Chapter VII

Sub-Inspector Blake told off ten men for special duty on Nov. 1, and about noon arrived with them on three outside cars in the little town of Mohill. “Now, boys,” was his parting advice, “this fellow Jones is a tough-looking customer, and will probably show fight. Brennan’s a rowdy, too. When I whistle, rush in and baton both of ’em if they show fight. If any of the hangers-on in the hotel seem ugly, give them the bayonet.”

“Two men with myself will be enough,” finally remarked Spriggins to Head Constable Walsh, of Mohill. “Our bird’s in the commercial room of the Railway Hotel just now. Perhaps ’twould be better, to avoid suspicion, if your men didn’t come in uniform, and they might wait outside till I whistled for them.”

It was so arranged.

Sergeant Crawley sat in the commercial room of the little hotel, describing the personal peculiarities of the fore-doomed Jones to three official Goliaths who had joined him from Dublin, when the door opened and the redoubtable Jones entered himself. Seeing his prey in deep consultation with three sturdy farmers, Jones muttered softly to himself, “By Jingo, I’ve got the whole crowd!” and instantly sounding the signal, sprang upon Crawley with a drawn pistol in his right hand and the warrant fluttering in his left.

“Holy Moses!” gasped Crawley; “they mean to murder us too,” and he ducked under the table, where Spriggins let go three or four shots at him, while two G men rushed at Spriggins and two local constables grappled with the two G men, and the remaining Dublin detective began a racket on his own account by firing round promiscuously, taking a chip off Spriggins’ ear, slicing a cutlet off Crawley’s cheek, and depositing one of the Mohill men on the half-shell, as it were, by a shot in the abdomen. At this moment Sub-Inspector Blake, his soul afire with war’s dread echoes, leaped into the apartment just in time to receive on his sconce the full weight of a brass spittoon fired by Sergeant Crawley, who, from his intrenchment under the table, was carrying on a destructive artillery bombardment of similar bombshells and grenades. Of course Blake sounded the alarm, and his followers charged with fixed bayonets into the room. They skivered Spriggins, they splintered Crawley, they committed multifarious ravages upon the sacred skins of the Dublin detectives, and in the joyous exhilaration of the hour they skewered each other up against the wainscoating, and pinned each other against the table, and prodded each other through the arms and legs of chairs and couches, and shed each other’s blood for their Queen and Constitution in the most liberal and disinterested manner. Finally, when there wasn’t a square three-inch patch of whole skin among the combined forces, the chambermaids and waiters came in and took the entire lot prisoners. Then followed mutual explanations, a reciprocal production of warrants, general expressions of regret, and a mournfully unanimous feeling that amongst the dark, unsolved problems of agrarian crimes would ever remain the awful mystery of who shot Phineas Phlynn’s hat.

THE RED-HEART DAISY.

A RUSSIAN ALLEGORY.

The clouds of battle-tempest had blown over;
The storm of wrath
Had swept through fields of ripening corn and clover,
And in its path
Had left the human cyclone’s awful traces
In quivering bodies and distorted faces.

Among the bloody drift of dead and dying
That strewed the ground,
A Prince and Serf, in Death’s communion lying,
The searchers found.
Earth drank both life-streams; as their current ended,
Blue blood and peasant’s in one tide had blended.

Some essence from the forms interred together
Enriched the clay,
And toned with deeper tints the patch of heather
’Neath which they lay--
Rough hide and dainty skin--deep brain and hollow--
Silver and iron--Vulcan and Apollo.

And when the Spring returned, and daisies spangled
The mountain’s crest,
Clusters with hearts of crimson were entangled
Among the rest,
Upon the spot where baron’s dream of glory
Had mingled with the toiler’s duller story.

* * * * *

Those who would make our land a frame of metal,
With jewelled heart,
Would have us view the daisy’s centre petal
As thing apart
From its white fringe; and, bringing death to both,
Would mar the flow’ret’s, like the nation’s, growth.

THE TIDE IS TURNING.

So, masters who have ruled so long
With cruel rods of iron,
Who sought with gyves and fetters strong
Our freedom to environ,
In plenitude of sullen power
Our tearful pleadings spurning:
Prepare ye for your fated hour,
Beware--the tide is turning!
Yes! yes! at last we fling the past
With all its woes behind us,
And stand to-day in firm array
Against the bonds that bind us.

With brutal grip of tyrant hand
Ye choked our aspirations,
And made our fertile motherland
The Niobe of nations;
To feed the vices of your lords,
Ye stole the people’s earning,
And held the theft with hireling swords--
But now the tide is turning!
Yes! yes! to-day your hated sway
Is tottering to ruin,
The Irish race a future face
That will not harbor you in!

Ye kept us chained to ignorance,
In fear that education
Might teach our brains the wisest chance
To liberate the nation.
But, spite of all your guile and thrall,
Our people still are learning
What most will tend your yoke to rend,
And so the tide is turning.
Yes! yes! the cause, despite your laws,
Each rusty chain is breaking;
The portents smile upon our isle,
For Ireland is awaking.

From meadows rich of smooth Kildare
To frowning crags of Kerry,
From ocean-girdled shores of Clare
To busy marts of Derry,
In our opprest, north, south, east, west,
A newer spirit’s burning--
The conquering fire of brave desire,
That tells the tide is turning.
Yes! yes! we mark through centuries dark
The light at last is blazing,
Till on our brow no serf-brand now
Can chill a friendly gazing.

OUR OWN AGAIN.

The voice of freedom’s sounding
From farthest shore to shore;
And Erin’s pulse is bounding
With manhood’s blood once more;
Our sluggard trance is broken,
We stand erect as men,
Our stern demand is spoken,
We’ll have our own again!

No futile bribes can stay us,
No traitor chiefs control,
No wheedling tones delay us,
No terrors blanch our soul.
The gloomy hour has vanished
And gone forever when
We could be crushed or banished--
We’ll have our own again!

The bluster of the Tories,
And Whigdom’s tempting lies,
Are vain and foolish stories
We spurn and we despise.
We’ve torn the landlord foeman
From out his reeking den,
And now we’ll halt for no man--
We’ll have our own again!

Our eyes are lifted sunward,
No power can bar our course,
Our march must still be onward,
Spite either guile or force;
And be it by the sabre,
The voice, the vote, or pen,
Or steadfast, patient labor--
We’ll have our own again!

THE TALE OF A TAIL.

There’s a place in fiery Ulster we may christen Macaroon,
Where they won’t believe in Parnell or the Land League very soon;
Where to call a priest “his rev’rence” treads upon their pious corns,
For they think a priest hoof-shodden, and believe the Pope wears horns;
’Tis there that yells and shouting on the twelfth day of July
Make the populace so thirsty they could drink the Shannon dry;
And ’tis there, where papal bulls could never make a sinner quail,
That a Papist cow has trampled on their feelings with her tail.

Pat Duggan, finding Clifford Lloyd too much for him in Clare,
Thought he’d try his fate in Ulster, so he took a holding there,
And of all the spots of Orange North, that most unlucky coon
Had the evil chance to squat in “no surrender” Macaroon.
And in his blissful ignorance, unmitigated ass,
He trudged a half-a-dozen miles each Sunday morn to mass,
Till his very Christian neighbors, his convictions to assail,
Began to whisper fell designs upon his heifer’s tail.

’Twas in the summer season, and the flies that skirmished round
Discovered that that cow’s soft ears were A 1 feeding ground,
And they gathered in their masses and formed animated plugs,
In perpetual convention, in her sorely troubled lugs;
And when, in her congested ears, agrarian troubles rose,
The poorer flies migrated and they colonized her nose,
But that cow knew neither tenant right, fair rent, nor yet free sale,
For she exercised coercion very strongly with her tail.

When round her nose the leading flies had taken plots on tick,
She would liquidate arrears and clear the district with a flick;
And the enterprising settlers that her ears would fain divide,
With the same obstructive weapon she would scatter far and wide.
Her practice made her perfect, and she grew so strong behind
That when her tail would whisk, ’twas like a gust of stormy wind.
Why, even when Pat Duggan split the handle of his flail,
That cow came in and threshed the oats completely with her tail.

Well, still to mass Pat Duggan every Sunday morning went,
And the Orange farmers round him grew insanely discontent,
Till they held a parish meeting, and decided there and then
That the time for speech was past--the knife was mightier than the pen.
They deputed Bill Mulvany, who was handy with the shears,
And Ned Malone, who’d often sang of clipping Croppy ears,
To see that Duggan’s butter would not pay another gale,
But they little knew his cow had such an energetic tail.

When darkness kicked the daylight out, Mulvany and Malone
Had somehow found their way about Pat Duggan’s byre alone.
The wind that whistled through the trees no warning signal gave,
As Ned Mulvany seized a hoof intended for the grave.
Malone was smart and ready with his fingers on the hasp,
But before the pride of victory their eager hands could grasp,
That dirty cow deposited Mulvany in a pail,
And created much confusion with a flourish of her tail.

And she wasn’t quite content with that: she rushed from out the byre,
Her horns curled up in anger, and her mighty tail on fire;
She seized (with cool indifference to very touching groans)
Malone around the waist and smashed his most important bones;
And when the jury gathered round his mangled fragments there,
And his friends had somehow recognized the mush of skin and hair,
That jury placed Pat Duggan’s cow on very heavy bail,
Because in their opinion she had rather too much tail.

And this is how, in Macaroon, it strangely came to pass,
That Pat Duggan, unmolested still, pursued his way to mass;
And that cow was so respected that no bigot would offend her
Bovine susceptibilities with shouts of “no surrender.”
Why, even on the glorious, immortal twelfth July,
The enthusiastic drummers in dread silence pass her by;
They would rather that the glory they commemorate should pale,
Than again tempt Duggan’s awful cow to exercise her tail.

THE SEA-SICK SUB-COMMISSIONERS.

[In the Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice, during
the League agitation, the court heard an application on behalf of
the Earl of Bantry to substitute service on twenty-one tenants on
the Island of Dersey, about a quarter of a mile from the main land,
in the barony of Bore, county of Cork. Counsel said that the island
was so inaccessible that rents had not been collected there for
over two years. Mr. Justice Harrison asked how were the Land
Commissioners to get over when they went down to fix fair rents?
Counsel said that they would find it difficult enough to get off.
The place was so wild that it was only on fine days it was possible
to cross Dersey Sound. They went over, however, and these verses
record the exploit:]

There were three Sub-Commissioners went sailing sou-sou-west,
With due responsibility on each official breast,
To the lonely isle of Dersey they travelled with intent
To investigate and regulate each pining tenant’s rent.
Oh, Moses! how the tempest blew adown the channel wild,
It made the oldest lawyer feel as helpless as a child,
Whilst the chairman had to exercise the greatest legal tact,
For fear his conscience might disgorge a portion of the Act.

They felt, did those commissioners, such physical defaults
As the toper who indulges by mistake in Epsom salts,
And not upon the future were their aspirations cast,
They wanted first to scatter round some relics of the past.
The fish that followed in their wake, cod, mackerel, and fluke,
Had never witnessed so much bait before without a hook,
They were ignorant entirely of the all-important fact
That their unexpected _dejeuner_ was owing to the Act.

They were very sick commissioners upon those troubled seas,
There was something quite seditious in the waves and in the breeze,
And when their tottering footsteps pressed on solid earth once more,
They used up all their handkerchiefs on Dersey’s barren shore,
And they couldn’t relish joyfully the wild delirious sport
That awaited but their presence in the Land Commission Court;
They wanted all to go to bed, and miserably lacked
The enthusiastic courage to administer the Act.

They seemed, those Sub-Commissioners, more circumspect than gay
While hearing Irish evidence interpreted all day,
Although alternate intervals were taken to allow
Opportunities to each of them to wipe his clammy brow.
That evening, at supper, they sought vainly to conceal
A variety of feelings unbecoming to that meal;
And when they sought their couches, with their constitutions racked,
They had tortures worse than striving to elucidate the Act.

CAOINE OF THE CLARE CONSTABULARY.

So, you’re goin’ out to Aigypt, wirrasthrue!
An’ we’ll niver see your faytures any more,
Millia murther! what in thunder shall we do
Whin you turn your crookid back upon our shore?
All innocint divarsion with yourself will be departin’
An’ existence will become a dreary void;
Ochone an’ ullagone! we must vainly sigh an’ groan;
Philalu! a long adieu to Clifford Lloyd!

No more at midnight’s melancholy stroke
Shall we revel in our customary fun
Of scaring all the humble women folk
In sarchin’ for the shadow of a gun.
There’s an ind to legal riot, they may sleep in peace an’ quiet,
An’ their slumbers niver more will be annoyed;
We’re dejected an’ neglected, an’ we cannot be expected
To be happy after banished Clifford Lloyd!

No more cartridges of buckshot we desire,
’Tis a burden whin we’re not allowed to use it,
An’ our batons may be thrown into the fire--
We may see a peasant’s head an’ dar not bruise it,
The girls may take to coortin’ an’ the boys resume their spoortin’,
An’ life by common people be enjoyed,
In contint, without lamint, since to Africa they’ve sint
That inimy of laughter, Clifford Lloyd!

Misther Healy, you have always been unkind.
But we didn’t think you positively cruel
Till we noticed how you changed ould Gladstone’s mind,
And made him sind away our darlin’ jewel.
Our feelins are diminted an’ our souls are discontinted,
Troth! we’re altogether ruined an’ destroyed,
We’re wailin’ an’ we’re quailin’ and we’re failin’ since the sailin’
Of that father of coercion, Clifford Lloyd!

CLAUSE TWENTY-SIX.

(A COTTER’S REVERY ON THE EMIGRATION CLAUSE OF THE LAND ACT.)

I’ve been towld there’s a chance in the distance,
For struggling poor sowls like myself,
To brighten our dreary existence,
An’ even to gather some pelf,
In a land where the soil is but waitin’
The wooin’ of shovels an’ picks
That we’ll take whin we’re all emigratin’
To fortune by Clause Twenty-six.

It’s hard and it’s sad to be hurried
Away from the strings of my life--
From the spot where my mother lies buried,
The place where I coorted my wife.
Sweet home of my birth, to forsake you,
My conscience remorsefully pricks--
I can’t tell if to lave or to take you,
Bewilderin’ Clause Twenty-six.

For it’s rather too bitther my fate is,
When my luck like a stranger goes by,
When blight settles down on the praties,
An’ the cow that I trusted turns dry;
Whin the turf is too damp to be fuel,
An’, crouched o’er a handful of sticks,
I curse you, misfortune so cruel,
An’ pray for you, Clause Twenty-six.

Whin the rain through the thatch finds a way in,
Till we sleep in a cheerless cowld bath;
Whin the hens are teetotal at layin’,
An’ the pig is as thin as a lath,
Whin the childer are pinin’ an’ ailin’,
An’ losin’ their mirth an’ their tricks--
Oh, I long for the ship to be sailin’
That’s chartered by Clause Twenty-six.

And often at night I’ve a notion,
Whilst hungry they’re lyin’ in bed,
In that plintiful land o’er the ocean
They wouldn’t be cryin’ for bread;
They might even an odd pat of butther
Along with their stirabout mix;
Oh, my heart is too full for to utter
Its thoughts of you, Clause Twenty-six.

To see the health-roses assimble
On the cheeks of my boys, an’ the curls
Once again in the bright mornin’ trimble
With the innocent laugh of my girls;
An’ to feel that herself would be aisy,
Nor frettin’ at trouble or fix.
Mavrone! but I’m mighty nigh crazy
Considerin’ Clause Twenty-six.

JENKINS, M. P.

Mr. Jenkins, M. P., from St. Stephen’s came o’er
To address the electors he’d soothered before,
But he found in their feelings toward him a change,
Manifested in ways both alarming and strange;
He had scarcely extolled their warm hearts in the south
When a wet sod of turf hit him square in the mouth,
And the force of its logic ’twas plain he could see,
For “your argument’s striking,” said Jenkins, M. P.

Then a cat long deceased was propelled at his pate;
Says Jenkins, “Your animal spirits are great.”
A two-year-old egg on his cheek went to batter;
“I’d rather,” he murmured, “not speak of that matter.”
They set fire to the platform, he gasped in affright,
“The subject’s appearing in quite a new light.”
He appealed to his friends to protect him, nor flee,
“For unity’s strength,” argued Jenkins, M. P.

But in vain was their aid from that circle so fond;
He was torn and well soused in a neighboring pond,
And as it was freezing it needn’t be told
That his ardor was damped by a greeting so cold.
And the peelers came up in a charge like the wind--
Not knowing the member, they stormed him behind,
And when he felt bayonets where they shouldn’t be,
“I won’t dwell on these points,” muttered Jenkins, M. P.

He fled to his inn, but avoided the bar,
Where some patriots waited with feathers and tar.
“Sweet creatures,” quoth he, with a satisfied grin,
“Their charity sha’n’t cover much of my sin.”
All bruises and scratches he sought the first train;
“I leave you, electors,” he whispered, “with pain.
’Tis plain that our sentiments do not agree;
I’ll express them elsewhere,” shouted Jenkins, M. P.

THADY MALONE.

Hurrah for our tight little, bright little nation,
The earth’s brightest jewel, the gem of the say;
The garden of Europe, the flower of creation,
Where no sarpints with legs or without them can stay.
Were once we united
Our wrongs should be righted
And ours be the brightest of emerald isles,
But still some intraygur,
Or bastely renayger,
Sells the pass on the cause just as victory smiles.
Yet, no matter, we’ve planned
A divarsion so grand
That we’ll soon have the land altogether our own;
And the rogue who’ll consent
To contribute rack rint
Will meet with the fate of old Thady Malone!

The tailor refused to patch up his torn breeches,
The cobbler declined to take charge of his soles,
An’ though he was rowlin’ in ill-gotten riches,
The heels of his stockin’s were nothin’ but holes,
For his wife wint away
On the very next day
With his mother-in-law (though he didn’t mind that),
An’ sisters and cousins
Departed in dozens,
Till there wasn’t a sowl in the place but the cat.
Why, sorra a doubt,
Sure, the fire it wint out
An’ left him in cowld and in darkness to moan,
Till he felt that the rint
Had been badly ill-spint
That wint to the landlord of Thady Malone!

The praties grew mowldy and bad in the ridges,
The mangolds an’ turnips got frosted an’ sour,
In summer the cows were desthroyed with the midges,
An’ the ass wint an’ drowned himself out in a shower.
The sparrows, diminted,
Grew quite discontinted,
An’ wouldn’t remain in the cabin’s ould thatch;
The pigs tuk to fittin’,
An’ hins that were sittin’
Wint off upon thramp an’ deserted the hatch.
A polis inspector,
A taxes collector,
Came out to protect him from kippeen or stone,
An’ there now he’s stuck,
Without hope, grace, or luck,
Misfortunate, boycotted Thady Malone!

[B] RORY’S REVERIE.

Death o’ my soul! the lot is cast, and mine will be the hand
To free from curse than plague spot worse this corner of the land,
To quench the light of eyes that never glared except in hate,
To stifle evermore the tongue that mocked the poor man’s fate.
’Tis I am proud that from the crowd ’twas I, and I alone,
Was chosen out to pay the debts that half the parish own;
My faith! the country side will ring before the mornin’ light,
Though little knows rack-rentin’ Phil that Rory walks to-night!

How Thade M’Gurk and Redmond Burke across the spreadin’ say,
Driven from home for years to roam ’mid strangers far away,
Will shout with glee the day they see their black and cruel lot,
Their woes, their tears, paid off in years by my avenging shot!
An’ they must know--the tale will go ’twas I, their boyhood’s friend,
That brought at last the tyrant to his well-earned bitter end.
Why, when I meet them next they’ll shake my arms off with delight--
I’m longin’ for the hour of gloom when Rory walks to-night!

Mary’s asleep. Now heaven keep her slumbers safe and sound,--
(“Heaven,” said I? Well, that’s wrong; ’tis Hell is surging
hotly round),--
And, nestled closely by her side, my little Kathleen’s face
Seems smiling like an angel’s through the darkness of the place.
She kissed me ere she sank to rest--I’d think it sin just now
To press my burnin’ lips again upon her childish brow;
Perhaps she’d dream about my scheme, and after shun my sight--
I mustn’t think of this--No! no! for Rory walks to-night!

Where’s that ould gun? But softly, so; I’d better make no noise,
I wouldn’t like the wife to know I’d dealings in such toys.
The barrel’s rather rusty: it’s been in the thatch too long--
Musha! the pull is heavy. Well, my trigger-finger’s strong.
And just to think! with this ould thing you lie behind a ditch,
When there’s silence all around you, an’ the night is dark as pitch,
An’ your landlord comes up whistlin’, an’ you spot his shirt-front white,
An’ his tune is changed immediately to “Rory walks to-night!”

And that black Phil has never done kind deed to me or mine;
If he were dead a thousand times none of my blood would pine;
My wife might even bless the hand by which his end was wrought;
My child--but, no, Great God forbid her wronged by such a thought!
She prayed for me at bedtime; sure I stood beside her when
She asked God’s blessing on me, and I dar’ not say Amen:
Amen to such a prayer as that! ’Twould be a curse, a blight,
To pray at all to God or saint, when Rory walks to-night!

What ails me? Am I coward turned? I, who had ever sneer
For every one that showed at all of priest or preacher fear;
I, who have sworn, were once I asked to play a man’s stern part,
No quiver of a nerve should swerve the bullet from his heart!
I’m shakin’ like an aspen--Faugh! I can’t afford to spend
My time in trembling, when I’m due down at the boreen’s end--
What? but a dream? Now God be praised for this sweet mornin’s light,
I’m better plased that, after all, no Rory walked last night.

A DOUBLE SURPRISE.