Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3)

The chaplain, showman, and two amateur rebels, now prepared to return to Wexford. Though somewhat disappointed at the short cut of their exhibition, they had no reason to find fault with the lining their pockets had got. The officers of the Tower, however, had heard the catastrophe and character of the “olive branch,” and communicated to the lieutenant their doubts if he were a fit subject to mix with the noble wild beasts in a royal menagerie. Several consultations took place upon the subject; the lord chamberlain was requested to take his Majesty’s commands upon the subject in council: the king, who had been signing some death-warrants and pardons for the Recorder of London, was thunderstruck and shocked at the audacity of an Irish pig eating a Protestant clergyman; and though no better Christian ever existed than George the Third, his hatred to pork from that moment was invincible, and became almost a Jewish aversion.

“The Tower! the Tower!” said his Majesty, with horror and indignation. “The Tower for an Irish hog that ate a pious Christian! – No, no – no, no, my lords. – Mr. Recorder, Mr. Recorder – here, see, see – I command you on your allegiance – shoot the pig, shoot him – shoot, Mr. Recorder – you can’t hang. – Eh! you would if you could, Mr. Recorder, no doubt. But, no, no – let me never hear more of the monster. A sergeant’s guard – shoot him – tell Sir Richard Ford to send his keepers to Ireland to-night – to-night if he can find them – go, go – let me never hear more of him – go – go – go – go – shoot him, shoot him!”

The Recorder withdrew with the usual obeisances, and notice was given that at six next morning a sergeant’s guard should attend to shoot the “olive branch,” and bury his corpse in the Tower ditch, with a bulky barrel of hot lime to annihilate it. This was actually executed, notwithstanding the following droll circumstance that Sir Richard Ford himself informed us of.

Sir Richard was far better acquainted with the humour and management of the Irish in London, than any London magistrate that ever succeeded him: he knew nearly all of the principal ones by name, and individually, and represented them to us as the most tractable of beings, if duly come round and managed, and the most intractable and obstinate, if directly contradicted.

The Irish had been quite delighted with the honour intended for their compatriot, the Enniscorthy boar, and were equally affected and irritated at the sentence which was so unexpectedly and so unjustly passed on him; and, after an immediate consultation, they determined that the pig should be rescued at all risks, and without the least consideration how they were to save his life afterwards. Their procedure was all settled, and the rescue determined on, when one of Sir Richard’s spies brought him information of an intended rising at St. Giles’s to rescue the pig, which the frightened spy said must be followed by the Irish firing London, plundering the Bank, and massacring all the Protestant population – thirty thousand choice Irish being ready for any thing.

Sir Richard was highly diverted at the horrors of the spy, but judged it wise to prevent any such foolish attempt at riot, by anticipating his Majesty’s orders; wherefore, early in the evening, a dozen policemen, one by one, got into the hog’s residence, with a skilful butcher, who stuck him in the spinal marrow, and the “olive branch,” scarcely brought life to the ground with him. The rescue was then out of the question, and in a very short time Doctor Haydn’s Gourmand was not only defunct, but actually laid ten feet under ground, with as much quick-lime covered up over his beautiful body as soon left hardly a bone to discover the place of his interment.

Sir Richard told this anecdote, as to the execution, &c. with great humour. The Irish used to tell Sir Richard that a pig was dishonoured by any death but to make bacon of; that God had sent the breed to Ireland for that purpose only; and that, when killed for that purpose, they considered his death a natural one!

THE END

1

Two Dublin aldermen lately made baronets; one by his Majesty on his landing in Ireland (Alderman King); and the other by the Marquess of Wellesley on his debarkation (Alderman James), being the first public functionary he met. The Marquess would fain have knighted him; but being taken by surprise, he conferred the same honour which Aldermen Stammer and King had previously received.

There are now four baronets amongst that hard-going corporation.

2

Every lord mayor of Dublin becomes judge of a “Court of Conscience” for twelve months after the expiration of his mayoralty; each decree costing a shilling; many of the causes are of the most comical description; but never would there have arisen so great a judge as Sancho Panza of Barataria, from presiding in our Court of Conscience.

I cannot omit stating, that Sir William, when lord mayor, gave the most numerous, brilliant, and complete masquerade ever seen in Dublin, or, I believe, any where else. There were fourteen or fifteen hundred persons, and I am sure not more than one hundred dominoes; every body went in character, and every person tried to keep up the character he adopted. Ireland, of all places in the world, is, perhaps, best adapted to a masquerade, as every Irishman is highly amused when he can get an opportunity of assuming, by way of freak, any new character.

It was the custom for the mob, on those occasions, to stop every carriage, and demand of each person, “What’s your character?” I was dreadfully tired of them in the street on the night in question; but fairly put into good-humour by the jeu d’esprit of a mob-man, who opened the carriage-door. After I had satisfied him as to character, he desired to know, where I was going? “Shut the door,” said I. “Ah, but where are you going?” I was vexed. “I’m going to the Devil,” said I. “Ough, then, God send you safe!” replied the blackguard.

3

This was the first instance I recollect of pertinacity conquering privilege.

4

In these times it may not, perhaps, be fully credited when I tell – that four of my father’s sons carried his body themselves to the grave: that his eldest son was in a state bordering on actual distraction at his death; and in the enthusiastic paroxysms of affection which we all felt for our beloved parent at that cruel separation, I do even now firmly believe there was not one of us who would not, on the impulse of the moment, have sprung into, and supplanted him in his grave, to have restored him to animation. But we were all a family of nature and of heart, and decided enemies to worldly objects.

5

I never saw a young woman brought into the dissecting-room but my blood ran cold, and I was immediately set a-moralising. The old song of “Death and the Lady” is a better lecture for the fair sex than all the sermons that ever were preached, including Mr. Fordyce’s. ’Tis a pity that song is not melodised for the use of the fashionables during their campaigns in London.

6

A massacre of the Irish at a place called Mullymart, in the county of Kildare, which is spoken of by Casaubon in his Britannia as a thing prophesied: the prophesy did actually take effect; and it is, altogether, one of the most remarkable traditionary tales of that country.

7

An instrument used in the practice of farriers. It is a piece of cord passed round the nose of a horse (being the most sensitive part of that animal); and being twisted tight by a short stick, it creates a torture so exquisite, that all other tortures go for nothing. Therefore, when a horse is to have his tail cut off, or his legs burned, &c., a touch is put upon his nose, the extreme pain whereof absorbs that of the operation, and, as they term it, makes the beast “stay easy.”

8

Ballaghlanagh was the name of an old Irish bard (by tradition), whose ghost used to come the night before to people who were to be killed fighting in battle on the morning: and as a ghost offers the most convincing proof that the mortal it represents is no longer living, the term Ballaghlanagh, came, figuratively, to signify a “dead man.” I learnt this explanation from the old colloughs, who all joined exactly in the same tradition.

9

Last year, the son of a very great man in England came over to Paris with a considerable sum in his pocket for the very same purpose. The first thing he did was gravely to ask his banker (an excellent and sensible man), “How long six thousand pounds would last him in Paris?” The reply was a true and correct one, “If you play, three days; if you don’t, six weeks.”

10

A custodium is a law proceeding in Ireland, not practised much any where else, and is vastly worse than even an “extent in aid.” By one fiction the debtor is supposed to owe money to the king: – by another “fiction,” the king demands his money; – and the debtor, by a third “fiction,” is declared a rebel, because he does not pay the king. – A commission of rebellion then issues in the name of the king against the debtor; and by a fourth “fiction,” he is declared an outlaw, and all his estates are seized and sequestered to pay his majesty. A receiver of every shilling belonging to the debtor is then appointed by the king’s chief baron of the exchequer; every tenant on the estates is served with the “fictions,” as well as the landlord; and a debt of one hundred pounds has been frequently ornamented with a bill of costs to the amount of three thousand in the name of his majesty, who does not know the least circumstance of the matter.

There was scarcely a gentleman in the county of Galway, formerly, but was as great an outlaw as Robin Hood; with this difference, that Robin Hood might be hanged, and his majesty could only starve the gentleman.

11

How admirably does Horace describe the grievance of a bore catching hold of your button, and making the proprietor a prisoner till his speech is expended. Doctor T – told me that the satire came into his head whilst Sir John had him in hold, and that in his hurry to emancipate himself, he made a large cut in a new surtout, and quite spoiled its beauty.

12

Sir John is the greatest eulogist of the Duchess of Berry, and has got the Legion of Honour for having given up his bed, blankets, and all, to the Duke of Berry, somewhere on the road, when they were both running away from Napoleon Bonaparte.

13

There is a manuscript of great antiquity in the library of the Vatican, which gives a full and circumstantial account of the chase and running down of St. Chrysostom by a legion of devils, and of his recapture by an inconsiderable number of saints, who came from heaven to the rescue.

14

Toler, now Lord Norbury, of whom the common people had a great dread.

15

Curran had told me, with infinite humour, of an adventure between him and a mastiff when he was a boy. He had heard somebody say, that any person throwing the skirts of his coat over his head, stooping low, holding out his arms and creeping along backward, might frighten the fiercest dog and put him to flight. He accordingly made the attempt on a miller’s animal in the neighbourhood, who would never let the boys rob the orchard; but found to his sorrow that he had a dog to deal with who did not care which end of a boy went foremost, so as he could get a good bite out of it. “I pursued the instructions,” said Curran; “and, as I had no eyes save those in front, fancied the mastiff was in full retreat: but I was confoundedly mistaken; for at the very moment I thought myself victorious, the enemy attacked my rear, and having got a reasonably good mouthful out of it, was fully prepared to take another before I was rescued. Egad, I thought for a time the beast had devoured my entire centre of gravity, and that I never should go on a steady perpendicular again.” “Upon my word, Curran,” said I, “the mastiff may have left you your centre, but he could not have left much gravity behind him, among the bystanders.”

I had never recollected this story until the affair of Diver at Parson Thomas’s, and I told it that night to the country gentlemen before Curran, and for a moment occasioned a hearty laugh against him; but he soon floored me, in our social converse, which whiled away as convivial an evening as I ever experienced.

16

The Prime Sergeant of the Irish bar was then Lord Sligo’s brother – a huge, fat, dull fellow; but the great lawyer of the family. Prime Sergeant Brown was considered as an oracle by the whole county of Mayo: yet there could scarcely be found man less calculated to tell fortunes. The watch-dog was named after him.

17

Mr. Richard Martin had been called to the Irish bar, as the eldest sons of the most respectable families of Ireland then were, not, as might be supposed, to practise for others, but with a supposition that they would thereby be better enabled to defend their own territories from judgments, mortgagees, custodiums, &c. &c., and to “stave off” vulgar demands, which if too speedily conceded, might beget very serious inconveniences.

18

This was the celebrated Henry Flood, the antagonist of Grattan – certainly the ablest statesman of his day. He had himself fought more than once; and had killed Mr. Eager, the father of Lord Clifden, of Gowran.

19

These were the gentry by whom the author was some time subsequently so closely beleaguered at the yarn fair at Castlebar, as hereafter mentioned.

20

I have read, in biographical books, George Robert Fitzgerald described as a great, coarse, violent Irishman, of ferocious appearance and savage manners. His person and manners were totally the reverse of this: a more polished and elegant gentleman was not to be met with. His person was very slight and juvenile, his countenance extremely mild and insinuating; and, knowing that he had a turn for single combat, I always fancied him too genteel to kill any man except with the small-sword.

21

Having been tried and convicted of a most unparalleled series of assaults upon, and imprisonment of, his own father, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment; but, as we have before stated, was pardoned (in six months), to the disgrace of the government.

22

Both Mr. Jenning’s daughters were pretty and pleasant girls. I observed Miss Betty mending silk stockings, which was rather odd at the plains of Kilcommon. I told her I fancied she was kind-hearted, and had an uncommon degree of sense for her years, and she firmly believed me. I made her a present of the “Sentimental Journey,” which I had in my coat-case. I construed the French for her (except two words): and on my return she told me it had taught her what sentiment was; that she found she had a great deal of sentiment herself, but did not know the name of it before; and that she would always keep the book in kind remembrance of the donor.

23

I had made an unbending rule, for which I was dreadfully teased in the country, never to fight or quarrel about horse-flesh.

24

In old times, Braefield near Turlow had been noted for witches, several of whom had been burned or drowned for poisoning cattle, giving love-powders to people’s childer ere they came to years of maturity, and bestowing the shaking ague on every body who was not kind to them. When I was at Turlow, they showed me near Braefield five high granite stones stuck up in the midst of a green field, which they called “the Witches of Braefield.” They said there was a witch under every one of these, buried a hundred feet deep “at any rate.”

25

Carding the tithe proctors (who certainly were the genuine tyrants of Ireland) was occasionally resorted to by the White Boys, and was performed in the following manner.

The tithe proctor was generally waked out of his first sleep by his door being smashed in; and the boys in white shirts desired him “never to fear,” as they only intended to card him this bout for taking a quarter instead of a tenth from every poor man in the parish. They then turned him on his face upon the bed; and taking a lively ram cat out of a bag which they brought with them, they set the cat between the proctor’s shoulders. The beast, being nearly as much terrified as the proctor, would endeavour to get off; but being held fast by the tail, he intrenched every claw deep in the proctor’s back, in order to keep up a firm resistance to the White Boys. The more the tail was pulled back, the more the ram cat tried to go forward; at length, when he had, as he conceived, made his possession quite secure, main force convinced him to the contrary, and that if he kept his hold he must lose his tail. So, he was dragged backward to the proctor’s loins, grappling at every pull, and bringing away here and there strips of the proctor’s skin, to prove the pertinacity of his defence.

When the ram cat had got down to the loins he was once more placed at the shoulders, and again carded the proctor (toties quoties) according to his sentence.

26

Two lines of Mr. Lysight’s song describe, quaintly, yet veritably, the practical point of the scenes which occurred at that place of licensed eccentricities. He speaks of the real Irish Paddy, who

“Steps into a tent, just to spend half-a-crown,

Slips out, meets a friend, and for joy knocks him down!

With his sprig of shillelah and shamrock so green.”

It is a literal fact that the blow is as instantly forgiven, and the twain set a-drinking together in great harmony, as if nothing had happened.

A priest constantly attended in former times at an alehouse near Kilmainham, to marry any couples who may have agreed upon that ceremony when they were drunk, and made up their minds for its immediate celebration so soon as they should be sober: and after the ceremony he sent them back to the fair for one more drink; and the lady then went home an honest woman, and as happy as possible. Many hundred similar matches used, in old times, to be effected during this carnival. Mr. Lysight also describes the happy consequences of such weddings with infinite humour. He says of the ulterior increase of each family

“and nine months after that

A fine boy cries out, ‘How do ye do, Father Pat?

With your sprig of shillelah and shamrock so green.’”

This system may somewhat account for the “alarming population of Ireland,” as statesmen now call it.

27

For the first of these occurrences see (Vol. ii.) my adventure with Counsellor Daly and Balloon Crosby.

28

I recollect a man at the assizes of Maryborough swearing to the leg of his own goose, which was stolen – having found it in some giblet broth at the robber’s cabin. The witness was obviously right; the web between the goose’s toes being, he said, snipped and cut in a way he could perfectly identify.

29

I remember one man of tremendous strength from Carlow County (Corcoran by name): he fancied he could knock down any man or beast on earth with his fist, and by downright muscular vigour, bear down the guards of all science or resistance. He went over to England to fight any “man, woman, or child,” in the whole nation; and when I was at temple, made sad examples of some of the scientific fancy. He could knock down the ablest horse with one blow of his fist. I never saw near so strong a person.

30

I do not think that the southern and western Irish have, or ever will have, any ardent brotherly affection for their northern fellow-countrymen (exclusive of differences in religion). The former descended direct from the aboriginals of the land; the latter are deduced from Scotch colonists, and those not of the very best occupations or character either.

An anecdote told of Sir Hercules Langreish and Mr. Dundas is illustrative of this observation, and was one of our standing jokes, when Ireland existed as a nation.

Mr. Dundas, himself a keen sarcastic man, who loved his bottle nearly as well as Sir Hercules, invited the baronet to a grand dinner in London, where the wine circulated freely, and wit kept pace with it. Mr. Dundas, wishing to procure a laugh at Sir Hercules, said: —

“Why, Sir Hercules, is it true that we Scotch formerly transported all our criminals and felons to Ireland?”

“I dare say,” replied Sir Hercules; “but did you ever hear, Mr. Dundas, of any of your countrymen returning to Scotland from transportation?”

31

Never did there appear a more extravagant and therefore mischievous historian than Sir Richard Musgrave proved himself in his “History of Irish Rebellions, and principally that of Ninety-eight,” – almost every chapter whereof is distinguished by misconception and fanaticism. Lord Cornwallis disclaimed the baronet’s dedication – who, on sinking into the grave, left a legacy to his country – having fomented prejudices against her in Great Britain which another century may not extinguish.

32

O’Connor, a fat, comely, cheerful-looking schoolmaster of County Kildare, was the first rebel executed for high treason. His trial gave rise to one of the most curious dialogues (between him and Judge Finucane) that ever took place in a court of justice. It ended, however, by the judge (who was a humane man) passing the usual sentence on him – “That he should be hanged by the neck, but not till he was dead: that while still alive his bowels should be taken out, his body quartered,” &c. &c. The culprit bore all this with firm though mild complacency; and on conclusion of the sentence bowed low, blessed the judge for his impartiality, and turning about, said, “God’s will be done! ’tis well it’s no worse!” I was surprised. I pitied the poor fellow, who had committed no atrocity, and asked him what he meant. “Why, Counsellor,” said he, “I was afraid his lordship would order me to be flogged!” Every rebel preferred death to the cat-o’-nine-tails! O’Connor’s head remained some years on the top of Naas gaol.

33

I knew at least but of one exception to this remark respecting the lawyers’ corps. Very early in the rebellion an officer took down a detachment of that corps to Rathcool, about seven miles from Dublin, without the knowledge of the commandant. They were not aware of his object, which turned out to be, to set fire to part of the town. He captured one gentleman, Lieutenant Byrne, who was hanged; – and returned to Dublin, in my mind not triumphant.

34

This circumstance is mentioned in my “Historic Anecdotes of the Union,” among several others, which were written before the present work was in contemplation. But the incident now before the reader is so remarkable that I have gone into it more particularly. Many will peruse this book who will never see the other, into which have been interwoven, in fact, numerous sketches of those days that I now regret I did not retain for the present work, to which they would have been quite appropriate.

35

His mode of execution being perfectly novel, and at the same time ingenious, Curran said, “The lieutenant should have got a patent for cheap strangulation.”

36

“We love the treason, but hate the traitor,” is an aphorism which those who assume prominent parts in any public convulsion are sure to find verified. Many instances took place in Ireland; and in France exemplifications occurred to a very considerable extent. A blind zealot is of all men most likely to become a renegade if he feel it more convenient: prejudice and interest unite to form furious partizans, who are never guided by principle– for principle is founded on judgment.