[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less than eleven children.]
[In one of the debates on the Irish land question, Chief Secretary Forster endeavored to attribute much of the poverty in Ireland to the early and imprudent marriages of the peasantry, and elicited roars of laughter by a comic but cruel description of one Pat Murphy, who had only two cows, but was the happy father of no less than eleven children.]
IN a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browsePat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole—a pair of Kerry cows.Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever loseThe cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair—The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vowsEre that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan—He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
IN a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browsePat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole—a pair of Kerry cows.Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever loseThe cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair—The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vowsEre that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan—He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
IN a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browsePat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole—a pair of Kerry cows.
Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever loseThe cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.
And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair—The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vowsEre that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.
Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.
Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan—He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.
HAIR white as innocence, that crownedA gentle face which never frowned;Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;Lips framed to counsel and to bless;Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,A reflex of our native skies,Through which now tears, now sunshine shone—There you have Father Tom Malone.He bade the infant at its birthCead mille failtheto the earth;With friendly hand he guided youthAlong the thorny track of truth;The dying felt, yet knew not why,Nearer to Heaven when he was by—For, sure, the angels at God’s throneWere friends of Father Tom Malone.For us, poor simple sons of toilWho wrestled with a stubborn soil,Our one ambition, sole content,Not to be backward with the rent;Our one absorbing, constant fear,The agent’s visits twice a year;We had, our hardships to atone,The love of Father Tom Malone.One season failed. The dull earth slept.Despite of ceaseless vigil keptFor sign of crop, day after day,To coax it from the sullen clay,Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;The tubers rotted—then, oh, shame!We—’twas the last time ever known—Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.We had, from fruitful years before,Garnered with care a frugal store;’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas goneWhat were our babes to live upon?We had no seed for coming spring,Nor faintest hope to which to cling;We would have starved without a moan,When out spoke Father Tom Malone.His voice, so flute-like in the past,Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!“God’s wondrous love doth not intendHundreds to starve that one may spend;Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”Thatfrom mild Father Tom Malone.And when the landlord with a forceOf English soldiers, foot and horse,Came down and direst vengeance swore,Who met him at the cabin door?Who reasoned first and then defiedThe thief in all his power and pride?Who won the poor man’s fight alone?Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.So, when you point to heroes’ scars,And boast their prowess in the wars,Give one small meed of praise, at least,To this poor modest Irish priest.No laurel wreath was twined for him,But pulses throb and eyelids dimWhen toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
HAIR white as innocence, that crownedA gentle face which never frowned;Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;Lips framed to counsel and to bless;Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,A reflex of our native skies,Through which now tears, now sunshine shone—There you have Father Tom Malone.He bade the infant at its birthCead mille failtheto the earth;With friendly hand he guided youthAlong the thorny track of truth;The dying felt, yet knew not why,Nearer to Heaven when he was by—For, sure, the angels at God’s throneWere friends of Father Tom Malone.For us, poor simple sons of toilWho wrestled with a stubborn soil,Our one ambition, sole content,Not to be backward with the rent;Our one absorbing, constant fear,The agent’s visits twice a year;We had, our hardships to atone,The love of Father Tom Malone.One season failed. The dull earth slept.Despite of ceaseless vigil keptFor sign of crop, day after day,To coax it from the sullen clay,Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;The tubers rotted—then, oh, shame!We—’twas the last time ever known—Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.We had, from fruitful years before,Garnered with care a frugal store;’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas goneWhat were our babes to live upon?We had no seed for coming spring,Nor faintest hope to which to cling;We would have starved without a moan,When out spoke Father Tom Malone.His voice, so flute-like in the past,Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!“God’s wondrous love doth not intendHundreds to starve that one may spend;Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”Thatfrom mild Father Tom Malone.And when the landlord with a forceOf English soldiers, foot and horse,Came down and direst vengeance swore,Who met him at the cabin door?Who reasoned first and then defiedThe thief in all his power and pride?Who won the poor man’s fight alone?Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.So, when you point to heroes’ scars,And boast their prowess in the wars,Give one small meed of praise, at least,To this poor modest Irish priest.No laurel wreath was twined for him,But pulses throb and eyelids dimWhen toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
HAIR white as innocence, that crownedA gentle face which never frowned;Brow smooth, spite years of care and stress;Lips framed to counsel and to bless;Deep, thoughtful, tender, pitying eyes,A reflex of our native skies,Through which now tears, now sunshine shone—There you have Father Tom Malone.
He bade the infant at its birthCead mille failtheto the earth;With friendly hand he guided youthAlong the thorny track of truth;The dying felt, yet knew not why,Nearer to Heaven when he was by—For, sure, the angels at God’s throneWere friends of Father Tom Malone.
For us, poor simple sons of toilWho wrestled with a stubborn soil,Our one ambition, sole content,Not to be backward with the rent;Our one absorbing, constant fear,The agent’s visits twice a year;We had, our hardships to atone,The love of Father Tom Malone.
One season failed. The dull earth slept.Despite of ceaseless vigil keptFor sign of crop, day after day,To coax it from the sullen clay,Nor oats, nor rye, nor barley came;The tubers rotted—then, oh, shame!We—’twas the last time ever known—Lost faith in Father Tom Malone.
We had, from fruitful years before,Garnered with care a frugal store;’Twould pay one gale, but when ’twas goneWhat were our babes to live upon?We had no seed for coming spring,Nor faintest hope to which to cling;We would have starved without a moan,When out spoke Father Tom Malone.
His voice, so flute-like in the past,Now thrilled us like a bugle blast,His eyes, so dove-like in their gaze,Took a new hue, and seemed to blaze!“God’s wondrous love doth not intendHundreds to starve that one may spend;Pay ye no rent, but hold your own.”Thatfrom mild Father Tom Malone.
And when the landlord with a forceOf English soldiers, foot and horse,Came down and direst vengeance swore,Who met him at the cabin door?Who reasoned first and then defiedThe thief in all his power and pride?Who won the poor man’s fight alone?Why, fearless Father Tom Malone.
So, when you point to heroes’ scars,And boast their prowess in the wars,Give one small meed of praise, at least,To this poor modest Irish priest.No laurel wreath was twined for him,But pulses throb and eyelids dimWhen toil-worn peasants pray, “Mavrone,God bless you, Father Tom Malone!”
THERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to findSweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confessI first met my fate,—what it was you can guess.It was under the shade of its bordering trees,One day I grew suddenly weak at the kneesAt the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,And yet it was but a short question to ask.’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I blessThe boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;And the question was this—but I’m sure you can guess.
THERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to findSweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confessI first met my fate,—what it was you can guess.It was under the shade of its bordering trees,One day I grew suddenly weak at the kneesAt the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,And yet it was but a short question to ask.’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I blessThe boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;And the question was this—but I’m sure you can guess.
THERE are grottos in Wicklow, and groves in Kildare,And the loveliest glens robed with shamrock in Clare,And in fairy Killarney ’tis easy to findSweet retreats where a swain can unburden his mind;But of all the dear spots in our emerald isle,Where verdure and sunshine crown life with a smile,There’s one boreen I love, for ’twas there I confessI first met my fate,—what it was you can guess.
It was under the shade of its bordering trees,One day I grew suddenly weak at the kneesAt the thought of what seemed quite a terrible task,And yet it was but a short question to ask.’Twas over, and since, night and morning, I blessThe boreen that heard the soft whisper of “yes.”And the breezes that toyed with each clustering tress;And the question was this—but I’m sure you can guess.
ONLY a cabin, thatched and gray,Only a rose-twined door,Only a barefooted child at playOn only an earthern floor.Only a little brain—not wiseFor even a head so small,And that is the reason he bitterly criesFor leaving his home—that’s all.Only the thought of her girlhood there,And her happier days as wife,In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,Have endeared them to her for life;What is the weeping woman’s cause?Why are her accents gall?What does she know of our intricate laws?It was only a hut—that’s all.He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,That man with the eyelids dim,And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earthFor sinewy serfs like him.Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,For his heart such a wondrous thrall?Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?He was born in the place—that’s all.. . . . . . .The years have gone, and the worn-out pairSleep under the stranger’s clay,And the weeping child with the curly hairIs a brave, strong man to-day;Yet still he thinks of the olden land,And prays for her tyrant’s fall,And longs to be one of some chosen band,With only a chance—that’s all.
ONLY a cabin, thatched and gray,Only a rose-twined door,Only a barefooted child at playOn only an earthern floor.Only a little brain—not wiseFor even a head so small,And that is the reason he bitterly criesFor leaving his home—that’s all.Only the thought of her girlhood there,And her happier days as wife,In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,Have endeared them to her for life;What is the weeping woman’s cause?Why are her accents gall?What does she know of our intricate laws?It was only a hut—that’s all.He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,That man with the eyelids dim,And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earthFor sinewy serfs like him.Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,For his heart such a wondrous thrall?Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?He was born in the place—that’s all.. . . . . . .The years have gone, and the worn-out pairSleep under the stranger’s clay,And the weeping child with the curly hairIs a brave, strong man to-day;Yet still he thinks of the olden land,And prays for her tyrant’s fall,And longs to be one of some chosen band,With only a chance—that’s all.
ONLY a cabin, thatched and gray,Only a rose-twined door,Only a barefooted child at playOn only an earthern floor.Only a little brain—not wiseFor even a head so small,And that is the reason he bitterly criesFor leaving his home—that’s all.
Only the thought of her girlhood there,And her happier days as wife,In the shelter poor of its walls so bare,Have endeared them to her for life;What is the weeping woman’s cause?Why are her accents gall?What does she know of our intricate laws?It was only a hut—that’s all.
He’s only a peasant in blood and birth,That man with the eyelids dim,And there’s room enough on the wide, wide earthFor sinewy serfs like him.Why had this pitiful, narrow farm,For his heart such a wondrous thrall?Why each tree and flower such a mystic charm?He was born in the place—that’s all.
. . . . . . .
The years have gone, and the worn-out pairSleep under the stranger’s clay,And the weeping child with the curly hairIs a brave, strong man to-day;Yet still he thinks of the olden land,And prays for her tyrant’s fall,And longs to be one of some chosen band,With only a chance—that’s all.
WHERE the Austral river rushesThrough feathery heath and bushes,Through its gurgles and its gushesYou may hear,To your wonder and surprise,Sweet melodies ariseYou have heard ’neath other skiesLow and clear.Yes! within the gold land,Strange to you and cold land,Voices from the old landSwell upon the gale—Lyrics of the story,Lit with flames of glory,Dimmed with pages gory,Songs of Innisfail!Where Mississippi leapingO’er cliffs and crags, or creepingThrough valleys fair, is sweepingTo the sea,From the fields of nodding grainOn some mountain path or plainRings a stirring old refrainFresh and free.Yes! where’er we wanderIrish hearts will ponderO’er our land, and fonderThrob with ev’ry taleOf the home that bore us,Till the new skies o’er usEcho with our chorusSongs of Innisfail.Exiles o’er the spray-foam,Whereso’er we may roam,Thoughts of far-away homeLinger still,And in dreams we see againBabbling stream and silent glen,Forest green and lonely fen,Vale and hill.Yes! our hearts’ devotionFlies across the ocean,While with deep emotionSternest features pale,As around us stealing,Softened by sad feeling,Through the air are pealingSongs of Innisfail!
WHERE the Austral river rushesThrough feathery heath and bushes,Through its gurgles and its gushesYou may hear,To your wonder and surprise,Sweet melodies ariseYou have heard ’neath other skiesLow and clear.Yes! within the gold land,Strange to you and cold land,Voices from the old landSwell upon the gale—Lyrics of the story,Lit with flames of glory,Dimmed with pages gory,Songs of Innisfail!Where Mississippi leapingO’er cliffs and crags, or creepingThrough valleys fair, is sweepingTo the sea,From the fields of nodding grainOn some mountain path or plainRings a stirring old refrainFresh and free.Yes! where’er we wanderIrish hearts will ponderO’er our land, and fonderThrob with ev’ry taleOf the home that bore us,Till the new skies o’er usEcho with our chorusSongs of Innisfail.Exiles o’er the spray-foam,Whereso’er we may roam,Thoughts of far-away homeLinger still,And in dreams we see againBabbling stream and silent glen,Forest green and lonely fen,Vale and hill.Yes! our hearts’ devotionFlies across the ocean,While with deep emotionSternest features pale,As around us stealing,Softened by sad feeling,Through the air are pealingSongs of Innisfail!
WHERE the Austral river rushesThrough feathery heath and bushes,Through its gurgles and its gushesYou may hear,To your wonder and surprise,Sweet melodies ariseYou have heard ’neath other skiesLow and clear.Yes! within the gold land,Strange to you and cold land,Voices from the old landSwell upon the gale—Lyrics of the story,Lit with flames of glory,Dimmed with pages gory,Songs of Innisfail!
Where Mississippi leapingO’er cliffs and crags, or creepingThrough valleys fair, is sweepingTo the sea,From the fields of nodding grainOn some mountain path or plainRings a stirring old refrainFresh and free.Yes! where’er we wanderIrish hearts will ponderO’er our land, and fonderThrob with ev’ry taleOf the home that bore us,Till the new skies o’er usEcho with our chorusSongs of Innisfail.
Exiles o’er the spray-foam,Whereso’er we may roam,Thoughts of far-away homeLinger still,And in dreams we see againBabbling stream and silent glen,Forest green and lonely fen,Vale and hill.Yes! our hearts’ devotionFlies across the ocean,While with deep emotionSternest features pale,As around us stealing,Softened by sad feeling,Through the air are pealingSongs of Innisfail!
WE were standing together on the platform of the King’s Bridge terminus, Dublin,—five of us—a gallant quintette in the noble army of drummers.
There was Austin Burke, slim, prim, and demure, as befitted the representative of a vast dry-goods establishment whose business lay amongst modistes and milliners; Paul Ryan, tall, dark, and dignified, who travelled for the great ironmongery firm of Locke & Brassey; Tim Malone, smart, chatty, and well-informed, the agent of a flourishing stationery house; dashing Jack Hickey, who was solicitor for a distillery, and rattling, rakish, as packed with funny ideas and comical jokes as a Western newspaper, and as full of mischief as a frolicsome kitten; and lastly, myself. We were waiting for the 11.30A.M.train south, and indulging in somewhat personal witticisms upon the appearance of various personages in the surrounding crowd, when our attention was attracted by the bustling advent upon the platform of a fussy, florid individual, with a face like an inflamed tomato, and the generally irascible and angry air of an infuriated rooster.
“Know that fellow?” queried Burke. “That’s Major Boomerang, the newly-appointed Resident Magistrate for some part of Cork; all the way from Bengal, to teach the wild Irish Hindoo civilization. He thinks we’re all Thugs and Dacoits, and by the ‘jumping Harry,’ as he would ejaculate, he’s going to sit on us. What do you say, boys, if we have a little lark with him? Let us all get into the same carriage and draw him out. I’ll introduce you, F. (to me), as my friend Captain Neville, of the Galway militia. I won’t know you other fellows, but you can take whatever characters you like, just as the conversation turns. Let me see. You, Ryan, get out at Portarlington, and you, Malone, at Limerick Junction. Jack Hickey goes on with us to Mallow. Now, I know this Boomerang will be launching out into fiery denunciation of Parnell and Biggar and all the rest before we’re aboard ten minutes, and I want each of you fellows to take the role of whoever he pitches into the worst, and challenge him in that character. D’ye see? F., as Capt. Neville, will offer to do the amiable for the major, and persuade him that he must fight. He’s an awful fire-eater in conversation, but I’ll stake my sample case we’ll put him into the bluest of funks before we part. What do you say, boys?”
Of course, we agreed. Whoever heard of a drummer refusing to take a hand in any deviltry afoot that promised a laugh at the end? We watched the major intoa first-class carriage, and quietly followed him. He seemed rather inclined to resent our intrusion, for we just crowded the compartment, but he graciously recognized Burke, who had stayed in Dublin at the same hotel, and he was “delighted, sir, by the jumping Harry,—delighted to meet a brother officer” (that was your humble servant).
At first he was somewhat reticent about Irish matters. He told us all manner of thrilling stories of his Indian adventures. He had polished off a few hundred tigers with all sorts of weapons, transfixed them to the trunks of trees with the native spear, riddled them with buckshot, swan-shot and bullets, and on one occasion, when his stock of lead had pegged out, and a Royal Bengal tiger, twelve feet, sir, from his snout to the tip of his tail, was crouched ready to spring on poor Joe Boomerang, why, Joe whipped out a loose double tooth, rammed it home, and sent it crashing through the brute’s frontal ossicles.
He wanted to keep that tooth as a memento, but, by the jumping Harry! the Maharajah of Jubbulpore would take no denial, and that tooth is now the brightest jewel in the dusky prince’s coronet.
He had killed a panther with his naked hands—with one naked hand, in fact. It had leaped upon him with its mouth wide open, and in desperation he had thrust his arm down its throat, intending to tear its tongue out by the roots. But such was the momentum of the panther’s spring and his own thrust, that his arm went in up to the shoulder, and he found his strong right hand groping around the beast’s interior recesses.He tore its heart out, sir,—its heart,—and an assortment of lungs and ribs and other things.
He used to think no more of waking up with a deadly cobra-di-capello crawling up his leg, or a boa constrictor playfully entwining around his waist, than he did of taking his rice pillau or his customary curry. He never lost his presence of mind, by the jumping Harry, not he.
At last, as we were passing through the pleasant pasturage of Kildare, and rapidly nearing Portarlington, where we should part with Ryan, we managed to turn the conversation upon the unsettled state of affairs in Ireland.
“Ah!” said the blusterous Boomerang, “I’m going to change all that—down in Cork, anyhow. I’ll have the murderous scoundrels like mice in a fortnight. By the jumping Harry, I’ll settle ’em! I’ve quelled twenty-seven mutinies and blown four hundred tawny rascals to pulverized atoms in Bengal, and if I don’t make these marauding peasants here sing dumb, my name’s not Boomerang—Joe Boomerang, the terror of Janpore.”
“I don’t,” observed Burke, with a wink at Ryan, “I don’t blame the peasantry so much as those who are leading them astray. There’s Davitt, for instance.”
“I wish,” growled the major, “that I had that rapscallion within reach of my horsewhip, sir, for five minutes. I’d flay him,—flay him alive, sir. If he ever is fool enough to come in my direction, he’ll remember Joe Boomerang—fighting Joe—as long as he lives. Green snakes and wild elephants! Iwould annihilate the released convict, the pardoned thief, the—the—by the jumping Harry, sir, I would exterminate the wretch!”
Ryan slowly rose, stretched his long form to its uttermost dimensions, and leaning over to the astounded major, in a deep base thundered, “I am the man, Major Boomerang, at your service. I have listened to your abominable bombast in silent contempt as long as I was not personally concerned. Now that you have attacked me, I demand satisfaction. I suppose your friend, Capt. Neville, will act for you. Captain, you will oblige me with your card. My second shall wait upon you to-morrow. As an officer, even though no gentleman, you cannot disgrace the uniform you have worn, Major Boomerang, by refusing to meet me. Good day.”
We had reached Portarlington, and Ryan leaped lightly on to the platform and disappeared, leaving the major puffing and blowing and gasping like an exhausted porpoise. “By the jumping Harry!” he at last exclaimed, but his voice had changed from its bouncing barytone to a timorous tenor, “I cannot fight a convicted thief. I won’t! D—— me, if I will!”
“I beg your pardon, major,” I observed. “You are mistaken; Davitt is not a thief. He was merely a political prisoner. You can meet him with perfect propriety. I shall be happy to arrange the preliminaries for you. I expect he’ll choose pistols. Let me see, Burke, wasn’t it with pistols he met poor Col. Smith? Ah, yes, to be sure it was. He shot him in the left groin. Don’t you remember what a job they had extracting the bullet? People said, you know,that it was the doctors and not Davitt that killed him.” Burke assented with a nod.
The major gazed at us with a sort of dazed, bewildered look, like a man in a dream. “Good God!” he murmured at last; “has he killed a man already? Why didn’t they arrest him? Why didn’t they hang him? I’m not going to be killed—I mean to kill a man that should be hanged. I’m not going to be popped at by a fellow that goes about shooting colonels as if they were snipe.”
“But, my dear major,” I remonstrated, “you must uphold the traditions of the cloth. In fact, the government will expect you to act just as Smith did.” (The major groaned.) “Smith didn’t like the idea of meeting Davitt, he’s such a dead shot.” (The major’s visage became positively blue.) “But the Duke of Cambridge wrote to him that he must go out for the honor of the service.”
“The service be d——d!” exploded the major, over whose countenance a kaleidoscope of colors—red, purple, blue, yellow, and white—were flashing and fluctuating; “I shall not fight a common low fellow like this. Now, if I had been challenged by a gentleman, it would be a different matter. By the jumping Harry, sir!” he cried, as he felt his courage returning at the prospect of evading the encounter, “if, instead of that low-bred cur, one of those Irish popinjays in Parliament had ventured to beard the lion heart of Boomerang, I should have sprung, sir, sprung hilariously at the chance. But there isn’t a man among them that wouldn’t quail at a glance from me, sir; yes, a lightning glance from fighting Joe, who has looked the Bengal tiger in the eyes and winked at the treacherous crocodile. Parnell is a coward, sir! Biggar and O’Donnell would hide if they heard that blazing Boomerang was round; and as for that whipper-snapper Healy, why, sir, I could tear him limb from limb, without exerting my mighty muscles.”
Little Tim Malone sprang to his feet like an electrified bantam-cock, and shaking his fist right under the major’s nose, he hissed: “You are a cur; an unmitigated, red-eyed, yellow-skinned, mongrel cur. I am Healy. I’ll have your life’s gore for this, if you escape my friend Davitt. I shall request him as a favor only to chip off one of your ears, so that I may have the pleasure of scarifying your hide. Captain Neville, as you must act for your brother officer, I shall send a friend to you to-morrow.” He sat down, and a solemn silence fell upon the company. The prismatic changes of hue which had illuminated the major’s features had disappeared altogether, and his face was now a sickening whitey-yellow. Not a word was spoken until we reached Limerick Junction, where Malone got off. The gallant Boomerang recovered a little at this, and managed to whisper to me, “Can Healy fight?”
“He is a master of fence,” I replied. “I suppose, as the insulted party, he will demand choice of weapons. His weapon is the sword; at least, he has always chosen that so far.”
“Has he been out before?” asked the terrible tiger-slayer, in such horror-stricken accents that I could barely refrain from laughing outright.
“Oh, yes,” I replied carelessly, “five or six times.”
“Has he—has he—I’m not afraid, you know—ha! ha! Joe Boomerang afraid—capital joke—but—but—has he killed anybody?”
“Only poor Lieutenant Jones,” I answered. “You see Jones insulted him personally; his other duels originated in political, not personal, matters. I think,” I added maliciously, “he’ll try to kill you.” The major gurgled as if he had a spasm of some sort in his windpipe. I continued: “I would advise you to furbish up your knowledge of both pistol and sword practice. You’ll have to fight both Davitt and Healy. You’ll be dismissed and disgraced if you decline either challenge. It will be somewhat inconvenient for me to see you through both affairs, but, my dear fellow, I never allow personal inconvenience to interfere with my duty.”
“You’re very good,” he murmured; “but don’t you think that—that—”
“That I may only be wanted for one. Very likely, but let us hope for the best. I know an undertaker in Cork—a decent sort of a chap. We can arrange for the funeral with him, so that, if it don’t come off the first time, he won’t charge anything extra for waiting till Healy kills you.”
“Stop, stop,” screamed the agonized panther pulverizer. “You make me sick.” By this time he had become green, and, as I did not know what alarming combination of colors he might next assume if I continued, I remained silent for some time. As we were nearing Mallow the major managed to get hold ofenough of his voice to inquire how it came to pass that the government permitted such a barbarous practice as duelling.
“Well,” I responded, “it’s a re-importation from America. Western institutions are getting quite a hold here. Duelling is winked at in deference to Yankee ideas.”
“Curse America and the Yankees too,” roared Boomerang. “Only for them we would have peace and quiet. They are a pestiferous, rowdy, hellish gang of—”
“Yahoop!” There was a yell from Jack Hickey that shook the roof of the car, as that individual bounded to his feet with a large clasp-knife clutched in his sinewy hand, and a desperate look of fiendish determination on his features that made the mighty Indian hunter collapse and curl up in his corner like a lame hen in a heavy shower. “Where’s the double-distilled essence of the son of a cross-eyed galoot that opens his measly mouth to drop filth and slime about our great and glorious take-it-all-round scrumptious and everlasting republic of America? I’m Yankee, clean grit, from the toe-nails and finger-tips to the backbone, and he’s riz my dander. And when my dander’s riz, I’m bound to have scalps. I’m a roaring, ring-tailed roysterer from the Rocky Mountains, I am; half earthquake and half wildcat, and when I squeal, somebody’s got to creep into a hole! Yahoop! Let me at the blue-moulded skunk till I rip him open. I don’t wait for any ceremonies, sending seconds and all that bosh. I go red-hot, boiling over, like a Kansas cyclone or a Texas steer, straight for thesnub-nosed, curly-toothed, red-headed, all-fired Britisher that wakes my lurid fury. Look out, Boomerang. Draw yer knife, for here’s a double-clawed hyena from Colorado going to skiver you.” And Jack made a terrific plunge forward, while he flashed his knife in a hundred wild gyrations that seemed to light up the compartment with gleaming steel. Burke and I made a pretence of throwing ourselves between the mad Yankee and his victim, but it was unnecessary. The hero of Bengal had fainted.
When we got out at Mallow I tipped one of the porters a shilling, told him that a passenger was ill in a compartment which I pointed out, and, having given him the name of the hotel at which the major purposed staying, I requested the porter to inform Boomerang when he recovered that Captain Neville would wait upon him in the morning to arrange for his interview with three, not two, gentlemen. Later on, when I called at the depot to see after my luggage, I questioned the porter as to Boomerang, and asked had he gone on to his hotel.
“Lor bless you, no, sir,” said the railway official. “As soon as that gintleman kem to, he jist axed what time the first thrain wint on to Cork in the mornin’, an’ thin, whin I towld about you wantin’ to see him this evenin’, he wuddent wait, sorra a bit, for the mornin’, but he booked straight back to Dublin on the thrain that was goin’ there an’ thin. I will say I niver saw such a frightened lookin’ gintleman since the day Squire Mulroony saw Biddy Mullen’s ghost, that hanged herself at the ould cross roads.” A few days after I read this announcement in the DublinGazette: “In consequence of ill-health, super-induced by the humid atmosphere of Ireland, Major Boomerang has resigned the resident magistracy in Cork to which he was recently appointed, and will shortly return to Bengal.”
THERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morningThe bountiful prizes of Nature to win,While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadowDistemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the countyWere—the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster—This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master—A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayerThat Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surgesSobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devilStill essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rallyAvengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
THERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morningThe bountiful prizes of Nature to win,While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadowDistemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the countyWere—the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster—This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master—A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayerThat Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surgesSobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devilStill essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rallyAvengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
THERE are skeleton homes like gaunt ghosts in the valley;The hillside swarms thick with anonymous graves,When the Last Trumpet sounds spectral legions ’twill rally,Whose corpses are shrouded in ocean’s sad waves.What hosts of accusers will cluster around him,What cohorts of famine, of wrong, and despair,On the white Day of Judgment to blanch and confound him,That stone-hearted, merciless Lord of Kenmare!
Fond, simple, and trusting, we toiled night and morningThe bountiful prizes of Nature to win,While he, wild and lustful, God’s providence scorning,Used virtue’s reward as the guerdon of sin,Till Heaven, in just anger, rained down on the meadowDistemper and rot; plagued the soil and the air;Filled the earth with distress, dimmed the sunlight in shadow,But touched not that cancerous heart in Kenmare!
When God had been good he reaped all of his bounty;When Heaven was wrathful the burden was ours,For the terms of this Lord of Kenmare with the countyWere—the thorns for his serfs, for his harlots the flowers.And when the poor toiler, beneath his load reeling,Sank, breathless and faint, on his cabin floor bare,The noose for his cattle, the torch for his sheeling,Were the pity he found from the Lord of Kenmare.
Our fortune enriched him: he coined our disaster—This lord of our sinews, our houses, our grounds,Who felt himself monarch, and knew himself master—A monarch of slaves, and a master of hounds!He held not his hand, and he spared not his scourges;He laughed at the shriek, and he scoffed at the prayerThat Kerry’s green swards and Atlantic’s white surgesSobbed and wailed, sighed and moaned, ’gainst the Lord of Kenmare!
He has gone from the orgies where once he held revel,Age and youth hunts no more as legitimate game,But Ireland to-day finds the work of the devilStill essayed by an imp of his lineage and name.Tried only, thank God, for the serf has gained reason,The fool learned to think, and the coward to dare,And no longer the wolf-cry of “danger” and “treason”Wraps in mist the misdeeds of the lords of Kenmare.
Hope’s phosphorent rays light that desolate valley;Truth’s sunbeams illumine those derelict graves;The stern blast of Justice’s bugle will rallyAvengers for every corpse ’neath the waves.Two hemispheres judge as a pitiless jury,Nor culprit nor crime will their firm verdict spare,Oh, vain your derision and wasted your fury,The world writes your sentence, false Lord of Kenmare!
DURING the height of the land agitation in Ireland, some of the most exciting debates in the House of Commons, and some of the most vehement articles in the National press, had reference to the action of the post-office authorities in opening letters addressed to gentlemen (and, for that matter, to ladies, too) whom the sagacious police intellect “reasonably suspected” of connection with the obnoxious league. This peculiarly English method of circumventing the plans of a constitutional association by a resort to an unconstitutional and illegal act was popularly known as “Grahamizing,” from the fact that it had first been introduced by Postmaster-General Graham to discover what designs certain refugees in London entertained against the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III. Inquisitive Graham had to resign his office, and the government which sanctioned his conduct was also kicked out by the indignant English electors, who are the soul of honor in all questions that do not relate to Ireland. But, despite the fate of Graham, subsequent cabinets did not hesitate toadopt his invention when they had reason to believe that anything calculated to interfere with thestatus quowas afoot amongst the terrible Irish. Sir William Harcourt, English Home Secretary in 1882, especially distinguished himself by his reckless indulgence in this espionage of the letter-box. His post-office pilferings at last involved him in an avalanche of correspondence that nearly swamped the staff employed in letter steaming.
The sapient Home Secretary had taken it into his bucolic brain that Ireland and Great Britain were undergoing one of those periodical visitations of secret conspiracy which enliven the monotony of existence in those superlatively happy and contented realms. From the amount of his postal communications, and from the brilliant reports of a gifted county inspector, Sir William strongly suspected that one Ryan, a Tipperary farmer, was engaged in less commendable pursuits than turnip-sowing or cabbage-planting. Still, there was no positive proof that Ryan’s whole soul was not centred in his Early Yorks and Mangolds. So resort was had to the Grahamizing process.
For some time Ryan suspected nothing, until his correspondence began to get muddled,—his tailor’s bill coming in an envelope addressed in the spidery calligraphy of his beloved Mary, a scentedbillet-douxfrom that devoted one arriving in a formidable-looking official revenue envelope which should have contained an income-tax schedule, a subpœna to appear as a witness in a law-suit at Clonmel reaching him in an envelope with the New York post-mark, and a half a dozen other envelopes being found to contain nothing at all.
Then Ryan smelt a multitude of rats, and he determined to cry quits with the disturbers of his gum and sealing-wax. He adopted the name of Murphy for the purposes of correspondence, and he arranged that the intelligent sub-inspector should know that he was going to receive letters in that euphonious cognomen.
Now, Murphys were as plentiful round there as counts in a state indictment or nominations at a Democratic convention. You couldn’t throw a stone in the location without knocking the eye out of a Murphy. You couldn’t flourish a kippeen there without peeling the skin off a Murphy. If you heard any one appealing to the masses, collectively or individually, to tread on the tail of his coat, you might depend it was a champion Murphy. The tallest man in the parish was a Murphy, the shortest was a Murphy; the stout man who took a square rood of corduroy for a waistcoat was a Murphy, and the mite who could have built a dress suit for himself out of a gooseberry skin was a Murphy. When a good harvest smiled on that part of the country people said the Murphys were thriving, and when small-pox decimated the population it was spoken of as a blight among the Murphys.
So, when the order came down from the Castle that all letters directed to Murphy should be stopped and forwarded to headquarters for perusal, it might naturally be expected that, even under ordinary circumstances, the local postmasters would have decent packages to return to Dublin.
But Ryan didn’t mean to be niggardly in his donations to the central bureau of the postal pimpdom. Hetook the clan Murphy into his confidence, and every Murphy in that parish wrote to every other Murphy in every other parish, and those Murphys wrote to other Murphys, and the fiery cross went round among the Murphys generally, and the fiat went forth that every Murphy worthy the name of Murphy should write as many letters to the particular Murphy the postmen were after as they could put pen to. It didn’t matter what they were about,—the crops, the weather, the price of provisions,—anything, in fact, or nothing at all. The language was of minor importance,—Irish, however, preferred,—and the Murphy who paid his postage would be considered a traitor to the cause.
Nobly did the Murphys sustain their reputation.
The first day of the interception oftheMurphy’s letters, three bags full were deposited in the Under Secretary’s office for perusal.
The morning after sixteen sacks were piled in the room.
The third morning that room was filled up, and they stuffed Mr. Burke’s private sanctum with spare bags.
The fourth morning they occupied a couple of bedrooms.
The fifth morning half a dozen flunkeys were arranging bales of Murphy letters on the stairs.
Then there was a lull in the Castle, for that day was Sunday.
But it was a deceptive lull, because it enabled every right-thinking Murphy to let himself loose, and on Monday three van loads of letters for Mr. Murphy were sent out to the viceregal lodge.
Day after day the stream flowed regularly for about a week, when the grand climax came. It was St. Valentine’s morning, and, in addition to the orthodox correspondence, every man, woman, and child who loved or hated, adored or despised a Murphy, contributed his or her quota to the general chaos.
The post-office authorities had to invoke the aid of the Army Service Corps, and from 8A.M.till midnight the quays and Phœnix Park were blocked with a caravan of conveyances bearing boxes and chests and tubs and barrels and sacks and hampers of notes and letters and illustrated protestations of affection or highly-colored expressions of contempt for Murphy from every quarter of the inhabitable globe.
Then the bewildered denizens of the Castle had to telegraph to the War Office for permission to take the magazine and the Ordnance Survey quarters, and the Pigeonhouse Fort and a barracks or two, to store the intercepted epistles in.
Forster wouldn’t undertake to go through the work,—the order to overhaul Murphy’s letters had come from Harcourt, and Harcourt would have to do it himself. Well, Harcourt went across, but when he saw the task that had accumulated for him, he threatened to resign unless he was relieved.
Finally, the admiralty ordered the channel fleet to convey the Murphy correspondence out to the middle of the Atlantic, where it was committed to the treacherous waves.
To this day, letters addressed to Mr. Murphy are occasionally picked up a thousand leagues from land,on the stormy ocean, and whenever Sir William Vernon Harcourt reads of such a discovery he disappears for a week, and paragraphs appear in the papers that he is laid up with the gout.
WE had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we layBy the banks of a streamlet whose thin little floodA thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,And over the dreams of the slumberers castThe magical spell of a voice from the past;It lulled and caressed till the accents of painSank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.Once again in old homes we were children at play,Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,But never a ball on its death-mission sped;Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoonWho wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!It linked with its strains ere they melted awayTrue hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.The air seemed to throb with invisible tearsEre burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
WE had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we layBy the banks of a streamlet whose thin little floodA thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,And over the dreams of the slumberers castThe magical spell of a voice from the past;It lulled and caressed till the accents of painSank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.Once again in old homes we were children at play,Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,But never a ball on its death-mission sped;Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoonWho wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!It linked with its strains ere they melted awayTrue hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.The air seemed to throb with invisible tearsEre burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
WE had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day,And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we layBy the banks of a streamlet whose thin little floodA thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud.Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp,And misery reigned all supreme in the camp,When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June,There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.
It crept low and clear through the whispering pines,It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines,And over the dreams of the slumberers castThe magical spell of a voice from the past;It lulled and caressed till the accents of painSank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain;And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon,Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.
Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile,Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle,Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet,For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet.Once again in old homes we were children at play,Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray.Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon,And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.
A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge,To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge,And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still,Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill;A dozen bright barrels could cover his head,But never a ball on its death-mission sped;Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoonWho wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!
It linked with its strains ere they melted awayTrue hearts severed only by blue coats and gray,But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe,To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago.The air seemed to throb with invisible tearsEre burst from both camps a tornado of cheers,And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon,Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
THERE is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piperof Hamelin. “God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence; “Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because he has been killed in the lump.
But of all the effects of all the tunes to which all the composers existing for all the centuries have devoted all their genius, there is none so startling, so instantaneous, so blood-curdling as that produced upon a constable by the strains of “Harvey Duff.” A red rag flourished in the eyes of a mad bull, a free-trade pamphlet in a Republican convention, a Chinese policeman ordering Denis Kearney to move on, or a trapped mouse wagging its tail defiantly at a cat helplessly growling outside the wirework, may provoke diabolical ebullitions of wrath; but if you want to see a forty-horse power, Kansas cyclone, Rocky Mountain tornado, Java earthquake, Vesuvius volcano, blue-fire and brimstone, dynamite and gun-cotton, and all the elements combined, crash of rage, hate, venom, spleen, disgust, and agony, just learn “Harvey Duff,” take a trip across to Ireland, insure your life, encase yourself in a suit of mail, and whistle it for the first policeman you meet. The result will amply repay thejourney. You needn’t take a return ticket. If he be anything like an average peeler, you won’t want it. It might be as well to ascertain beforehand the number of ribs you possess. It will interest you in hospital to know how many are missing; that is, if you are lucky enough to go to hospital.
Somebody wrote, “The path of glory leads but to the grave.” The performance of “Harvey Duff” leads generally to the nearest cemetery.
How, when, where, and why “Harvey Duff” was composed, or who was its composer, or in what manner the air has become indissolubly associated with the Irish police, is one of those mysteries which, like the authorship of the Letters of Junius, may lead to interminable theories and speculations, but will never be definitely settled.
I suspect that “Harvey Duff,” like Topsy, “growed.”
There is a character of the name, a miserable wretch of a process-server and informer, in Boucicault’s drama, “The Shaughraun,” but the popular “Harvey Duff” is of country origin, and his requiem was first whistled in Connemara, where a theatrical company would be as much out of place as a bottle of rum in a convention of prohibitionists. It is equally difficult to ascertain the cause of the aversion entertained to the melody by the constabulary, but that they hate it with Niagara force has been established a thousand times. Bodies of police have been known to submit to volleys of stones on rare occasions, but, in a long and varied experience, I never met a constable yet who could stand “Harvey Duff” for thirty seconds.
I think it is of Head Constable Gardiner, of Drogheda, the story is told that, when Dr. Collier, a relative who had been away for some years, returned to his native place and he failed to recognize him, the doctor jocosely asked Mr. Gardiner to hum him “Harvey Duff,” as he was anxious to master that national anthem. Before that disciple of Galen had time to finish his request, he found himself battering the pavement with the back of his head, one leg desperately striving to tie itself into a knot, and the other hysterically pointing in the direction of the harvest-moon, whilst the furious Gardiner was looking for a soft spot in the surgeon’s body to bury his drawn sword-bayonet in.
In Kilmallock, County Limerick, on one occasion, a bright, curly-headed little boy of the age of five years was marched into court under an escort of one sub-inspector, two constables, and eight sub-constables, and there and then solemnly charged with having intimidated the aforesaid force of her Majesty’s defenders. It appeared that the small and chubby criminal, on passing the barracks, had tried to whistle something which the garrison imagined to be “Harvey Duff,” and before the barefooted urchin could make his retreat, the sub-inspector’s Napoleonic strategy, aided as it was by the marvellous discipline and bulldog valor of his command, resulted in the capture of the infant, without any serious loss to the loyal battalions. The five-year-old rebel was bound over to keep the peace, so that the Kilmallock policemen might not in future pace their dismal rounds with their hearts in their mouths and their souls in their boots,—that is, if an Irish policeman has either a heartor a soul. The popular belief is that they discard both along with their civilian clothes.[A]
A few days afterwards, in the city of Limerick, an ardent wearer of the dark-green uniform got a lift in the world, and gave an unique gymnastic entertainment for the benefit of the citizens that has immortalized him in the “City of the Violated Treaty,” through the same “Harvey Duff.” He was passing by a lofty grain warehouse. In the topmost story a laborer was industriously winding up by a crane sacks of corn which were attached to the rope below by a fellow-workman. The sub-constable, pausing to survey the operations, was horror-stricken to hear the man aloft enlivening his toil by the unmistakable accompaniment of the atrocious “Harvey Duff.” Fired with heroic zeal, he determined to capture the sacrilegious miscreant and silence his seditious solo. Seizing the corn-porter below, he threatened him with the direst penalties of the law if by signal or shout he warned his musical comrade of his impending fate. Then, when the rope next descended, that strategic sub fastened it round his waist, gave the signal “all right,” and the operatic minstrel began to wind up, not a cargo of grain, but an avenging angel with belt and tunic. How Mephistopheles below told Orpheus above of his approaching danger I know not; but when the passionate peeler was elevated some thirty feet from Mother Earth the ascent suddenly ceased, and there he was left suspended in mid-air, twirling andtwisting, and swinging and gyrating, and flinging out upon the passing breeze a cloud of official profanity that made the atmosphere lurid. His promotion lasted for fully half an hour, and, when the arrival of re-enforcements released him from his aerial bondage, the crowd beneath, who had been enjoying his acrobatic feats, and wondering at his ornamental objurgations, thought it better to dissolve before he could recover his breath.
I am not aware whether “Harvey Duff” had ever any words attached to its obnoxious measure, but I think it would be a pity not to convey the ideas of the Royal Irish concerning the tune in imperishable verse, and it is with feelings of profound sympathy I dedicate the following lines to that immaculate body:—