Chapter XII: Part 12

“Faith! and why not, Mistress Doolan?” says he, “worse luck!”--for it was true, and he couldn't deny it. And Larry Morris went on to tell the wife, that the child's mother said she was married, and made an excuse for her husband coming to see her now and then only; and who should the husband be, but Pat? Moreover, since she had walked off, the way I tould you, Larry had never seen Pat; and, sure enough, Mistress Doolan remembered that Pat convinced her, about that time, it would be well for him to carry his poultry to another market; and he did so.

Doolan put as good a face as he could upon all this. Larry said he was sorry to be a maker of mischief; but the rogue took advantage of it, for he drew Pat aside, and, from what passed privately between them, Pat carried his poultry afterwards to the town where Larry lived.

From that day, poor Paddy Doolan pined;--wouldn't any one in such a way?--Larry stood between Pat and the market, making Pat sell all his poultry to him at an under-price, and then going to the great buyers that sould them again to the consumers; so making a profit beyond Christian credence out of Pat. And what would you have Doolan do? Wasn't he afraid of Larry's telling upon him? And if he haggled to get any way near a fair price, didn't Larry tell him--“Paddy, boy, ar'n't you under my thumb?” He did: and Doolan was as much afraid of the disgrace of being exposed, as the loss of my lady's allowance. So he struggled and struggled, and every day got worse in the world; and bitterly did he suffer and repent for what he had done. His wife didn't quarrel with the child this while, but loved and nourished it as if it was her own; so did Pat--and he had a right, you'll say:--but I wouldn't swear to that; for who knows but Pat himself might have been cheated, as well as he cheated Sally his wife?

Now I'm coming near the end of my story--no bad news that, you'll say:--Pat was tortured for a long time by Larry, “like a toad under the harrow,” as the story goes, till he could scarcely scrape enough together to get on with from week's end to week's end. At last and in the long run, what does Larry do,--like others like him, who, trying to make the most of their villany, ruin all outright,--what does he do, but insist upon Pat's paying him half the allowance he got from my lady, to hould his peace?--Doolan knocked him down with a goose he had in his hand at the time; jumped on his garron; and if you want to know the rate he came home at, ask the people by the road-side. Grogy, his little garron, wondered whether Ireland was sinking, or what was the matter,--and no blame to him.

When Doolan got home, he tould the wife how he had ruined himself by knocking down Larry. “You've done well,” says she, “and it was high time you did.”--Didn't you ever remark, that when a man gets at his wits' end, and don't know which way to turn, how well a woman will carry him through? I'm sure you have; and seen the courage of the poor creatures too, when men are cowed, and can't look the danger that threatens them full in the face. “You shall be under the thumb no longer, Pat,” says she:--“you've done that by me I don't like, but it's forgiven, if not forgot; and let the worst come to the worst, we'll be as well as we are:--so, come with me at once.”

“Where'll I go?” says Doolan, staring at her, and drawing back, for he half suspected what she intinded. But Sally was resolute; she took the child in her hand, and half persuaded, half dragged Pat away, up to my lady at The Beg. Doolan went down on his knees, while his wife tould her ladyship the whole story; and when it was done, Pat got such a lecture as he never had before; no--not even from his wife after Larry's first visit.

“Look at the fruits,” said my lady; “look at the consequences, Patrick Doolan, of your misdoings:--didn't you know that sin is always followed by sorrow?--that deceit can never long plaster up iniquity? You have richly merited your sufferings, Pat. I shall, of course, stop the allowance, and take away the child from you. When I find you are so far deserving, you shall have my protection, and the little girl again; till then, I withdraw both.”

Terribly downcast was Pat, to be sure, as you may guess but he was no longer under the thumb. Besides, he'd a hope left, of getting into grace again by good conduct so to work he went like a Trojan. Larry came down as hard as he could after Pat, determined to ruin him or make him knock under again: but when he got to the village, Pat was back from The Beg, and had tould all his neighbours what he'd been doing; so that they hadn't much the laugh of him; and as Pat wasn't disliked, the boys and girls made such a mudlark of Larry, nobody could tell the colour of his coat.

Pat began to prosper, and, by-and-by, got on well enough: in a year or two after, the little girl walked into his cabin one day, with a goulden guinea in her hand, and has lived under Pat's roof ever since. Among us, she is, as I tould you, much admired for her beauty,--to say nothing of her being an heiress.

People generally trate a fable as the boys do a dog sometimes,--tie a moral tay-kittle to its tail; and so would I, if my story was a fable: but it's neither a story nor a fable, but the downright truth, and if I made a moral to it, you'd suspect 'twas a fable; as the boys suspect the dog, if they meet him with a kittle in his train, to be a suspicious and a stray dog,--don't you see?--and so despise and pelt him. However, for all that, there can't be much harm in just mentioning that a man will do well to take warning by Paddy Doolan, and do nothing in the wide world that may bring him under the thumb.

OUR TOMMY.

We'd often be frightened out of our lives a'most, did we know, while we were about them, what mighty events, to ourselves or somebody else, would spring from some of our every-day doings. But it's right we shouldn't. If it wasn't so, Paddy Doolan might be breaking his heart, for the sow that's going to be choaked next Monday, by a bone he'll throw into her trough to-night. There's none of our actions, big or little, in my mind, goes off, without leaving a family: something I did three days,--or, may be, three years ago, was the grandmother of something I'm doing, or that may befall me, to-day. Peg Dwyer's husband threw his can at the head of a cow, that wouldn't give out her milk as she ought, and one of her horns made a hole in its side. That happened him on a Wednesday;--very well;--he wetted his floor, through carrying water in the can with the hole in it, on Thursday; it froze in the night; and early on Friday he got such a bruise, through slipping up on the floor, which he'd wetted by carrying water in the can that he'd thrown on the horn of the cow, because she wouldn't give milk, that it laid him up for a month, and killed him outright in the long run. A boy quarrels with his home and quits it, because he fancies he don't get as much buttermilk to his peeathees, or peeathees to his buttermilk, as some of his brothers; he walks off with himself to the next town; and, a year after, to the next to that, may be: by-and-by he gets taken by the tar, as birds are by birdlime; and, after being aboard ship awhile, casts anchor in foreign parts. Before he can whistle, he's pushed another move further: and something or other continues to poke him from place to place, and from post to pillar, till he reaches the wild Indians at last, and marries Hullamullaloo, the king's youngest daughter, or gets roasted and devoured--just as it may happen--by that lady and her iligant maids of honour. And, supposing he'd a good memory, and could look back, while he stood tied to the stake, or about to be tied to Hullamullaloo at the altar, as the case might be, he'd find each of the moves he made through life was owing, one way or another, to something as simple as his quarrelling, when a boy with his peeathees and buttermilk, at his mother's mud cabin here at home in ould Ireland.

Poor Tommy Maloe got his liking for martial music, through thumping a drum, which he'd stolen from young Veogh, when they were both little boys, and didn't know right from wrong; or if they did, wouldn't make a shew of what they knew, by doing as they ought. Though Pierce's parents were rich, and Tommy's were poor, Tommy was Pierce's playmate: they spent most of their time together, and were always at war, and frequently fighting. Tommy was the sole and only boy far or near, that would dare stand up before Master Pierce, when he clenched his little fist; and there was few that Tommy would demean himself to thump or play tricks with but Pierce.

Tommy, as I said, stole a drum from little Pierce, or may be carried it off as booty after a fray; and it was from the delight he got by bating it with the drumstick of an ould goose, that years after, he bartered a new hat for a bad fife from which time, for six months and more, morning, noon, and night, the fife was at Tommy's lips, and he trying to coax marches out of it, but couldn't. At last he threw it away in a pet; and took to trapesing after Mick Maguire when he'd be going out to fire at, and sometimes shoot, the water-birds. Tommy, who was now grown a man a'most, never felt happier than when Mick would allow him to carry the gun; and one day, while Mick's back was turned, something or other tempted him to fire it off. By chance, I suppose, he shot a little bird--a tern, or a petrel it was--and from that time, Tommy talked of nothing but shouldering a musket, and getting a pelt at a Frenchman. He walked thirty miles over mountains and bogs, without a shoe to his foot, (for his father had hid them that he mightn't go,) to see a review of two companies of the North Cork, and three dozen of beggarly volunteers.

Our Tommy--for that's the name he is best known by--from his father's always calling him so--though it was only to himself, a poor doating ould widower, he belonged;--our Tommy, I say, at last determined to enlist. He wouldn't be satisfied, he said, until, as every one ought, he'd killed at least two or three of the enemies of his king and country. His father begged of him not to go for a souldier and leave him alone, when he could get good bread at home: but, though Tommy in other things was as dutiful as most sons, he wouldn't mind his father in this. At one time, however, it was thought he would forget the Frenchmen, and behave himself; for he fell in love with one of the prettiest little girls in these parts, and offered to give up all thoughts of campaigning, and killing his share of the foreigners, if she'd have him. But the little girl gave him a downright denial; and a week after that he got picked up by a recruiting-party at a fair.

Tommy was all on fire to go abroad; and it wasn't long before he got his wish granted of being sent on foreign service. You'll think of the little drum, and the goose's leg, and the bad fife, and Mick Maguire's gun, and the review of the North Cork with the volunteers, and feel sad, for a moment, may be, when I tell you, that the very first Frenchman he saw, run his baggonet right through poor Tommy, in a skirmish, before he could even pull his trigger, and killed him on the spot.

When I say that Tommy was killed on the spot, I mane that he never stirred from the place where he fell; though he lived long enough to see the enemy driven back; and then,--as we heard from a disabled dragoon, who passed through this place on his way home a year after,--poor Tommy Maloe, though he'd been disappointed so sorely,--like a good boy as he was in the main,--departed this life with a smiling eye and a prayer on his lips. And I trust I may do no worse;--though, I must confess, I'd rather die on a bad bed, than on the finest field of battle,--for I'm not heroic; and in my own mud cabin, than a grand hospital,--for I'm not ambitious. And yet I don't know, upon giving the thing a thought dying is dying all the world over, and it don't matter much where we do it. I was going to say too, that I'd prefer a natural death in ould age, to the honour of being cut off by a dragoon's sabre in my prime: but there's a riddle about death no one can solve; and it isn't often we see even the ould people go off and melt away like a mist. We may prate and preach as much as we plaze about hard deaths and aisy deaths;--the horror and agony of going off one way, compared with another:--but there isn't a living soul on the face of the earth knows any thing about dying at last. Drowning is spoken of as being the least disagreeable by some; others prefer a bullet; one says one thing, and another says another; even hanging isn't without advocates but _I_ say, there's no knowing which is best, and which is worst; and we never _shall_ know, that's certain, until some of us is dead, and gets brought to life again;--and that you know never can be: for it's nothing but blarney an honest man tells you about the feelings of death, who has been relieved from suffocation by a lancet; or, to go further, it's foolish to listen to what one that has been some time under water, and gets picked up, and restored, as they call it,--to hear such a one tell what little or what much he suffered, with an idea of your gathering enough from his story to know what death by drowning is. If you do that, it's mighty mistaken you are; and I'll tell you why:--them people that gets restored that way or any other, no matter how, know but little about the thing, not much more than-myself or you and why don't they?--because _they never have died._ You never met with a man in your life, that had died, out and out. You couldn't; for them that dies completely never breathes mortal breath again. My father--rest his soul!--thought as I do; and he'd say, when the fire of existence is once extinguished, it's gone for ever and ever. When death has entirely done his work, the body is clay; then the spirit departs, and nothing human can ever bring it back. A man may lie motionless, breathless, and, what's more, senseless, at the bottom of a well, for an hour, or, may be, more,--who can tell?--and yet not die. In that case, by clever means and much work, the dying embers of life may be brought to a flame again; but once fairly dead, we're dead for ever. And so, I say, that the man who gets taken out of the water and recovers, can't say that he was dead. It's true, he has gone to the door; but has he passed over the threshold?--answer me that! If he had, he wouldn't have come back to us again, I'll engage! Don't you see, that we can't take a pair of compasses or a piece of tape, and measure exactly where life ends and death begins? And how do we know, when we take leave of a friend, because he don't move, and there's none o' the dew of life on the glass we put to his lips,--that he's dead?--Tossing the arms, or gnashing the teeth, shews pain, but there may be greater agony without it; for if we're violent, it shews we're strong; and it's suffer we may, much worse perhaps, when we're so weak that we can't wag a finger. Well, then,--and this is what I've been coming to all through my rigmarole, but I couldn't before,--how do we know that,--after the breath goes, and the limbs lose their power, and all is still,--the dying man, without breathing or moving, or his heart beating, don't feel the true grapple of death--the parting of soul and body?--Therefore, I say, as nobody ever came back, as I think, in body,--I don't spake of ghosts,--from the clutch of our enemy, we don't know anything much about him; and it's well we don't:--God be praised! all things in this world is ordered for the best!

It's little or nothing that's left me to add to my story:--poor Tommy Maloe's father, when he heard of the death of his son, got quite childish at once, and unable to help himself any way: so that he'd have had little to look to, but his poor neighbours, if my lady hadn't put him down on her little list of pensioners, and paid Peg Dwyer to mind the poor soul, and make him as comfortable, considering all things, as he well could be. You may still see ould Darby--that's his name--strolling about, from house to house, as he did on the morning after the disabled dragoon brought us news of his son's death, and telling every one who'll listen to him, how his beautiful boy was struck through and through by a baggonet, like a souldier's loaf,--or a tommy, as it's called in the army,--when he wint to fight the French, in foreign parts.

THE DENTIST.

Malachi Hoe is known, for twenty miles round his house, as a cow-doctor, and a rat-catcher, and a man of tip-top talent in two or three dozen useful arts and sciences,--as he himself calls tooth-drawing, and dog-cropping, and all the things he's famous for. He has the finest terriers and traps in the whole country; and if there isn't a fox to be found by the subscription pack, that Squire Lawless, and the rest of them has, nine miles off, at the brook of Ballyfaddin, they've only to send a dog-boy to Malachi, before sun-set, and he'll have one in a bag, ready to turn out before them, by the morning. He's very sparing of talk, and when he spakes, it's in short bits; and he'll look all the while as if he'd a right to be paid for his words: and it's well paid he is for them too, sure enough, by them that can do it. There isn't a hair's-breadth of a horse, from the crown down to the coronet, or below that again, to the head of the nail in his shoe, but Malachi knows: he's as much at home in the inside of a cow as that of his own cabin, and can tell where any thing is, as well in one as the other,---just as if he'd put it there himself. But Malachi prides himself most on his skill in tooth-drawing; and if you ask him what he is, he'll tell you--a dentist.

It's full thirty years ago, since Malachi came to settle among us. You hadn't then to send for him if he was wanted, for he seemed to scent sickness like a raven; and if your cow was taken ill, the next news you heard was, that Malachi's horn was blowing on the hill; and, in ten minutes more, he stood at your door, with a drench if you wished it.

Malachi now keeps closer to his nest: still he's to be had, if you'll pay him his bill. He's looked upon as an oracle in most things, by every body except Ileen, his wife, who thinks one of her opinions worth two of his, any day; and though Malachi Roe is a wise man, I won't say but Ileen is right. If you knew him, you'd as soon think of saying black was white, as contradicting the dentist: but Ileen don't care a bawbee for him, and often tells him right up to his face that he's wrong. Malachi wishes she'd bide at home; but she'd rather be busy on the beach, having an eye to the girls and women she employs to gather the dillosk: and, though feared, her goodness of heart secures her the love of every one of her neighbours--high and low. By all accounts, she must be the exact temper of her grandmother and namesake Ileen, the Meal-woman; who, though left a widow, at eighteen, with a child looking up to her for support, never got married again; but kept herself dacent, and brought up her little one, without a ha'p'orth of help from man, woman, or child. She put on the manners and resolution of a man, with her weeds;--the mills which her husband had occupied she kept going; and managed so well, that she got more and more grist by degrees, till at last, the name of Ileen the Meal-woman, was known all over the country.

Her child--it was a boy--grew up, got married, and did well, until about the time of his turning the awkward corner of fifty; then it was that his wife, who was three or four years younger than himself,--as wives should be, you know,--fell sick, and died away suddenly. No man could well grieve much more for the loss of his wife, than ould Ileen the Meal-woman's son did for his: he wouldn't allow her to be carried away up the country, and buried among her own kin, but insisted that she should be laid in his father's grave; so that, one day or other, his own remains might be placed by her side.

If you reckon the age of his son, and remember how soon after his marriage he died, you'll find that Ileen the Meal-woman's husband, at the time his daughter-in-law departed this life, must have been buried hard upon half a century. When the grave was opened, his coffin crumbled beneath the pickaxe some of his dry bones were carelessly shovelled up by the digger, and there they lay among the earth, which so long had covered him. Ileen knew nothing of this: she had heard of the death of her son's wife, and made all the haste she could away from a distant part, where she was buying wheat, or selling meal, I don't know which, so as to be at the funeral. When she got near home, two or three people tould her that her husband's grave had been opened, to receive the body of her daughter-in-law; but she wouldn't believe them: for all that though, she quickened her horse's pace, and made direct for the spot. The memory of her husband was still fresh within her, long as she'd lost him,--for her heart had never known a second affection. She didn't remember and so see him, in her waking dreams, a poor, broken-down, grey-headed old man, tottering gradually under a load of infirmities, to death's door, with his temper soured by time and pain, and his affections froze up by age: but whenever his form came across her mind,--and it's often she looked back to the two short years of happiness, she'd passed with him,--he started up to her thoughts in all the pride of his manhood,--handsome, high-spirited, and affectionate, as he was a week before she parted from him for ever.

The people were just going to lower the coffin of the Meal-woman's daughter-in-law into the earth, when Ileen reached the outer circle of them that came to the funeral. Without spaking a word she made a lane for herself through the crowd, and at that awful moment, she suddenly appeared, speechless with fury, at the head of the grave. Her son shrunk from her terrible glance; and every one within view of her, stood without motion, gaping in fear and wonder at the tall, gaunt figure of Ileen, and the features of her, distorted as they were by the grief---the rage--the horror--the agony she felt,--and wondered what was going to be the matter. After some little time, during which not a word was spoke, and nobody scarcely dared breathe, Ileen began to tremble from head to foot; big tears gushed out of her eyes; and says she:--“Is that you I see there, Patrick?--Are you my son?--And is this your father's grave?”

“Mother,” says Patrick, “what, in the name of the holy Saints, ails you?--Don't you see it's me?--And ar'nt you sure it's my poor father's last home?--Where else would I bury my wife?”

“Your wife!--And was it to bury your wife, that you broke open my husband's grave?”

“Of course it is, mother what harm?--Go on, friends.”

“Stand back!” cried Ileen, in a loud and determined tone, placing herself betuxt the coffin and the brink of the grave;--“I'd like to see the man who dare pollute the dust of my husband, with that of a strange woman! I am the wife of him whose grave is here--of him, and of none but him: I lay in his bosom when he was alive--and do you think, any of you, I'll stand by, while there's a drop of blood left in my veins, to see another be put in my place, now that he's dead? Have I lived for fifty long years with the hope of one day being united in death to the joy of my life, to have another laid by his side at last?--Who broke this holy earth?--What accursed wretch was it?--Where is he?--Shew him to me--that I may grip him by the throat?”

“Mother, mother!” said Patrick, “for the sake of him you spake of, be not so violent! If I've done wrong--”

“_If_ you've done wrong?--Thank God, Patrick, it wasn't your own hand did this!”

“Well! I'm sorry now that any hand did it: but it's too late to waste time in words: and I _must_ have the remains of my wife respected.”

“Wretched--unnatural child!--what respect have you shown to those of my husband--my husband, and your father, Patrick?--Oh! this earth which covered him,” continued Ileen, stooping to pick up a handful of the mould she stood upon,--and at that moment, for the first time, she saw the bones!--She shrieked out at the sight, and no tongue could describe the look of agony which she cast at her son.

Patrick, however, who'd more love for the wife he'd lived thirty years with, than the father he couldn't remember, much as he was grieved at the sorrow and anger of his mother, resolved that the corpse shouldn't be treated with a shew of insult: so says he to those about him, “Come, let us make an end of this; I will set you an example.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when Ileen snatched up one of her husband's bones, and gave her son so violent a blow with it on his head, that he staggered and fell nearly senseless into the grave.

His friends got Patrick out again as quick as they could: but before he recovered, Ileen had carefully gathered up the bones, folded them in a kerchief, which she tore off her bosom, dropped them into the grave, and proceeded to throw in the earth again with her hands. No one attempted to hinder her--but it was only when she had made the ground level, and cast herself, moaning, upon it, that the people persuaded her son to let them carry his wife's coffin away, and bury it elsewhere.

Just such a one as Ileen the Meal-woman, in temper and heart, is her grand-daughter Ileen, the second wife of Malachi Roe: he'd a son by his first; but has had no children by Ileen. If Malachi's boy was a fool all his young days,--and he's not so now he's grown up--it wasn't Ileen's fault; for she behaved like a mother to him, and tried all she could to make him know a duck from a drawbridge, but in vain. At last, when he was about eighteen, Malachi got him a place in my lady's stables, under the grooms and coachmen she'd just had down with fine horses and new liveries from Dublin--_why_, nobody could guess, except that she was going to give up being a widow.

The first day Malachi's boy got into the stables, the grooms and postillions persuaded him they were much finer dentists than his father; and, to convince him, they tied a piece of whipcord round one of his teeth, and fastened the other end of it to a stall-post: then one of them came and threatened the end of his nose with the prong of a pitchfork, so that the stripling drew back his head with a jerk, and out came the tooth. This, and two or three other of the usual jokes that boys gets played in a stable, put young Malachi on his mettle; so that, after awhile, his father, and even ould Ileen herself, began to glory in him;--thanks to the dentist whose only instrument was the prong of a pitchfork.

THE MUSHROOM.

About six o'clock, or, may be, a quarter less, on a wet summer's evening, all of a sudden the sun peeped out from behind a cloud,--as Corney Carolan said,--looking half ashamed to shew his face, after his bad behaviour all day,--and just cast a glance across the bog, to see who was that so merry and musical in Luke Fogarty's car, bating the garron that dragged it along, with his wooden leg in lieu of a whip. Who was it, then, but the piper of Drogheda, Coraey Carolan himself, coming from a wedding, away somewhere in the hills, where he'd been drinking whiskey galore, and playing his pipes, night and morning, for the biggest half of a week! Luke Fogarty had sent his son Rory with the car that morning, to bring home the piper, dead or alive; for it was whispered by many, that great things would be doing in a day or two at our place here; who by, or why for, nobody well knew; but there was to be drinking and dancing:--and what would drinking or dancing be without himself?--I mane Corney the piper.

The sun drew in his horns again,--if you'd believe Carolan,--as soon as he saw it was his ould friend the piper; but he shone quite long enough for Corney to discover that the big mile-stone, put up at the edge of the bog, by mad Henniker, years ago, to judge by the shadow it cast across the road, wasn't anything like its ordinary shape. Corney couldn't make out at all what it meant, or why it was; but, as the car got nearer the mile-stone, the piper perceived that it carried an umbrella.

“Well, to be sure, it's rainy enough, so it is,” says Corney; “but mile-stones, I thought, was made to stand wind and weather. Is that any one's umbrella there on Henniker's mile-stone?--Be-kase if it's nobody's, why, then, I'll get it.”

The umbrella began to move, and presently Corney discovered that a gentleman and his dog was beneath it. There they sat, shivering, dirty, and making themselves as little as possible, on the top of the stone; and barely able, the one to keep his tail, and the other the skirts of his coat, and the lower part of his legs, out of the water; which, after it rained unusually hard,--as it did that day,--got together in a pool round the stone, and sometimes rose over it entirely.

“Come out o' that,” said Corney to the gentleman; “come away at once, sir; and don't be sitting that way on Henniker's folly all night! May be you're Henniker himself, though,--and then, no wonder.”

The gentleman replied, as well as his shivering would let him, that Corney was mistaken.

“Then why stay there, sir?” says Corney, “when we've room on the car for you, and the garron impatient to be going!”

“Look at the water,” said the gentleman; “how am I to wade through it?”

“Is it wade?--Faith! then, you'll have to swim soon! But take your choice, sir:--I won't persuade you one way or another.”

“Where _am_ I?” says the gentleman.

“Where _are_ you!--Why, then, look at the side of the stone, and you'll see, cut in legible letters,'_nine miles from anywhere_ and no mile-stone in the world ever spoke truer. Was it to gratify impertinent curiosity, do you think, that Henniker put up the stone?--Not himself, then!--Mad as he was, he knew that it would be quite enough to make any man move on to be tould he was nine miles from anywhere!--What more did you want? Would you have him keep a horse ready saddled, waiting 'till you'd come?”

“My mare has thrown me and ran away,” said the gentleman; “and I merely got on the stone, so that I might shelter myself and my dog, from head to foot, until some one came by, or the rain ceased.”

“Ceased!” exclaimed Corney, bursting into a laugh; “if you waited for that, sir, you'd stay till the crows removed you as a nuisance to the frogs in the slush there behind. Does it ever cease?--Divil a bit, then, for three miles round, morning, noon, or night,--summer or winter,--but keeps pelting and pattering away, at all times and in all seasons, as it has for hundreds of years, and will for ever and ever except once in a twelvemonth, sometimes, and that's the fifteenth day of the month of July, when St. Swithin is too busy raining down upon the other parts of the world, to mind this which is his watery worship's home. It's fine weather here, if, with three coats on your back, you don't get wet to the skin in forty minutes. I wouldn't insult the Saint, by carrying an umbrella, for Damer's estate! Bad luck and ill chance is the best I'd expect, and so may you; for it's raining now just worse than ever I knew it but once. Had you no idea, then, where you were, sir?”

“I had,” says the gentleman; “but I wasn't sure. I never came by this road to The Beg before; and I asked the boy that's with you where I was, when I met him hereabouts, full two hours ago; but he grinned in my face.”

“Is it yourself that bate him, bekase he couldn't understand English?”

“I certainly did lay my whip over his shoulders,” says the gentleman; “and the young villain then began to pelt me and my mare with stones, so that the animal feared to approach near enough to permit of my beating him again; and at last she got unmanageable, ran away, and threw me off,--that is, I mean--threw me off, and ran away.”

“Rory was right, then, and so I said while ago, when he tould me part of the story; for you'd no business to bate him,--had you, now?--But what makes you wait, sir? If you don't come at once, why, then, good night!--For it's not agreeable to be houlding a conversation such weather as this, with one on a mile-stone under a big umbrella.--Is it coming you are?”

The gentleman talked of borrowing a boat, or backing the car into the pool: but Corney said he couldn't get the one, and wouldn't do the other; and, moreover, that the umbrella must be sacrificed to St. Swithin, for he wasn't reprobate enough to ride in its company. After many more words, the gentleman got down from the mile-stone, with his dog under his arm, and walked through the water like a cat through a puddle. At first he insisted on being allowed his umbrella; but Corney was resolute; and away it wint, at last, scudding over the bog,--frightening up thousands of birds, which flew screaming after it,--until it suddenly sunk in what's called “The Saint's Piggin.” The gentleman wasn't well seated on the car, before Corney thrust a bottle of whiskey into his hand, and threatened him with a quantity of discipline from his wooden leg, if he didn't take a good pull at it.

“It's merry we'll be, as whiskey and good stories can make us,” said the piper: “I don't care a bawbee for St. Swithin, while I've a cork, or even a thumb left, to keep him out of my bottle. But I'll not be disrespectful to the Saint, though, any way why should I?--He does me no more harm than my betters; and if I offended him, mightn't he follow me, far and near, and rain on me wherever I went? May be, you never heard how he served the little nation that lived here long ago how should you, that didn't know where you were, and you sitting on Henniker's folly? Why, then, I'll tell you:--Once upon a time--long ago it was, in the days of our forefathers--this place was peopled by Mathawns, and one King Ounshough reigned over them, and he and his subjects were all believers in blarney. Well, who should come to the king one day, but a man that said, if he got the weight of what he could ate during nine days, in gold, and had his own people to wait on him, he'd make all the spiders grow so big, that the ladies might wear their webs by the way of veils; and after that, may be, for more gold, he'd carry his invention to such a pitch, that the insects should weave fishing-nets, strong enough to catch whales themselves,--to say nothing of salmon and smaller fish.--Well, while he was at work, along comes another, who sould them a secret for planting trees in such a way, that they'd grow of themselves into ships: and, says he, 'for a trifle, I'll teach you how to sow hemp and flax, in little pots, on their branches, so that they may shoot up into ready-made sails and rigging; and all by philosophy, without a morsel of magic.'--Wasn't this more than men could wish? The boobies bit at the bait,--high and low; and thinks they to themselves, 'what fine fellows we'll be, to catch whales and conquer the world by philosophy!'--While the trees were growing, and the spiders were spinning, there comes another man, and says he, 'Don't you know me, any of you?'--And some suspected they did; and others was almost sure he was related to them by their mother's side; but nobody owned him. So then, says he, 'I'll tell you who I am: that moon yonder, that lights you, is my property; you've had the use of it for years, but I've been too generous. I'm grown poor, and can't be liberal any longer:--you sha'n't have the light of my moon gratis; so pay five hundred a year, or I'll put it out: and then what'll you do?'--Well, what they'd do, sure enough, they didn't know; but before they'd done debating upon it, up comes a smart little man--a foreigner--who advised them to pay what was asked for the present, and if they'd subscribe for him, he'd get up an opposition moon, that should shine better, and be full all the year round, for half the expense of the ould one. Wasn't that too good an offer to be rejected?--It was; and the Mathawns bit at that too. But this wasn't all:--before the new moon was made, or the trees grown into ships, or the spiders' webs big enough for veils, the people was persuaded by a traveller to let him build them an umbrella, that should be large enough to keep the rain off every inch of the country; and it was to be so contrived that they could let it down by machinery, if the land wanted water, and put it up when they'd just as much wet as they liked. Now this was so great an insult to St. Swithin, that he began raining at once, and before they could put up their umbrella, dispersed the whole people;--making the country a bog, as you see it; and never ceasing to pelt away with his little pellets of water, from that day to this. But though they were scattered, the boobies wasn't destroyed. You may find some of their descendants in every corner of the world, who are as staunch believers in blarney, as ever their forefathers were in the days of ould Ounshough the king.--Isn't that a fine story for you, now, such a murdering wet evening as this?”

“Bathershin, man!” says the gentleman, with a sneer of contempt; “call it a lie, and give me the bottle, for I'm cold after it.”

“Don't you believe it, then?”

“How could I,” says the gentleman, “when it's lies, and you know it?”

“Then sorrow the sup out of my bottle you get, sir, and sorrow the step goes the garron, until you believe it. Arrah! Rory,--pturr-r!”

“Pturr-r!” roared Rory, at the top of his voice, and stock-still stood the horse, as in duty bound.

“Is it quite mad you are, you dirty blackguard?” says the gentleman.

“Blackguard your betters!” says Corney: “Musha! then, if the likes o' you was rolled in the bog, what harm?--You couldn't be worse than you were; for it's dirt itself you are!--I'll say that for you, since you put me up.”

“Ar'n't you an impertinent ould scoundrel?”

“No doubt I am; but the garron don't stir one of his four pegs till you believe what I tould you, while ago, for all that. I won't ride with a man if there's such a difference of opinion betuxt us.”

“Don't you see the rain how it pours?”

“Do you think I'm blind?--or that I can't feel the water running in channels down the wet back o' me?--But I'd weather the rain like a duck, in a good cause; and it's promoting concord I am, betwxt myself and one that's ungrateful and don't mind me, at this moment.”

The piper was obstinate; and after awhile, the gentleman was obliged to say he did'nt think the story a lie. It was then, only, that he got a sup of the whiskey; and Corney gave the garron a hint with his wooden leg, to be going.

“Now,” says Corney, “as we've made friends,--and I don't think I ever had an enemy but one, a whole day,--I'll entertain you with some of my music: but, before I begin, I'll just remind you, that I said while ago, there was boobies everywhere,--didn't I?--I did, that's true enough, and Rory's one o'them. May be you've been tould of one o' the Fogarty family, who ties a lanthorn to the horse's head, so that the crature may find out his grass in the dark?--This is the boy that does it:--as though the Will-o'-Wisps, and Jack-Lanterns of the bog, wouldn't do what was wanted o' them in that way, for a horse?--Do you believe that now, or don't you?”

“Is it a fool you take me for?” says the gentleman.

“Yea or nay, just as you plaize. Arrah! Rory,--pturr-r!”

“Pturr-r!” says Rory again; and the garron stopped so suddenly, that the piper himself was like to have been pitched over his head.

“Go on, and good luck to you!” cried the gentleman; “go on, and there's nothing you'll say but what I'll believe; for it's killed with the cold I am entirely!”

“Oh, fie! and the whiskey here at your elbow!”

The piper lifted his leg, and away wint the garron again. After much more talk, and two or three stoppages, Carolan at last says to the gentleman, “Now I'd like to know, sir,--may be you won't tell me, though;--but why shouldn't you?--”

“Ask me no impertinent questions, and behave yourself in every respect, or you'll wish you hadn't a tongue in your head this journey, when you come to know me,--as perhaps you may.”

“Perhaps I won't, though;--for I've no great opinion of you. Perhaps, I won't know you to plaize you. But you'll own I'm right in not riding another step with one that won't tell me which way he'd be going.”

“Don't stop the horse again, and you shall know at least where I'm bound to:--indeed, I tould you long ago, it was to The Beg.”

“Is it The Beg?--and so you did, now I remember. May be you're a new butler?--No?--A bailiff, then?--Yet why should you? There's nobody there now that's in debt. And if you ar'n't either the one or the other, what can you be?--But it's bad manners in me to be bothering my brains with guessing who you are, when I don't care about knowing. You won't go to The Beg though, anyhow, to-night it's a long three miles from where we stop a bad road and up-hill entirely, too.”

“Can I get a bed, think you?”

“Why, then, Luke Fogarty's is the state cabin o' the whole place, and he'd give up his own bed any day to a stranger, though he hasn't the best of characters; and Ramilies, his pig--”

“His what?”

“Ramilies, his pig;--they say she's a witch: she farrows nineteen, four or five times a year; and she has tushes like ram's horns, only they're straight. She goes miles away by the sea-side and walks into the water, like a Christian, to nuzzle up crabs among the rocks. It's often I've seen her scrunching them: they nips her--trust them for that--with their claws; but I'm inclined to believe, the pinches she gets on her tongue serves by way of a fillip or sauce to the feast, by the same ride that donkeys like thistles that's prickly, and we ourselves mustard with pork. If I'd a house to pull down to-morrow, I wouldn't wish a better workman than Ramilies, if she hadn't her dinner, and there was fish inside, and the doors barred. They say, she drinks whiskey when she can get it:--but what need have you to be afraid? Won't I be there with you?--Sure I will.--Ramilies has no ear for music, and one blow of my bagpipes drives her. As to Luke,--why, if Luke shouldn't behave himself, it won't be the first time I've poked my wooden leg in the face of him, and broke his ugly deaf head, with the big hollow bull's-hom he has for an ear-pipe, into the bargain. Corney Carolan is well able for him, or any one else, if he's only awake.”

“I'm afraid your friend's cabin won't afford much accommodation for a gentleman.”

“Why, then,” says Corney, “I'll just give you a bit of a bird's-eye view of it, and you'll judge for yourself. As you go in, there's a remarkably fine dunghill, on each side of the door, built up as straight as two walls,--only a little loose at the top,--so that they forms a sort of artificial porch, or portico, to the house; and, at the other side o' the window, there's another wall o' dung, that reaches chuck up to the gable. When you go in, if you look to the right, there's a place where Luke sits and makes brogues, when he's in the humour for it; and you'll see a pair of channel-pumps, hanging by wooden pegs in the wall, which he made when he worked in Waterford; and among the tools,--I mane, the awl, and strap, and stone,--no doubt but there's the broken crockery he had his dinner in, this day six months, when he'd a fit o' work on him, and wouldn't, for a moment, quit the brogues he was then making, and which ar'n't finished yet, nor never will: for the next time he sits down to work, he'll begin another pair, and lave off again, when he's just done three quarters of each of them. Though he's the finest workman, they say, within seven baronies, Luke and his family are the best customers to Jack Sheelan the shoemaker, in the whole place: for Luke has other ways o' getting money than with his hammer and awl,--it's himself that has, then! He's come of a fine family too,--though I say it, that's his cousin,--for he's a Sweeney by birth, and has a right to be called so: he _was_, long ago, and would be now, if he hadn't quarrelled with his father's family, and sworn, out of spite, never to wear their name again as long as he breathed: so he took to his mother's--she was a Fogarty;--and you couldn't offend him more any way in the world than you would if you upset his whiskey, singed his nose while he was asleep, or called him Luke Sweeney.”

“He's a room above stairs, I hope,” says the gentleman.

“He _had_; and the floor of it went three parts across the kitchen; and when you got up, you could look over a board and see your peathees boiling below for breakfast:--and you might, to this day, if the rain hadn't soaked through the ould thatch and rotted the timber, so that it fell down with nineteen of us, one night at a dance, years and years ago.”

“Then I'll be compelled to sleep with nothing above me but the bare thatch!”

“That, and the cobwebs:--and you'll see how the big spiders will run down their little ropes, and dangle over the table, when I'm playing Garry-hone-a-gloria!--But there's no harm in the cratures; nor much in ould Ramilies herself, if she hasn't been drinking. I've known her get so drunk, on beer-grounds they gave her at The Beg, that it took seven men and a boy to bring her home, with Luke Fogarty's sister going before, pinching one o' the little pigs, so as to make him squeal out, by the way of wheedling her on quietly.”

“Right glad am I that I've my dog to watch me:--but, of course, they'll keep her out if I ask it,” says the gentleman.

“They will, if she'll let them; but her word isn't worth a bad song, if you could get her to give it;--and you couldn't, could you?--But, _na boeklish!_ hav'n't you your dog!--I'll promise to persuade Fogarty to give you up his own little black oak bedstead, that stands beside the chimney: and then who knows but you'll get the canvass bed stuffed with louchaun--that's the chaff that comes from the oats when they're winnowed--and three rugs to cover you! But what's better than all, though we shouldn't be there till midnight,--and, faith! then, we won't at this rate,--there'll be an iligant supper, and all the gorlochs--except Susey, the eldest--put to bed. What'll we have, you'd like to know, eh?--Well, then, I'd tell you, if I could, but I can't. May be, if Luke's had luck lately, we'll get a bonnov,--that's a little pig, you know and if not, there'll be a cobbler's nob, and a dish of caulcannon at any rate, we're sure of hot ghindogues and praupeen, or stirabout, or shloucaun,--that's the sea-weed,--the dillosk, you know, that the girls gather, boiled down to a nicety, and which, as they say, is what Saint Ambrose lived upon, and the same thing you rade of in books, by the name of ambrosia. Rory tells me they'd a breast of mutton,--he don't precisely remember what day, but it was lately,--and we'll get that made up into beggar's-dish, with onions, and a bit of tripe, may be, if it's not eat, and Ramilies hasn't stolen it. That pig's a witch, as I tould you before; but sure you needn't mind her with your dog, need you?--If it comes to the worst, we're certain of peathees, trundled out hot from the crock in the middle of the big table, with a clane hoop on it to keep them from rolling off: and what's finer than peathees when they're smoking, and grinning at you through their red jackets? With them and milk (I'll engage for him, Luke will be able to give you your choice, sour milk or new) and two or three piggins o' pothien,--we'll be gay as drovers, and sleep sound wherever we fall. But I'm houlding out all these fine things to you, only to shew you what good luck you'll miss, if you don't tell me who you are, and what is it you'd be doing at The Beg; for it wouldn't be well of me to bring home any one, without knowing head nor hair of him, to my cousin Fogarty's,--would it, now?”

“It isn't at all necessary that I should satisfy your curiosity,” says the gentleman.

“May be, not; but I think so:--so we'd better settle the point before we go further. Arrah! Rory,--Pturr-r!”