true, the old green flag laid by,
No gleaming of its sunburst flashed across the ambient sky,
But yet in many a faithful breast, spite cruel penal laws,
The love remained, undimmed, unstained, that glorified the cause.

It sprang to life, in brief, stern strife, in storied Ninety-eight;
It only slept when Erin wept o’er gallant Emmet’s fate;
O’Connell’s accent broke the trance, and found the cause once more
Still burning in the nation’s soul as brightly as of yore.
Hunger and fever stifled for an hour its thrilling tones,
And paved the deep encircling seas with bleaching Irish bones;
But, ah, the brave old race too well its inspiration draws,
And how it flamed when Three brave lives were given for the cause.

What is that cause that time nor change has ever known retreat,
That smiles at persecution and that triumphs in defeat,
That mingles with the ozone in the Irish infant’s breath,
Whose memories soothe the pillow in the lonely exile’s death?
’Tis mother Ireland’s liberty, expansive and complete,
No aliens in her senate, in her armies or her fleet;
Faithful to this the tribune gains the multitude’s applause,
And the scaffold is a kingly throne ascended for the cause!

SERVED HIM RIGHT.