NIGHTS IN THE GUARD-HOUSE.No. II.
“Hoo' comes it, that ye ha' got an' extra guard the naight, Mulligan—Eh?”
“Musha 'pon my sowl, Sargeant M'Fadgen, it's becaise the Captain ordthered it.”
“Poh! mun, I ken that weel; but the Captain wonna gi' ye a guard for naething, wad he?”
“No, faith! it'ssomethingto me; for I've had three this week before; that is, three nights out o' bed in my reglar juty; so isn't it something to be ordthered another night by way o' recreation?”
“Aweel, but what ha' ye been doin, lad?”
“Faith! I was doin' nothing at all; an' it was for that I got my guard.”
“Hoo's that?”
“I was ordthered to put out the light in my barrack-room every night at nine o'clock, an' I did not do it last night—that 's all.”
“But you were doin' a wee bit o' something, I'll warrant, Pat. Ye war a liften yer han' to your muzzle—eh?”
“O! that's nothing at all at all. We had a dthrop to be sure. That fellow over there on the stool—(you, mister Jack Andrews, I mane)—kept a tellin' us such stories, that I forgot the time entirely. Hooh! the divil may care—Jack is here now, and Corporal O'Callaghan to boot; so what signifies a guard, if they'll only tip us a bit of a song: what do you say, Sargeant—eh?”
“Why, Pat, I've no objection to that, if there be no muckle noise aboot it.”
Thus spoke the Sergeant, and his worthy private, Mulligan: the latter, by way of punishment, was ordered to an extra guard, for being a little out of rule, as above-mentioned; but his punishment was given him by an Officer who had fought and bled with him, and who regarded him with kindly feelings. Pat's delinquency was reported to the Captain by the Orderly Officer, and he could do no less. However, there was not a better nor a more respected man in the corps, than Patrick Mulligan, of the grenadier company. Like many other good soldiers, he was fond of society and the all-powerful potyeen. So when the Orderly Officer was going round at nine o'clock, he put the light under a wooden pale, and when all was, as he thought, safe, he returned to the convivial glass with his comrades; but the officer was one of those pipe-clay martinets, just joined from the half-pay of a militia regiment, and although he had never seen in his life as much actual service as poor Pat had done in one month of his existence, (and perhaps knew much less in reality about the duties of a soldier,) he stole back to the barracks, and surprised the party of carousing Peninsulars. His report was made, and the men were punished.
The practice of keeping lights in the barrack rooms, after the proper hour for extinguishing them, cannot be justified; but there are infractions of general rules in the army, which, if not to be tolerated, should not be sought after with too scrutinizing an eye. A good officer knows when to pry and when to keep his eyes shut; but that was not the case with Pat Mulligan's Orderly Officer.
“Weel Jock,” said the Corporal, “ye maun gi' us a lilt—you or the Corporal.”
“With all my heart,” replied Jack Andrews, “if Corporal O'Callaghan is willing to join in with his second.”
“Faith! I've no objection in the world to conthribute to the harmony of the guard, if my voice doesn't frighten you, lads.”
“Neever mind, Corporal, your voice is na so bad as the Highland pipes, nor yet so loud. But before ya begin, here tak' a——.”
It is impossible to say what the Sergeant offered the Corporal; but it has been since seriously hinted at by Pat Mulligan, and some others. Whatever it was, I have no business to blab—even if I thought it nothing less than pure Inishowen: however, when compliments had passed, and all the men were comfortably seated round the fire, the Corporal and Jack Andrews sung the following verses to a beautiful Biscayan air:—
THE FRIAR OF ST. SEBASTIAN.
Deep the matin-bell toll'd from Benedict's tower,Long the Friar alone had sighed for the hour,When all were at rest—All but the gentlest lady of SpainWho loved him the best.In secret he gave her his passion again,Unholy, unblest:His lamp of religion was clouded by love,Too thick and too dark to be seen from above!Soon the Friar's boat came her bower beneath,While Sebastian's rock was silent as death,And gloomy, and steep.Soft she descended, while, close to her breast,Her baby lay asleep;Gentlest innocent, long is thy rest,Long, long in the deep!O Friar! the depth of Sebastian's waveCannot cover the crime or the little one's grave.Light the little boat skimmed the moon-covered sea,Guilt fell dark on the dawn that pointed their way.Woe followed their flight:Soon they were brought to St. Benedict's tower—The deed came to light.Down to the dungeon the lovers they boreOn St. Benedict's night.The lamp of religion had scarcely a rayTo chase the deep gloom of their prison away.None can tell of the fate that either befell;Yet on holy record 'tis noted full wellIn Benedict's tower.Often the sentinel, trembling, fearsThe matin-bell hour:Often the sentinel fancies he hearsHeaven's punishing pow'r;And the moans of dying grow loud in his mind,As the Friar and Lady flit by on the wind.
Deep the matin-bell toll'd from Benedict's tower,Long the Friar alone had sighed for the hour,When all were at rest—All but the gentlest lady of SpainWho loved him the best.In secret he gave her his passion again,Unholy, unblest:His lamp of religion was clouded by love,Too thick and too dark to be seen from above!Soon the Friar's boat came her bower beneath,While Sebastian's rock was silent as death,And gloomy, and steep.Soft she descended, while, close to her breast,Her baby lay asleep;Gentlest innocent, long is thy rest,Long, long in the deep!O Friar! the depth of Sebastian's waveCannot cover the crime or the little one's grave.Light the little boat skimmed the moon-covered sea,Guilt fell dark on the dawn that pointed their way.Woe followed their flight:Soon they were brought to St. Benedict's tower—The deed came to light.Down to the dungeon the lovers they boreOn St. Benedict's night.The lamp of religion had scarcely a rayTo chase the deep gloom of their prison away.None can tell of the fate that either befell;Yet on holy record 'tis noted full wellIn Benedict's tower.Often the sentinel, trembling, fearsThe matin-bell hour:Often the sentinel fancies he hearsHeaven's punishing pow'r;And the moans of dying grow loud in his mind,As the Friar and Lady flit by on the wind.
At the conclusion of this ballad, the door of the guard-house flew open, and the noise which it made, together with the sudden flapping of the window-shutters, astonished the whole guard, and terrified one or two. The wind roared, the night was as dark as chaos, and the song had wound the soldiers' minds up to a climax. They, for an instant forgot themselves, when the door was thrown open. Perhaps they expected a visit from the Friar himself, accompanied by the Lady, to remonstrate with them on the impropriety of thus disturbing their departed spirits. There was no very great demonstration of fear; but even soldiers—and soldiers used to behold the dying and the dead, cannot be always prepared against the effects of romance and music allied against them. None fell from their seats, nor was any stool overturned; but there was a certain shuffling and huddling up together, which sufficiently demonstrated to the sentry at the door, that his trick (forhewas the ghost that opened the door,) had the effect he intended. He laughed without, and the guard laughed within; but none had theright of laughexcept the sentry himself; which, to do him justice, he rightly enjoyed.
“Shut the door, then, God dom ye! for a blatherinskate, and mind yar duty,” roared out Sergeant M'Fadgen to the sentry, who obeyed the peremptory words as soon as he had expended his laugh in the dark; and order thus being restored, Jack Andrews was unanimously requested to tell the story of the “Friar and the Lady,” as he heard it at St. Sebastian: to this he assented, and gave it in something like the following words:—
“You all know, lads, that when the storming of the town was over, we took the duty there. Well, in the house where I was quartered, there lived nobody but an old couple: the man had been a smuggler, and had once been a prisoner of war in England, so that he managed by his intercourse with British and Americans, to speak English pretty tolerably. The old woman was a regular Basquentian mountaineer, with scarcely a bit of flesh on her bones, and not less than eighty years of age. This old couple had returned to St. Sebastian to occupy the house of a leather-seller, who retired from the town before the siege. And the house was certainly in a complete state of dilapidation, with the exception of the ground-floor; it had been on fire during the siege, and although the flames had not made much havoc in it, yet the shot and shell had done enough to reduce it to a complete wreck. Here I used to sit with the old pair of a night, talking of various subjects, and it was from the old man I heard the particulars of the ‘Friar and the Lady.’ He told me that his wife lived in the capacity of waiting-maid with the heroine of the tale, and that the convent of St. Benedict, to which the friar belonged, was in the same street where we then resided. The convent in which the young lady lived was at the extremity of the town, near the sea, which the back windows looked out upon, from an elevated rock. You have all seen the rock, yourselves.
“The young lady was about seventeen years of age; she had been admitted as a novice in the convent of Santa Clara, and was to be made a nun in about ten or twelve months after the period of her becoming acquainted with the friar. He was on very familiar terms with the mother abbess, as well as the whole of the establishment; for he was universally celebrated for piety and wisdom: his age was about thirty-five. Thisholygentleman managed matters so that he got the better of the novice's virtue, and the consequences were that she became pregnant: they contrived to conceal all appearances of her frailty; and the holy father, in order to preserve his reputation, prevailed upon the novice to elope with him, under a promise of removing her to Italy, whither he proposed to follow her, and to settle in that country. The night was fixed for carrying this plan into effect,—this was about a week before the day on which she was to take the veil—the friar procured a boat, and with it came to the back of the convent at midnight; the novice was prepared, and bade adieu to the walls of her sisterhood for ever. She entered the boat, and the friar easily rowed it along the coast towards the port of Passages, for it was a fine moonlight night, and the sea was as bright as a looking-glass. Before they had proceeded many yards from the beach the young lady became ill, and in half an hour was delivered of a fine boy in the boat: there were no clothes for the little stranger, and the friar was determined it should not long require them, for he sunk it remorselessly into the deep water close to the rocks, and ended all its wants in a moment.
“The baby was washed on shore next morning stiff and dead. There was a black silk band, with a clasp, twisted round its little leg, by accident, or more likely by the providence of God, for it was recognized as belonging to the unfortunate novice of St. Clara's convent. Enquiries soon took place; the guilty friar and his victim were discovered at an obscure house in the town of Passages, and taken back to St. Sebastian. The influence of the clergy prevented a public trial for the murder, lest the holy church should be scandalized; but neither Friar nor Lady were ever afterwards seen, and it is believed to this day, that they were either privately put to death, or imprisoned in the Convent for life. The old woman declares they were chained in separate dungeons, and starved to death; but this only rests upon her own assertion; however, most of the people of St. Sebastian implicitly believe that the ghosts of both visit the sea-shore every full moon; and so much did their stories about ‘The Friar and the Lady’ affect one of our lads, that it nearly killed him.”
“Wha' dy' ye mean,” said the Sergeant.
“I mean John Thomas, the Welshman. You remember we were on guard one night after the siege of St. Sebastian, on the top of the high hill in the middle of the town, where the fort stands, and into which the French retired. Well, this John Thomas was sentry; he was then only a raw boy, just come from among the goats and ghosts of his native mountains. It was exactly twelve o'clock, and a fine moonshine night. You could see the wide Bay of Biscay below your feet; the high Pyrenees, all misty on the right; and close under you the ruined town. I suppose the young fellow was superstitious; but be that as it may, he burst into the guard-room without his musket, fell down on the floor, against which he cut his forehead, and struggled in a fit for half an hour. He was taken down to the regimental hospital, and had three fits before the next morning. When he came quite to himself, he declared that he saw the Friar of St. Sebastian and the Lady beside him on the hill, and that the Friar held a dead infant in his hand, which he dashed down into the sea. Of course, this vision was the effect of his boyish fears and superstition; but it certainly is a fact that the lad nearly lost his life by it, for I heard our doctor himself say so. The poor fellow was afterwards killed at the sortie of Bayonne.”
“I remember the lad weel, Jock; but wha made the sang aboot it?” demanded Sergeant M'Fadgen.
“The Captain himself wrote the song,” replied Andrews, “and Corporal O'Callaghan taught me the air.”
“By my sowl,” said O'Callaghan, “I never hard an air I like betther. I used to sit for hours listening to the boat-women all singing it in chorus. I used to cross with them from Passages to Renteria of an evening, for no other purpose than to hear them.”
“Haud yer tongue, Corporal,” observed Sergeant M'Fadgen. “It's na' for a sang that ye wad stay sae lang amongst a parcel o' bonny lasses like them.”—
“Turn out the guard!” roared the sentry: and out the guard turned, leaving Patrick Mulligan in quiet possession of the old arm chair, and a blazing fire.