ACAPITALsteamer, which on this day was thronged with people, carried us for about four hours down the noble stream and landed us at Limerick Quay. The character of the landscape on either side the stream is not particularly picturesque, but large, liberal, and prosperous. Gentle sweeps of rich meadows and cornfields cover the banks, and some, though not too many, gentlemen’s parks and plantations rise here and there. But the landscape was somehow more pleasing than if it had been merely picturesque; and, especially after coming out of that desolate county of Kerry, it was pleasant for the eye to rest upon this peaceful, rich, and generous scene. The first aspect of Limerick is very smart and pleasing; fine neat quays with considerable liveliness and bustle, a very handsome bridge (the Wellesley Bridge) before the spectator, who, after a walk through two long and flourishing streets, stops at length at one of the best inns in Ireland—the large, neat, and prosperous one kept by Mr. Cruise. Except at Youghal, and the poor fellow whom the Englishman belaboured at Glengarriff, Mr. Cruise is the only landlord of an inn I have had the honour to see in Ireland. I believe these gentlemen commonly (and very naturally) prefer riding with the hounds, or manly sports, to attendance on their guests; and the landladies, if they prefer to play the piano, or to have a game of cards in the parlour, only show a taste at which no one can wonder: for who can expect a lady to be troubling herself with vulgar chance-customers, or looking after Molly in the bedroom or waiter Tim in the cellar?
Now, beyond this piece of information regarding the excellence of Mr. Cruise’s hotel, which every traveller knows, the writer of this doubts very much whether he has anything to say about Limerick that is worth the trouble of saying or reading. I can’t attempt to describe the Shannon, only to say that on board the steamboat there was a piper and a bugler, a hundred of genteel persons coming back from donkey-riding and bathing at Kilkee, a couple of heaps of raw hides that smelt very foully, a score of women nursing children, and a lobster-vendor, who vowed to me on his honour that he gave eightpence apiece for his fish, and that he had boiled them only the day before; but when I produced the Guide-book, and solemnly told him to swear upon that to the truth of his statement, the lobster-seller turned away, quite abashed, and would not be brought to support his previous assertion at all. Well, this is no description of the Shannon, as you have no need to be told, and other travelling cockneys will, no doubt, meet neither piper nor lobster-seller nor raw hides; nor, if they come to the inn where this is written, is it probable that they will hear, as I do at this present moment, two fellows with red whiskers, and immense pomp and noise and blustering with the waiter, conclude by ordering a pint of ale between them. All that one can hope to do is, to give a sort of notion of the movement and manners of the people; pretending by no means to offer a description of places, but simply an account of what one sees in them.
So that if any traveller after staying two days in Limerickshould think fit to present the reader with forty or fifty pages of dissertation upon the antiquities and history of the place, upon the state of commerce, religion, education, the public may be pretty well sure that the traveller has been at work among the guide-books, and filching extracts from the topographical and local works.
They say there are three towns to make one Limerick: there is the Irish town on the Clare side; the English town with its old castle (which has sustained a deal of battering and blows from Danes, from fierce Irish kings, from English warriors who took an interest in the place, Henry Secundians, Elizabethians, Cromwellians, andvice versâ, Jacobites, King Williamites,—and nearly escaped being in the hands of the Robert Emmetites); and finally the district called Newtown-Pery. In walking through this latter tract, you are, at first, half led to believe that you are arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and broad the quays; so neat and trim a street of near a mile which stretches before you. But even this mile-long street does not, in a few minutes, appear to be so wealthy and prosperous as it shows at first glance; for of the population that throng the streets, two-fifths are barefooted women, and two-fifths more ragged men: and the most part of the shops which have a grand show with them appear, when looked into, to be no better than they should be, being empty makeshift-looking places with their best goods outside.
Here, in this handsome street too, is a handsome club-house, with plenty of idlers, you may be sure, lolling at the portico; likewise you see numerous young officers, with very tight waists and absurd brass shell-epaulettes to their little absurd frock-coats, walking the pavement—the dandies of the street. Then you behold whole troops of pear-, apple-, and plum-women, selling very raw, green-looking fruit, which, indeed, it is a wonder that any one should eat and live. The houses are bright red—the street is full and gay, carriages and cars in plenty go jingling by—dragoons in red are every now and then clattering up the street; and as upon every car which passes with ladies in it you are sure (I don’t know how it is) to see a pretty one, the great street of Limerick is altogether a very brilliant and animated sight.
If the ladies of the place are pretty, indeed, the vulgar are scarcely less so. I never saw a greater number of kind, pleasing, clever-looking faces among any set of people. There seem, however, to be two sorts of physiognomies which are common; the pleasing and somewhat melancholy one before mentioned, and a square, high-cheeked, flat-nosed physiognomy not uncommonly accompanied by a hideous staring head of dry, red hair. Except, however, in thelatter case, the hair flowing loose and long is a pretty characteristic of the women of the country; many a fair one do you see at the door of the cabin, or the poor shop in the town, combing complacently that ‘greatest ornament of female beauty,’ as Mr. Rowland justly calls it.
The generality of the women here seem also much better clothed than in Kerry; and I saw many a one going barefoot whose gown was nevertheless a good one, and whose cloak was of fine cloth. Likewise it must be remarked that the beggars in Limerick were by no means so numerous as those in Cork, or in many small places through which I have passed. There were but five, strange to say, round the mail-coach as we went away; and, indeed, not a great number in the streets.
The belles-lettres seem to be by no means so well cultivated here as in Cork. I looked in vain for a Limerick guide-book: I saw but one good shop of books, and a little trumpery circulating library, which seemed to be provided with those immortal works of a year old, which, having been sold for half a guinea the volume at first, are suddenly found to be worth only a shilling. Among these, let me mention, with perfect resignation to the decrees of fate, the works of one Titmarsh: they were rather smartly bound by an enterprising publisher, and I looked at them in Bishop Murphy’s library at Cork, in a bookshop in the remote little town of Ennis, and elsewhere, with a melancholy tenderness. Poor flowerets of a season! (and a very short season too), let me be allowed to salute your scattered leaves with a passing sigh!... Besides the bookshops, I observed in the long, best street of Limerick a half-dozen of what are called French shops, with nick-nacks, German-silver chimney ornaments, and paltry finery. In the windows of these you saw a card with ‘Cigars’; in the bookshop, ‘Cigars’; at the grocer’s, the whisky-shop, ‘Cigars’: everybody sells the noxious weed, or makes believe to sell it, and I know no surer indication of a struggling, uncertain trade than that same placard of ‘Cigars.’ I went to buy some of the pretty Limerick gloves (they are chiefly made, as I have since discovered, at Cork). I think the man who sold them had a patent from the Queen, or his Excellency, or both, in his window: but, seeing a friend pass just as I entered the shop, he brushed past, and held his friend in conversation for some minutes in the street,—about the Killarney races, no doubt, or the fun going on at Kilkee. I might have swept away a bagful of walnut-shells containing the flimsy gloves; but instead walked out, making him a low bow, and saying I would call next week. He said, wouldn’t I wait? and resumed his conversation; and, no doubt, by this way of doing business, is makinga handsome independence. I asked one of the ten thousand fruit-women the price of her green pears. ‘Twopence apiece,’ she said; and there were two little ragged beggars standing by, who were munching the fruit. A bookshop-woman made me pay threepence for a bottle of ink which usually costs a penny; a potato-woman told me that her potatoes cost fourteenpence a stone; and all these ladies treated the stranger with a leering, wheedling servility, which made me long to box their ears, were it not that the man who lays his hand upon a woman is an——, etc., whom ‘twere gross flattery to call a what-d’ye-call-‘em. By the way, the man who played Duke Aranza at Cork delivered the celebrated claptrap above alluded to as follows:—
‘The man who lays his hand upon a woman,Save in the way of kindness, is a villain,Whom ‘twerea gross pieceof flattery to call a coward;’
‘The man who lays his hand upon a woman,Save in the way of kindness, is a villain,Whom ‘twerea gross pieceof flattery to call a coward;’
and looked round calmly for the applause, which deservedly followed his new reading of the passage.
To return to the apple-women;—legions of ladies were employed through the town upon that traffic; there were really thousands of them, clustering upon the bridges, squatting down in doorways and vacant sheds for temporary markets, marching and crying their sour goods in all the crowded lanes of the city. After you get out of the main street the handsome part of the town is at an end, and you suddenly find yourself in such a labyrinth of busy swarming poverty and squalid commerce as never was seen—no, not in St. Giles’s, where Jew and Irishman side by side exhibit their genius for dirt. Here every house almost was a half ruin, and swarming with people; in the cellars you looked down and saw a barrel of herrings, which a merchant was dispensing; or a sack of meal, which a poor dirty woman sold to people poorer and dirtier than herself: above was a tinman, or a shoemaker, or other craftsman, his battered ensign at the door, and his small wares peering through the cracked panes of his shop. As for the ensign, as a matter of course, the name is never written in letters of the same size. You read—
enlarge-imagePAT^K HANLAH^an TAILOR--JAME^S HURL^EY SHOE MAK^er
or some similar signboard. High and low, in this country, they begin things on too large a scale. They begin churches too big and can’t finish them; mills and houses too big, and are ruinedbefore they are done; letters on signboards too big, and are up in a corner before the inscription is finished—there is something quite strange, really, in this general consistency.
Well, over James Hurley, or Pat Hanlahan, you will most likely see another board of another tradesman, with a window to the full as curious. Above Tim Carthy evidently lives another family. There are long-haired girls of fourteen at every one of the windows, and dirty children everywhere. In the cellars, look at them in dingy white nightcaps over a bowl of stirabout; in the shop, paddling up and down the ruined steps, or issuing from beneath the black counter; up above, see the girl of fourteen is tossing and dandling one of them; and a pretty tender sight it is, in the midst of this filth and wretchedness, to see the women and children together. It makes a sunshine in the dark place, and somehow half reconciles one to it. Children are everywhere—look out of the nasty streets into the still more nasty back lanes; there they are, sprawling at every door and court, paddling in every puddle; and in about a fair proportion to every six children an old woman—a very old, blear-eyed, ragged woman—who makes believe to sell something out of a basket, and is perpetually calling upon the name of the Lord. For every three ragged old women you will see two ragged old men, praying and moaning like the females. And there is no lack of young men, either, though I never could make out what they were about: they loll about the street, chiefly conversing in knots; and in every street you will be pretty sure to see a recruiting sergeant, with gay ribands in his cap, loitering about with an eye upon the other loiterers there. The buzz, and hum, and chattering of this crowd is quite inconceivable to us in England, where a crowd is generally silent: as a person with a decent coat passes, they stop in their talk and say, ‘God bless you for a fine gentleman!’ In these crowded streets, where all are beggars, the beggary is but small: only the very old and hideous venture to ask for a penny, otherwise the competition would be too great.
As for the buildings that one lights upon every now and then in the midst of such scenes as this, they are scarce worth the trouble to examine: occasionally you come on a chapel, with sham Gothic windows and a little belfry, one of the Catholic places of worship; then, placed in some quiet street, a neat-looking dissenting meeting-house. Across the river yonder, as you issue out from the street, where the preceding sketch was taken, is a handsome hospital; near it the old cathedral, a barbarous old turreted edifice, of the fourteenth century it is said; how different to the sumptuous elegance which characterises the English and Continental churchesof the same period! Passing by it, and walking down other streets,—black, ruinous, swarming, dark, hideous,—you come upon the barracks and the walks of the old castle, and from it on to an old bridge, from which the view is a fine one. On one side are the grey bastions of the castle; beyond them, in the midst of the broad stream, stands a huge mill that looks like another castle; farther yet is the handsome new Wellesley Bridge, with some little craft upon the river, and the red warehouses of the new town looking prosperous enough. The Irish town stretches away to the right; there are pretty villas beyond it, and on the bridge are walking twenty-four young girls, in parties of four and five, with their arms round each other’s waists, swaying to and fro, and singing or chattering, as happy as if they had shoes to their feet. Yonder you see a dozen pair of red legs glittering in the water, their owners being employed in washing their own or other people’s rags.
The Guide-book mentions that one of the aboriginal forests of the country is to be seen at a few miles from Limerick; and thinking that an aboriginal forest would be a huge discovery, and form an instructive and delightful feature of the present work, I hired a car in order to visit the same, and pleased myself with visions of gigantic oaks, Druids, Norma, wildernesses and awful glooms, which would fill the soul with horror. The romance of the place was heightened by a fact stated by the carman, viz., that until late years robberies were very frequent about the wood; the inhabitants of the district being a wild lawless race. Moreover, there are numerous castles round about,—and for what can a man wish more than robbers, castles, and an aboriginal wood?
The way to these wonderful sights lies through the undulating grounds which border the Shannon; and though the view is by no means a fine one, I know few that are pleasanter than the sight of these rich, golden, peaceful plains, with the full harvest waving on them and just ready for the sickle. The hay harvest was likewise just being concluded, and the air loaded with the rich odour of the hay. Above the trees, to your left, you saw the mast of a ship, perhaps moving along, and every now and then caught a glimpse of the Shannon, and the low grounds and plantations of the opposite county of Limerick. Not an unpleasant addition to the landscape, too, was a sight which I do not remember to have witnessed often in this country—that of several small and decent farmhouses, with their stacks and sheds and stables, giving an air of neatness and plenty that the poor cabin with its potato-patch does not present. Is it on account of the small farms that the land seems richer and better cultivated here than in most otherparts of the country? Some of the houses in the midst of the warm summer landscape had a strange appearance, for it is often the fashion to whitewash the roofs of the houses, leaving the slates of the walls of their natural colour; hence, and in the evening especially, contrasting with the purple sky, the house-tops often looked as if they were covered with snow.
According to the Guide-book’s promise, the castles began soon to appear; at one point we could see three of these ancient mansions in a line, each seemingly with its little grove of old trees, in the midst of the bare but fertile country. By this time, too, we had got into a road so abominably bad and rocky, that I began to believe more and more with regard to the splendour of the aboriginal forest, which must be most aboriginal and ferocious indeed when approached by such a savage path. After travelling through a couple of lines of wall with plantations on either side, I at length became impatient as to the forest, and, much to my disappointment, was told this was it. For the fact is, that though the forest has always been there, the trees have not, the proprietors cutting them regularly when grown to no great height, and the monarchs of the woods which I saw round about would scarcely have afforded timber for a bedpost. Nor did any robbers make their appearance in this wilderness: with which disappointment, however, I was more willing to put up than with the former one.
But if the wood and the robbers did not come up to my romantic notions, the old castle of Bunratty fully answered them, and indeed should be made the scene of a romance, in three volumes at least.
‘It is a huge, square tower, with four smaller ones at each angle; and you mount to the entrance by a steep flight of steps, being commanded all the way by the crossbows of two of the Lord De Clare’s retainers, the points of whose weapons may be seen lying upon the ledge of the little narrowmeurtrièreon each side of the gate. A venerable seneschal, with the keys of office, presently opens the little back postern, and you are admitted to the great hall—a noble chamber,pardi! some seventy feet in length, and thirty high. ‘Tis hung round with a thousand trophies of war and chase,—the golden helmet and spear of the Irish king, the long yellow mantle he wore, and the huge brooch that bound it. Hugo De Clare slew him before the castle in 1305, when he and his kernes attacked it. Less successful in 1314, the gallant Hugo saw his village of Bunratty burned round his tower by the son of the slaughtered O’Neill; and, sallying out to avenge the insult, was brought back—a corpse! Ah! what was the pangthat shot through the fair bosom of theLady Adela, when she knew that ‘twas the hand ofRedmond O’Neillsped the shaft which slew her sire!
‘You listen to this sad story, reposing on an oaken settle (covered with deer’s-skin taken in the aboriginal forest of Carclow hard by), and placed at the enormous hall-fire. Here sits Thonom an Diaoul, “Dark Thomas,” the blind harper of the race of De Clare, who loves to tell the deeds of the lordly family. “Penetrating in disguise,” he continues, “into the castle, Redmond of the golden locks sought an interview with the lily of Bunratty; but she screamed when she saw him under the disguise of the gleeman, and said, My father’s blood is in the hall! At this, up started fierce Sir Ranulph. Ho, Bludyer! he cried to his squire, call me the hangman and Father John; seize me, vassals, yon villain in gleeman’s guise, and hang him on the gallows on the tower!
‘“Will it please ye walk to the roof of the old castle and see the beam on which the lords of the place execute the refractory?” “Nay, marry,” say you, “by my spurs of knighthood, I have seen hanging enough in merry England, and care not to see the gibbets of Irish kernes.” The harper would have taken fire at this speech reflecting on his country; but luckily here Gulph, your English squire, entered from the pantler (with whom he had been holding a parley), and brought a manchet of bread, and bade ye, in the Lord De Clare’s name, crush a cup of Ypocras, well spiced,pardi, and by the fair hands of the Lady Adela.
‘“The Lady Adela!” say you, starting up in amaze. “Is not this the year of grace 1600, and lived she not three hundred years syne?”
‘“Yes, Sir Knight, but Bunratty tower hathanother lily: will it please you see your chamber?”
‘So saying, the seneschal leads you up a winding stair in one of the turrets, past one little dark chamber and another, without a fireplace, without rushes (how different from the stately houses of Nonsuch or Audley End!), and, leading you through another vast chamber above the baronial hall, similar in size, but decorated with tapestries and rude carvings, you pass the little chapel (“Marry,” says the steward, “many would it not hold, and many do not come!”), until at last you are located in the little cell appropriated to you. Some rude attempts have been made to render it fitting for the stranger; but, though more neatly arranged than the hundred other little chambers which the castle contains, in sooth ‘tis scarce fitted for the serving-man, much more for Sir Reginald, the English knight.
‘While you are looking at a bouquet of flowers, which lies on the settle—magnolias, geraniums, the blue flowers of the cactus, and in the midst of the bouquet,one lily; whilst you wonder whose fair hands could have culled the flowers—hark! the horns are blowing at the drawbridge and the warder lets the portcullis down. You rush to your window, a stalwart knight rides over the gate, the hoofs of his black courser clanging upon the planks. A host of wild retainers wait round about him: see, four of them carry a stag, that hath been slain, no doubt, in the aboriginal forest of Carclow. By my fay! (say you), ‘tis a stag of ten.
‘But who is that yonder on the grey palfrey, conversing so prettily, and holding the sportive animal with so light a rein?—a light green riding-habit and ruff, a little hat with a green plume—sure it must be a lady, and a fair one. She looks up. O blessed Mother of Heaven, that look! those eyes that smile, those sunny golden ringlets! It is—it isthe Lady Adela: the lily of Bunrat——’
If the reader cannot finish the other two volumes for him or herself, he or she never deserves to have a novel from a circulating library again; for my part, I will take my affidavit the English knight will marry the Lily at the end of the third volume, having previously slain the other suitor at one of the multifarious sieges of Limerick. And I beg to say that the historical part of this romance has been extracted carefully from the Guide-book: the topographical and descriptive portion being studied on the spot. A policeman shows you over it, halls, chapels, galleries, gibbets, and all. The huge old tower was, until late years, inhabited by the family of the proprietor, who built himself a house in the midst of it: but he has since built another in the park opposite, and half a dozen ‘peelers,’ with a commodity of wives and children, now inhabit Bunratty. On the gate where we entered were numerous placards offering rewards for the apprehension of various country offenders; and a turnpike, a bridge, and a quay have sprung up from the place which Red Redmond (or anybody else) burned.
On our road to Galway the next day, we were carried once more by the old tower, and for a considerable distance along the fertile banks of the Fergus lake, and a river which pours itself into the Shannon. The first town we came to is Castle Clare, which lies conveniently on the river, with a castle, a good bridge, and many quays and warehouses, near which a small ship or two were lying. The place was once the chief town of the county, but iswretched and ruinous now, being made up for the most part of miserable thatched cots, round which you see the usual dusky population. The drive hence to Ennis lies through a country which is by no means so pleasant as that rich one we have passed through, being succeeded ‘by that craggy, bleak, pastoral district which occupies so large a portion of the limestone district of Clare.’ Ennis, likewise, stands upon the Fergus—a busy little narrow-streeted, foreign-looking town, approached by half a mile of thatched cots, in which I am not ashamed to confess that I saw some as pretty faces as over any half-mile of country I ever travelled in my life.
A great light of the Catholic church, who was of late a candlestick in our own communion, was on the coach with us, reading devoutly out of a breviary, on many occasions, along the road. A crowd of black coats and heads, with that indescribable look which belongs to the Catholic clergy, were evidently on the look-out for the coach; and as it stopped one of them came up to me with a low bow, and asked if I was the Honourable and Reverend Mr. S——? How I wish I had answered him I was! It would have been a grand scene. The respect paid to this gentleman’s descent is quite absurd—the papers bandy his title about with pleased emphasis—the Galway paper calls him theveryReverend. There is something in the love for rank almost childish: witness the adoration of George IV.; the pompous joy with which John Tuam records his correspondence with a great man; the continual my-lording of the Bishops, the Right-Honourabling of Mr. O’Connell—which title his party-papers delight on all occasions to give him—nay, the delight of that great man himself when first he attained the dignity; he figured in his robes in the most good-humoured simple delight at having them, and went to church forthwith in them, as if such a man wanted a title before his name!
At Ennis, as well as everywhere else in Ireland, there were of course the regular number of swaggering-looking buckeens, and shabby-genteel idlers, to watch the arrival of the mail-coach. A poor old idiot, with his grey hair tied up in bows, and with a ribbon behind, thrust out a very fair soft hand with taper fingers, and told me, nodding his head very wistfully, that he had no father nor mother: upon which score he got a penny. Nor did the other beggars round the carriage who got none seem to grudge the poor fellow’s good fortune. I think when one poor wretch has a piece of luck, the others seem glad here: and they promise to pray for you just the same if you give as if you refuse.
The town was swarming with people; the little dark streets,which twist about in all directions, being full of cheap merchandise and its vendors. Whether there are many buyers, I can’t say. This is written opposite the market-place in Galway, and I have watched a stall a hundred times in the course of the last three hours and seen no money taken: but at every place I come to, I can’t help wondering at the numbers; it seems market-day everywhere—apples, pigs, and potatoes being sold all over the kingdom. There seem to be some good shops in those narrow streets: among others, a decent little library, where I bought, for eighteenpence, six volumes of works strictly Irish, that will serve for a half-hour’s gossip on the next rainy day.
The road hence to Gort carried us at first by some dismal, lonely-looking, reedy lakes, through a melancholy country; an open village standing here and there, with a big chapel in the midst of it, almost always unfinished in some point or other. Crossing at a bridge near a place called Tubbor, the coachman told us we were in the famous county of Galway, which all readers of novels admire in the warlike works of Maxwell and Lever; and, dismal as the country had been in Clare, I think on the northern side of the bridge it was dismaller still—the stones not only appearing in the character of hedges, but strewing over whole fields, in which sheep were browsing as well as they could.
We rode for miles through this stony, dismal district, seeing more lakes now and anon, with fellows spearing eels in the midst. Then we passed the plantations of Lord Gort’s Castle of Loughcooter, and presently came to the town which bears his name, orvice versâ. It is a regularly-built little place, with a square and street: but it looked as if it wondered how the deuce it got into the midst of such a desolate country, and seemed toboreitself there considerably. It had nothing to do, and no society.
A short time before arriving at Oranmore, one has glimpses of the sea, which comes opportunely to relieve the dulness of the land. Between Gort and that place we passed through little but the most woeful country, in the midst of which was a village, where a horse-fair was held, and where (upon the word of the coachman) all the bad horses of the country were to be seen. The man was commissioned, no doubt, to buy for his employers, for two or three merchants were on the look-out for him, and trotted out their cattle by the side of the coach. A very good, neat-looking, smart-trotting chestnut horse, of seven years old, was offered by the owner for £8; a neat brown mare for £10, and a better (as I presume) for £14; but alllookedvery respectable, and I have the coachman’s word for it that they were good serviceable horses. Oranmore, with an old castle in the midst of the village, woods,and park plantations round about, and the bay beyond it, has a pretty and romantic look; and the drive of about four miles thence to Galway, the most picturesque part, perhaps, of the fifty miles’ ride from Limerick. The road is tolerably wooded. You see the town itself, with its huge old church-tower, stretching along the bay, ‘backed by hills linking into the long chain of mountains which stretch across Connemara and the Joyce country.’ A suburb of cots that seems almost endless has, however, an end at last among the houses of the town: and a little fleet of a couple of hundred fishing-boats was manœuvring in the bright waters of the bay.
WHENit is stated that, throughout the town of Galway, you cannot get a cigar which costs more than twopence, Londoners may imagine the strangeness and remoteness of the place. The rain poured down for two days after our arrival at Kilroy’s Hotel. An umbrella under such circumstances is a poor resource: self-contemplation is far more amusing, especially smoking, and a game at cards, if any one will be so good as to play.
But there was no one in the hotel coffee-room who was inclined for the sport. The company there, on the day of our arrival, consisted of two coach passengers,—a Frenchman who came from Sligo, and ordered mutton-chops andfraid potatoesfor dinner by himself, a turbot which cost two shillings, and in Billingsgate would have been worth a guinea; and a couple of native or inhabitant bachelors who frequented thetable d’hôte.
By the way, besides these there were at dinner two turkeys (so that Mr. Kilroy’s two-shilling ordinary was by no means ill supplied); and, as a stranger, I had the honour of carving these animals, which were dispensed in rather a singular way. There are, as it is generally known, to two turkeys four wings. Of the four passengers, one ate no turkey, one had a pinion, another the remaining part of the wing, and the fourth gentleman took the other three wings for his share. Does everybody in Galway eat three wings when there are two turkeys for dinner? One has heard wonders of the country,—the dashing, daring, duelling,desperate, rollicking, whisky-drinking people: but this wonder beats all. When I asked the Galway turkiphagus (there is no other word, for turkey was invented long after Greece) ‘if he would take a third wing?’ with a peculiar satiric accent on the wordsthird wing, which cannot be expressed in writing, but which the occasion fully merited, I thought perhaps that, following the custom of the country where everybody, according to Maxwell and Lever, challenges everybody else,—I thought the Galwagian would call me out; but no such thing. He only said, ‘If you plase, sir,’ in the blandest way in the world; and gobbled up the limb in a twinkling.
As an encouragement, too, for persons meditating that important change of condition, the gentleman was a teetotaller: he took but one glass of water to that intolerable deal of bubblyjock. Galway must be very much changed since the days when Maxwell and Lever knew it. Three turkey-wings and a glass of water! But the man cannot be the representative of a class, that is clear: it is physically and arithmetically impossible. They can’talleat three wings of two turkeys at dinner: the turkeys could not stand it, let alone the men. These wings must have been ‘non usitatæ (nec tenues) pennæ.’ But no more of these flights; let us come to sober realities.
The fact is, that when the rain is pouring down in the streets, the traveller has little else to remark except these peculiarities of his fellow-travellers and inn-sojourners; and, lest one should be led into further personalities, it is best to quit that water-drinking gormandiser at once, and, retiring to a private apartment, to devote one’s self to quiet observation and the acquisition of knowledge, either by looking out of the window and examining mankind, or by perusing books, and so living with past heroes and ages.
As for the knowledge to be had by looking out of window, it is this evening not much. A great wide, blank, bleak, water-whipped square lies before the bedroom window; at the opposite side of which is to be seen the Opposition Hotel, looking even more bleak and cheerless than that over which Mr. Kilroy presides. Large dismal warehouses and private houses form three sides of the square; and in the midst is a bare pleasure-ground surrounded by a growth of gaunt iron railings, the only plants seemingly in the place. Three triangular edifices that look somewhat like gibbets stand in the paved part of the square, but the victims that are consigned to their fate under these triangles are only potatoes, which are weighed there; and, in spite of the torrents of rain, a crowd of barefooted, red-petticoatedwomen, and men in grey coats and flower-pot hats, are pursuing their little bargains with the utmost calmness. The rain seems to make no impression on the males; nor do the women guard against it more than by flinging a petticoat over their heads, and so stand bargaining and chattering in Irish, their figures indefinitely reflected in the shining, varnished pavement. Donkeys and pony carts innumerable stand around, similarly reflected; and in the baskets upon these vehicles you see shoals of herrings lying. After a short space this prospect becomes somewhat tedious, and one looks to other sources of consolation.
The eighteen-pennyworth of little books purchased at Ennis in the morning came here most agreeably to my aid; and indeed they afford many a pleasant hour’s reading. Like theBibliothèque Grise, which one sees in the French cottages in the provinces, and the GermanVolksbuecher, both of which contain stores of old legends that are still treasured in the country, these yellow-covered books are prepared for the people chiefly; and have been sold for many long years before the march of knowledge began to banish Fancy out of the world, and give us, in place of the old fairy tales, Penny Magazines, and similar wholesome works. Where are the little harlequin-backed story-books that used to be read by children in England some thirty years ago? Where such authentic narratives asCaptain Bruce’s Travels,The Dreadful Adventures of Sawney Bean, etc., which were commonly supplied to little boys at school by the same old lady who sold oranges and alycompayne?—they are all gone out of the world, and replaced by such books asConversations on Chemistry,The Little Geologist,Peter Parley’s Tales about the Binomial Theorem, and the like. The world will be a dull world some hundreds of years hence, when Fancy shall be dead, and ruthless Science (that has no more bowels than a steam-engine) has killed her.
It is a comfort, meanwhile, to come on occasions on some of the good old stories and biographies. These books were evidently written before the useful had attained its present detestable popularity. There is nothing usefulhere, that’s certain; and a man will be puzzled to extract a precise moral out of theAdventures of Mr. James Freeny; or out of the legends in theHibernian Tales; or out of the lamentable tragedy of theBattle of Aughrim, writ in most doleful Anglo-Irish verse. But, are we to reject all things that have not a moral tacked to them? ‘Is there any moral shut within the bosom of the rose?’ And yet, as the same noble poet sings (giving a smart slap to theutility people the while), ‘useful applications lie in art and nature,’ and every man may find a moral suited to his mind in them; or, if not a moral, an occasion for moralising.
Honest Freeny’s adventures (let us begin with history and historic tragedy, and leave fancy for future consideration), if they have a moral, have that dubious one which the poet admits may be elicited from a rose; and which every man may select according to his mind. And surely this is a far better and more comfortable system of moralising than that in the fable-books, where you are obliged to accept the story with the inevitable moral corollary thatwillstick close to it.
Whereas, in Freeny’s life, one man may see the evil of drinking, another the harm of horse-racing, another the danger attendant on early marriage, a fourth the exceeding inconvenience as well as hazard of the heroic highwayman’s life—which a certain Ainsworth, in company with a certain Cruikshank, have represented as so poetic and brilliant, so prodigal of delightful adventure, so adorned with champagne, gold lace, and brocade.
And the best part of worthy Freeny’s tale is the noblenaïvetéand simplicity of the hero as he recounts his own adventures, and the utter unconsciousness that he is narrating anything wonderful. It is the way of all great men, who recite their great actions modestly, and as if they were matters of course; as indeed to them they are. A common tyro, having perpetrated a great deed, would be amazed and flurried at his own action; whereas I make no doubt the Duke of Wellington, after a great victory, took his tea and went to bed just as quietly as he would after a dull debate in the House of Lords. And so with Freeny,—his great and charming characteristic is grave simplicity; he does his work; he knows his danger as well as another; but he goes through his fearful duty quite quietly and easily; and not with the least air of bravado, or the smallest notion that he is doing anything uncommon.
It is related of Carter, the Lion-King, that when he was a boy, and exceedingly fond of gingerbread-nuts, a relation gave him a parcel of those delicious cakes, which the child put in his pocket just as he was called on to go into a cage with a very large and roaring lion. He had to put his head into the forest-monarch’s jaws, and leave it there for a considerable time, to the delight of thousands: as is even now the case; and the interest was so much the greater, as the child was exceedingly innocent, rosy-cheeked, and pretty. To have seen that little flaxen head bitten off by the lion would have been a far more pathetic spectacle than that of the decapitation of some grey-bearded, old, unromantickeeper, who had served out raw meat and stirred up the animals with the pole, any time these twenty years; and the interest rose in consequence.
While the little darling’s head was thus enjawed, what was the astonishment of everybody to see him put his hand into his little pocket, take out a paper—from the paper a gingerbread-nut—pop that gingerbread-nut into the lion’s mouth, then into his own, and so finish at least twopennyworth of nuts!
The excitement was delirious: the ladies, when he came out of Chancery, were for doing what the lion had not done, and eaten him up—with kisses. And the only remark the young hero made was, ‘Uncle, them nuts wasn’t so crisp as them I had t’other day.’ He never thought of the danger,—he only thought of the nuts.
Thus it is withFreeny. It is fine to mark his bravery, and to see how he cracks his simple philosophic nuts in the jaws of innumerable lions.
At the commencement of the last century, honest Freeny’s father was house-steward in the family of Joseph Robbins, Esq., of Ballyduff; and, marrying Alice Phelan, a maid-servant in the same family, had issueJames, the celebrated Irish hero. At a proper age James was put to school; but being a nimble, active lad, and his father’s mistress taking a fancy to him, he was presently brought to Ballyduff, where she had a private tutor to instruct him, during the time which he could spare from his professional duty, which was that of pantry-boy in Mr. Robbins’s establishment. At an early age he began to neglect his duty; and although his father, at the excellent Mrs. Robbins’s suggestion, corrected him very severely, the bent of his genius was not to be warped by the rod, and he attended ‘all the little country dances, diversions, and meetings, and became what is called a good dancer, his own natural inclinations hurrying him (as he finely says) into the contrary diversions.’
He was scarce twenty years old when he married (a frightful proof of the wicked recklessness of his former courses), and set up in trade in Waterford; where, however, matters went so ill with him, that he was speedily without money, and £50 in debt. He had, he says, not any way of paying the debt, except by selling his furniture or hisriding-mare, to both of which measures he was averse; for where is the gentleman in Ireland that can do without a horse to ride? Mr. Freeny and his riding-mare became soon famous, insomuch that a thief in gaol warned the magistrates of Kilkenny to beware of aone-eyed man with a mare.
These unhappy circumstances sent him on the highway to seeka maintenance, and his first exploit was to rob a gentleman of fifty pounds; then to attack another, against whom he ‘hada secret disgust, because this gentleman had prevented his former master from giving him a suit of clothes!’
Urged by a noble resentment against this gentleman, Mr. Freeny, in company with a friend by the name of Reddy, robbed the gentleman’s house, taking therein £70 in money, which was honourably divided among the captors.
‘We then,’ continues Mr. Freeny, ‘quitted the house with the booty, and came to Thomastown; but not knowing how to dispose of the plate, left it with Reddy, who said he had a friend from whom he would get cash for it. In some time afterwards I asked him for the dividend of the cash he got for the plate, but all the satisfaction he gave me was, that it was lost, which occasioned meto have my own opinion of him.’
Mr. Freeny then robbed Sir William Fownes’ servant of £14, in such an artful manner that everybody believed the servant had himself secreted the money; and no doubt the rascal was turned adrift, and starved in consequence—a truly comic incident, and one that could be used so as to provoke a great deal of laughter, in an historical work of which our champion should be the hero.
The next enterprise of importance is that against the house of Colonel Palliser, which Freeny thus picturesquely describes. Coming with one of his spies close up to the house, Mr. Freeny watched the Colonel lighted to bed by a servant; and thus, as he cleverly says, could judge ‘of the room the Colonel lay in.’
‘Some time afterwards,’ says Freeny, ‘I observed a light upstairs, by which I judged the servants were going to bed, and soon after observed that the candles were all quenched, by which I assured myself they were all gone to bed. I then came back to where the men were, and appointed Bulger, Motley, and Commons to go in along with me; but Commons answered that he never had been in any house before where there were arms; upon which I asked the coward what business he had there, and swore I would as soon shoot him as look at him, and at the same time cocked a pistol to his breast; but the rest of the men prevailed upon me to leave him at the back of the house, where he might run away when he thought proper.
‘I then asked Grace where did he choose to be posted; he answered “That he would go where I pleased to order him,” for which I thanked him; we then immediately came up to the house, lighted our candles, put Houlahan at the back of the house, to prevent any person from coming out that way, and placedHacket on my mare, well armed, at the front; and I then broke one of the windows with a sledge, whereupon Bulger, Motley, Grace, and I got in; upon which I ordered Motley and Grace to go upstairs, and Bulger and I would stay below, where we thought the greatest danger would be; but I immediately, upon second consideration, for fear Motley or Grace should be daunted, desired Bulger to go up with them, and when he had fixed matters above, to come down, as I judged the Colonel lay below. I then went to the room where the Colonel was, and burst open the door; upon which he said, “Odds-wounds! who’s there?” to which I answered, “A friend, sir;” upon which he said, “You lie; by G—d, you are no friend of mine!” I then said that I was, and his relation also, and that if he viewed me close he would know me, and begged of him not to be angry; upon which I immediately seized a bullet-gun and case of pistols, which I observed hanging up in his room. I then quitted his room, and walked round the lower part of the house, thinking to meet some of the servants,whomI thought would strive to make their escape from the men who were above, and meeting none of them, I immediately returned to the Colonel’s room; where I no sooner entered than he desired me to go out for a villain, and asked why I bred such disturbance in his house at that time of night; at the same time I snatched his breeches from under his head, wherein I got a small purse of gold, and said that abuse was not fit treatment for me who was his relation, and that it would hinder me of calling to see him again. I then demanded the key of his desk which stood in his room; he answered he had no key; upon which I said I had a very good key; at the same time giving it a stroke with the sledge, which burst it open, wherein I got a purse of ninety guineas, a four-pound piece, two moidores, some small gold, and a large glove, with twenty-eight guineas in silver.
‘By this time Bulger and Motley came downstairs to me, after rifling the house above; we then observed a closet inside his room, which we soon entered, and got therein a basket wherein there was plate to the value of three hundred pounds.’
And so they took leave of Colonel Palliser, and rode away with their earnings.
The story, as here narrated, has that simplicity which is beyond the reach of all except the very highest art; and it is not high art certainly which Mr. Freeny can be said to possess, but a noble nature rather, which leads him thus grandly to describe scenes wherein he acted a great part. With what a gallant determination does he inform the coward Commons that he would shoot him ‘as soon as look at him’; and how dreadful he must have looked(with his one eye) as he uttered that sentiment! But he left him, he says, with a grim humour, at the back of the house, ‘where he might run away when he thought proper.’ The Duke of Wellington must have read Mr. Freeny’s history in his youth (his Grace’s birthplace is not far from the scene of the other gallant Irishman’s exploit), for the Duke acted in precisely a similar way by a Belgian Colonel at Waterloo.
It must be painful to great and successful commanders to think how their gallant comrades and lieutenants, partners of their toil, their feelings, and their fame, are separated from them by time, by death, by estrangement, nay sometimes by treason. Commons is off, disappearing noiseless into the deep night, whilst his comrades perform the work of danger; and Bulger,—Bulger, who in the above scene acts so gallant a part, and in whom Mr. Freeny places so much confidence—actually went away to England, carrying off ‘some plate, some shirts, a gold watch, and a diamond ring’ of the Captain’s; and, though he returned to his native country, the valuables did not return with him, on which the Captain swore he would blow his brains out. As for poor Grace, he was hanged, much to his leader’s sorrow, who says of him that he was ‘the faithfullest of his spies.’ Motley was sent to Naas gaol for the very robbery: and though Captain Freeny does not mention his ultimate fate, ‘tis probable he was hanged too. Indeed, the warrior’s life is a hard one, and over misfortunes like these the feeling heart cannot but sigh.
But, putting out of the question the conduct and fate of the Captain’s associates, let us look to his own behaviour as a leader. It is impossible not to admire his serenity, his dexterity, that dashing impetuosity in the moment of action, and that aquilinecoup d’œilwhich belongs to but few generals. He it is who leads the assault, smashing in the window with a sledge; he bursts open the Colonel’s door, who says (naturally enough), ‘Odds-wounds! who’s there?’ ‘A friend, sir,’ says Freeny. ‘You lie! by G—d, you are no friend of mine!’ roars the military blasphemer. ‘I then said that I was,and his relation also, and that if he viewed me close he would know me, and begged of him not to be angry:upon which I immediately seizeda brace of pistols which I observed hanging up in his room.’ That is something like presence of mind: none of your brutal braggadocio work, but neat, wary—nay, sportive bearing in the face of danger. And again, on the second visit to the Colonel’s room, when the latter bids him ‘go out for a villain, and not breed a disturbance,’ what reply makes Freeny? ‘At the same time I snatched his breechesfrom under his head.’ A common man would never have thoughtof looking for them in such a place at all. The difficulty about the key he resolves in quite an Alexandrian manner; and, from the specimen we already have had of the Colonel’s style of speaking, we may fancy how ferociously he lay in bed and swore, after Captain Freeny and his friends had disappeared with the ninety guineas, the moidores, the four-pound piece, and the glove with twenty-eight guineas in silver.
As for the plate, he hid it in a wood; and then, being out of danger, he sate down and paid everybody his deserts. By the way, what a strange difference of opinion is there about a man’sdeserts! Here sits Captain Freeny with a company of gentlemen, and awards them a handsome sum of money for an action which other people would have remunerated with a halter. Which are right? perhaps both: but at any rate it will be admitted that the Captain takes the humane view of the question.
The greatest enemy Captain Freeny had was Counsellor Robbins, a son of his old patron, and one of the most determined thief-pursuers the country ever knew. But though he was untiring in his efforts to capture (and of course to hang) Mr. Freeny, and though the latter was strongly urged by his friends to blow the Counsellor’s brains out; yet, to his immortal honour it is said he refused that temptation, agreeable as it was, declaring that he had eaten too much of that family’s bread ever to take the life of one of them, and being besides quite aware that the Counsellor was only acting against him in a public capacity. He respected him, in fact, like an honourable though terrible adversary.
How deep a stratagem-inventor the Counsellor was, may be gathered from the following narration of one of his plans:—
‘Counsellor Robbins finding his brother had not got intelligence that was sufficient to carry any reasonable foundation for apprehending us, walked out as if merely for exercise, till he met with a person whom he thought he could confide in, and desired the person to meet him at a private place appointed for that purpose, which they did; and he told that person he had a very good opinion of him, from the character received from his father of him, and from his own knowledge of him, and hoped that the person would then show him that such opinion was not ill founded. The person assuring the Counsellor he would do all in his power to serve and oblige him, the Counsellor told him how greatly he was concerned to hear the scandalous character that part of the country (which had formerly been an honest one) had lately fallen into. That it was said that a gang of robbers who disturbed the country lived thereabouts; the person told him he was afraid what he said was too true; and, on being asked whom hesuspected, he named the same four persons Mr. Robbins had, but said he dare not, for fear of being murdered, be too inquisitive, and therefore could not say anything material; the Counsellor asked him if he knew where there was any private ale to be sold; and he said Moll Burke, who lived near the end of Mr. Robbins’s avenue, had a barrel or half a barrel. The Counsellor then gave the person a moidore, and desired him to go to Thomastown and buy two or three gallons of whisky, and bring it to Moll Burke’s, and invite as many as he suspected to be either principals or accessories to take a drink, and make them drink very heartily, and when he found they were fuddled, and not sooner, to tell some of the hastiest, that some other had said some bad things of them, so as to provoke them to abuse and quarrel with each other; and then, probably, in their liquor and passion, they might make some discoveries of each other, as may enable the Counsellor to get some one of the gang to discover and accuse the rest.
‘The person accordingly got the whisky and invited a good many to drink; but the Counsellor being then at his brother’s, a few only went to Moll Burke’s, the rest being afraid to venture while the Counsellor was in the neighbourhood; among those who met, there was one Moll Brophy, the wife of Mr. Robbins’s smith, and one Edmund or Edward Stapleton, otherwise Gaul, who lived thereabouts; and when they had drank plentifully, the Counsellor’s spy told Moll Brophy, Gaul had said she had gone astray with some persons or other; she then abused Gaul, and told him he was one of Freeny’s accomplices, for that he, Gaul, had told her he had seen Colonel Palliser’s watch with Freeny, and that Freeny had told him, Gaul, that John Welsh and the two Graces had been with him at the robbery.
‘The company on their quarrel broke up, and the next morning the spy met the Counsellor at the place appointed, at a distance from Mr. Robbins’s house, to prevent suspicion, and there told the Counsellor what intelligence he had got; the Counsellor not being then a justice of the peace, got his brother to send for Moll Brophy to be examined; but when she came, she refused to be sworn or to give any evidence, and thereupon the Counsellor had her tied and put on a car in order to be carried to jail on a mittimus from Mr. Robbins, for refusing to give evidence on behalf of the Crown. When she found she would really be sent to jail, she submitted to be sworn, and the Counsellor drew from her what she had said the night before, and something further, and desired her not to tell anybody what she had sworn.’
But if the Counsellor was acute, were there not others as clever as he? For when, in consequence of the information of Mrs.Brophy, some gentlemen who had been engaged in the burglarious enterprises in which Mr. Freeny obtained so much honour, were seized and tried, Freeny came forward with the best of arguments in their favour. Indeed, it is fine to see these two great spirits matched one against the other,—the Counsellor, with all the regular force of the country to back him—the Highway General, with but the wild resources of his gallant genius, and with cunning and bravery for his chief allies.
‘I lay by for a considerable time after, and concluded within myself to do no more mischief till after the assizes, when I would hear how it went with the men who were then in confinement. Some time before the assizes Counsellor Robbins came to Ballyduff, and told his brother that he believed Anderson and Welsh were guilty, and also said he would endeavour to have them both hanged, of which I was informed.
‘Soon after, I went to the house of one George Roberts, who asked me if I had any regard for those fellows who were then confined (meaning Anderson and Welsh). I told him I had a regard for one of them: upon which he said, he had a friend who was a man of power and interest,—that he would save either of them, provided I would give him five guineas. I told him I would give him ten, and the first gold watch I could get; whereupon he said that it was of no use to speak to his friend without the money or value, for that he was a mercenary man; on which I told Roberts I had not so much money at that time, but that I would give him my watch as a pledge to give his friend. I then gave him my watch, and desired him to engage that I would pay the money which I promised to pay, or give value for it in plate, in two or three nights after; upon which he engaged that his friend would act the needful; when we appointed a night to meet, and we accordingly met; and Roberts told me that his friend agreed to save Anderson and Welsh from the gallows; whereupon I gave him a plate tankard, value £10, a large ladle, value £4, with some tablespoons; and the assizes of Kilkenny, in spring 1748, coming on soon after, Counsellor Robbins had Welsh transmitted from Naas to Kilkenny, in order to give evidence against Anderson and Welsh; and they were tried for Mrs. Mounford’s robbery, on the evidence of John Welsh and others. The physic working well, six of the jury were for finding them guilty, and six more for acquitting them; and the other six finding them peremptory, and that they were resolved to starve the others into compliance, as they say they may do by law, were for their own sakes obliged to comply with them, and they were acquitted; on which Counsellor Robbins began to smoke the affair, and suspect the operation of gold dust, which waswell applied for my comrades, and thereupon left the court in a rage, and swore he would for ever quit the country, since he found people were not satisfied with protecting and saving the rogues they had under themselves, but must also show that they could and would oblige others to have rogues under them whether they would or no.’
Here Counsellor Robbins certainly loses that greatness which has distinguished him in his former attack on Freeny; the Counsellor is defeated and loses his temper. Like Napoleon, he is unequal to reverses, but in adverse fortune his presence of mind deserts him.
But what call had he to be in a passion at all? It may be very well for a man to be in a rage because he is disappointed of his prey: so is the hawk, when the dove escapes, in a rage; but let us reflect that, had Counsellor Robbins had his will, two honest fellows would have been hanged; and so let us be heartily thankful that he was disappointed, and that these men were acquitted by a jury of their countrymen. What right had the Counsellor, forsooth, to interfere with their verdict? Not against Irish juries at least does the old satire apply, ‘And culprits hang that jurymen may dine.’ At Naas, on the contrary, the jurymen starved in order that the culprits might be saved—a noble and humane act of self-denial.
In another case, stern justice, and the law of self-preservation, compelled Mr. Freeny to take a very different course with respect to one of his ex-associates. In the former instance we have seen him pawning his watch, giving up tankard, tablespoons—all, for his suffering friends; here we have his method of dealing with traitors.
One of his friends, by the name of Anderson, was taken prisoner, and condemned to be hanged, which gave Mr. Freeny, he says, ‘a great shock’; but presently this Anderson’s fears were worked upon by some traitors within the gaol, and—
‘He then consented to discover; but I had a friend in gaol at the same time, one Patrick Healy, who daily insinuated to him that it was of no use or advantage to him to discover anything, as he received sentence of death; and that, after he had made a discovery, to leave him as he was, without troubling themselves about a reprieve. But notwithstanding, he told the gentleman that there was a manblind of an eye, who had a bay mare, that lived at the other side of Thomastown Bridge,whomhe assured them would be very troublesome in that neighbourhood after his death. When Healy discovered what he told the gentleman, he one night took an opportunity, and made Dooling fuddled, and prevailed upon him totake his oath he never would give the least hint about me any more. He also told him the penalty that attended infringing upon his oath; but more especially as he was at that time near his end, which had the desired effect; for he never mentioned my name, nor even anything relative to me,’ and so went out of the world repenting of his meditated treason.
What further exploits Mr. Freeny performed may be learned by the curious in his history: they are all, it need scarcely be said, of a similar nature to that noble action which has already been described. His escapes from his enemies were marvellous; his courage in facing them equally great. He is attacked by whole ‘armies,’ through which he makes his way; wounded, he lies in the woods for days together with three bullets in his leg, and in this condition manages to escape several ‘armies’ that have been marched against him. He is supposed to be dead, or travelling on the Continent, and suddenly makes his appearance in his old haunts, advertising his arrival by robbing ten men on the highway in a single day: and, so terrible is his courage, or so popular his manners, that he describes scores of labourers looking on while his exploits were performed, and not affording the least aid to the roadside traveller whom he vanquished.
But numbers always prevail in the end; what could Leonidas himself do against an army? The gallant band of brothers led by Freeny were so pursued by the indefatigable Robbins and his myrmidons, that there was no hope left for them, and the Captain saw that he must succumb.
He reasoned, however, with himself (with his usual keen logic), and said:—
‘My men must fall,—the world is too strong for us, and, to-day or to-morrow,—it matters scarcely when they must yield. They will be hanged for a certainty, and thus will disappear the noblest company of knights the world has ever seen.
‘But as they will certainly be hanged, and no power of mine can save them, is it necessary that I should follow them too to the tree; and will James Bulger’s fate be a whit more agreeable to him, because James Freeny dangles at his side? To suppose so, would be to admit that he was actuated by a savage feeling of revenge, which I know belongs not to his generous nature.’
In a word, Mr. Freeny resolved to turn king’s evidence; for though he swore (in a communication with the implacable Robbins) that he would rather die than betray Bulger, yet when the Counsellor stated that he must then die, Freeny says, ‘I promised to submit, andunderstood that Bulger should be set.’
Accordingly some days afterwards (although the Captain carefully avoids mentioning that he had met his friends with any such intentions as those indicated in the last paragraph) he and Mr. Bulger came together: and, strangely enough, it was agreed that the one was to sleep while the other kept watch; and, while thus employed, the enemy came upon them. But let Freeny describe for himself the last passages of his history:—
‘We then went to Welsh’s house, with a view not to make any delay there; but, taking a glass extraordinary after supper, Bulger fell asleep. Welsh, in the meantime, told me his house was the safest place I could get in that neighbourhood, and while I remained there I would be very safe, provided that no person knew of my coming there (I had not acquainted him that Breen knew of my coming that way). I told Welsh that, as Bulger was asleep, I would not go to bed till morning: upon which Welsh and I stayed up all night, and in the morning Welsh said that he and his wife had a call to Callen, it being market-day. About nine o’clock I went and awoke Bulger, desiring him to get up and guard me whilst I slept, as I guarded him all night; he said he would, and then I went to bed charging him to watch close, for fear we should be surprised. I put my blunderbuss and two cases of pistols under my head, and soon fell fast asleep. In two hours after, the servant-girl of the house, seeing an enemy coming into the yard, ran up to the room where we were, and said that there were an hundred men coming into the yard; upon which Bulger immediately awoke me, and, taking up my blunderbuss, he fired a shot towards the door, which wounded Mr. Burgess, one of the sheriffs of Kilkenny, of which wound he died. They concluded to set the house on fire about us, which they accordingly did; upon which I took my fusee in one hand, and a pistol in the other, and Bulger did the like, and as we came out of the door, we fired on both sides, imagining it to be the best method of dispersing the enemy, who were on both sides of the door. We got through them, but they fired after us, and as Bulger was leaping over a ditch he received a shot in the small of the leg, which rendered him incapable of running; but, getting into a field, where I had the ditch between me and the enemy, I still walked slowly with Bulger, till I thought the enemy were within shot of the ditch, and then wheeled back to the ditch and presented my fusee at them; they all drew back and went for their horses to ride round, as the field was wide and open, and without cover except the ditch. When I discovered their intention I stood in the middle of the field, and one of the gentlemen’s servants (there were fourteen in number) rode foremost towards me; upon whichI told the son of a coward I believed he had no more than five pounds a year from his master, and that I would put him in such a condition that his master would not maintain him afterwards. To which he answered that he had no view of doing us any harm, but that he was commanded by his master to ride so near us; and then immediately rode back to the enemy, who were coming towards him. They rode almost within shot of us, and I observed they intended to surround us in the field, and prevent me from having any recourse to the ditch again. Bulger was at this time so bad with the wound, that he could not go one step without leaning on my shoulder. At length, seeing the enemy coming within shot of me, I laid down my fusee and stripped off my coat and waistcoat, and running towards them, cried out, “You sons of cowards, come on, and I will blow your brains out;” on which they returned back, and then I walked easy to the place where I left my clothes, and put them on, and Bulger and I walked leisurely some distance farther. The enemy came a second time, and I occasioned them to draw back as before, and then we walked to Lord Dysart’s deer-park wall. I got up the wall and helped Bulger up. The enemy, who still pursued us, though not within shot, seeing us on the wall, one of them fired a random shot at us to no purpose. We got safe over the wall, and went from thence into my Lord Dysart’s wood, where Bulger said he would remain, thinking it a safe place; but I told him he would be safer anywhere else, for the army of Kilkenny and Callen would be soon about the wood, and that he would be taken if he stayed there. Besides, as I was very averse to betraying him at all, I could not bear the thoughts of his being taken in my company by any party but Lord Carrick’s. I then brought him about half a mile beyond the wood, and left him there in a brake of briars, and looking towards the wood I saw it surrounded by the army. There was a cabin near that place where I fixed Bulger: he said he would go to it at night, and he would send for some of his friends to take care of him. It was then almost two o’clock, and we were four hours going to that place, which was about two miles from Welsh’s house. Imagining that there were spies fixed on all the fords and by-roads between that place and the mountain, I went towards the bounds of the county Tipperary, where I arrived about nightfall, and going to a cabin, I asked whether there was any drink sold near that place? The man of the house said there was not; and as I was very much fatigued, I sat down, and there refreshed myself with what the cabin afforded. I then begged of the man to sell me a pair of his brogues and stockings, as I was then barefooted, which he accordingly did. I quittedthe house, went through Kinsheenah and Poulacoppal, and having so many thorns in my feet, I was obliged to go barefooted, and went to Sleedelagh, and through the mountains, till I came within four miles of Waterford, and going into a cabin, the man of the house took eighteen thorns out of the soles of my feet, and I remained in and about that place for some time after.
‘In the meantime a friend of mine was told that it was impossible for me to escape death, for Bulger had turned against me, and that his friends and Stack were resolved upon my life; but the person who told my friend so, also said, that if my friend would set Bulger and Breen, I might get a pardon through the Earl of Carrick’s means and Counsellor Robbins’s interest. My friend said that hewas sure I would not consent to such a thing, but the best way was to do it unknown to me; and my friend accordingly set Bulger, who was taken by the Earl of Carrick and his party, and Mr. Fitzgerald, and six of Counsellor Robbins’s soldiers, and committed to Kilkenny jail. He was three days in jail before I heard he was taken, being at that time twenty miles distant from the neighbourhood; nor did I hear from him or see him since I left him near Lord Dysart’s wood,till a friendcame and told me it was to preserve my life and to fulfil my articles that Bulger was taken.’
. . . . .
‘Finding I was suspected, I withdrew to a neighbouring wood and concealed myself there till night, and then went to Ballyduff to Mr. Fitzgerald and surrendered myself to him, till I could write to my Lord Carrick, which I did immediately, and gave him an account of what I escaped, or that I would have gone to Ballilynch and surrendered myself there to him, and begged his lordship to send a guard for me to conduct me to his house, which he did, and I remained there for a few days.
‘He then sent me to Kilkenny jail; and at the summer assizes following, James Bulger, Patrick Hacket, otherwise Bristeen, Martin Millea, John Stack, Felix Donnelly, Edmund Kenny, and James Larrassy were tried, convicted, and executed; and at spring assizes following, George Roberts was tried for receiving Colonel Palliser’s gold watch, knowing it to be stolen, but was acquitted on account of exceptions taken to my pardon, which prevented my giving evidence. At the following assizes, when I had got a new pardon, Roberts was again tried for receiving the tankard, ladle, and silver spoons from me, knowing them to be stolen, and was convicted and executed. At the same assizes, John Reddy, my instructor, and Martin Millea were also tried, convicted, and executed.’
And so they were all hanged: James Bulger, Patrick Hacketor Bristeen, Martin Millea, John Stack and Felix Donnelly, and Edmund Kenny and James Larrassy, with Roberts, who received the Colonel’s watch, the tankard, ladle, and the silver spoons, were all convicted and all executed. Their names drop naturally into blank verse. It is hard upon poor George Roberts too: for the watch he received was no doubt in the very inexpressibles which the Captain himself took from the Colonel’s head.
As for the Captain himself, he says that, on going out of jail, Counsellor Robbins and Lord Carrick proposed a subscription for him—in which, strangely, the gentlemen of the county would not join, and so that scheme came to nothing; and so he published his memoirs in order to get himself a little money. Many a man has taken up the pen under similar circumstances of necessity.
But what became of Captain Freeny afterwards does not appear. Was he an honest man ever after? Was he hanged for subsequent misdemeanours? It matters little to him now; though, perhaps, one cannot help feeling a little wish that the latter fate may have befallen him.
Whatever his death was, however, the history of his life has been one of the most popular books ever known in this country. It formed the class-book in those rustic universities which are now rapidly disappearing from among the hedges of Ireland. And lest any English reader should, on account of its lowness, quarrel with the introduction here of this strange picture of wild courage and daring, let him be reconciled by the moral at the end, which, in the persons of Bulger and the rest, hangs at the beam before Kilkenny jail.