Part 9

Yet I feel an occasional spasm At thoughts of returning at all, ’Twere better to leap down a chasm Or under an avalanche fall; Or, fingers embracing the trigger, Let the pistol’s report loudly tell How I hated the queries of Biggar And the dolorous talk of Parnell.

A PICTURESQUE PENNY-A-LINER.

There may be some miserable beings to whom the existence of that powerful organ of public opinion, the Stretchville _Sparrow_, is a sealed volume, or, more correctly, an unopened newspaper. Should such be the melancholy fact, I hasten to inform them that the Stretchville _Sparrow_ (_vide_ its own circular) is a power, a forty-horse power, in the universe. Circulating, as it does, among the three hundred adults of Stretchville and vicinity, it wields an influence that inspires awe and creates astonishment. As befits a journal with responsibilities so tremendous, and a status so imposing, it aims to keep abreast of the times. So when the Land League agitation had brought Ireland and the Irish prominently forward, and such lesser luminaries as the New York _Herald_ and _Tribune_ and _Times_ and the Boston _Herald_ and a score of other dailies had their specials over in the sorrowful country, the _Sparrow_ felt imperatively called upon to bestow its approval by following the example. Stubbs, the head reporter, bookkeeper, advertisement canvasser, and proof-reader, was therefore ordered to hold himself in readiness to embark on a perilous journey (via the editorial back room) through the wilds of Connemara and the mountains of Kerry. He was equipped for the expedition with a school map of Ireland and an old copy of Thom’s Dublin Directory, which contained a list of all the landed gentry of the country.

His instructions were brief, but they covered a lot of ground. “You know as much about the country now,” observed his chief, “as if you were there. We’ve got to lick the New York _Herald_ and the rest of ’em. Whenever you see an Irish murder in another paper, let us have two. There’s nearly two thousand names in that directory. With judicious management they ought to last till this Irish boom pegs out. You’d better tick each landlord off when you telegraph his demise. It won’t do to shoot one fellow three or four times. People want variety. You might skin a bailiff or scalp a policeman now and then. Go ahead at once, and give us some lively telegrams.”

Well, it _was_ lively for a few weeks after that in the _Sparrow_. One day we had: “Fearful Murders in Ireland--Seven Landlords Shot!” The next there was a six-inch heading, “Cannibalism in Connemara--Six Agents Stewed and a Sub-Inspector Fricasseed!” Then when the _Tribune_ came out with a summary of three months’ Irish outrages, and showed that there had been fourteen murders of agents and landlords, and one hundred and seven assaults upon bailiffs and process servers, that conscientious reporter, who had been told to double every crime reported elsewhere, and who didn’t grasp the fact that the _Tribune’s_ was a three-months’ record, paralyzed the readers of the _Sparrow_ with a blood-curdling telegram to the effect that there had been a horrible night’s battue in the Emerald Isle, twenty-eight landlords and agents having handed in their checks, and two hundred and fourteen officers of the law having suffered every conceivable indignity, from swallowing writs and processes on the half-shell, to being stripped naked and turned loose for light recreation in nettle beds or around wasps’ nests. By this time the special had got half through his directory, and the list of names eligible for assassination was rapidly dwindling down, so he had to improvise a few. His boss, too, complained that there was a lack of variety in his telegrams. He had wiped out four or five hundred land-owners in pretty nearly the same sentences every time. He should diversify the details. He diversified. Here’s his style:--

“GALWAY, Tuesday.--A man named M’Swilkin took a farm last week from which the previous tenant had been evicted. He was waited upon yesterday evening by a few neighbors. It is estimated that he weighed forty pounds heavier after the interview. The surgeons have been three days excavating for lead, and haven’t done striking new veins yet.”

“At a land-meeting near Castlebar last week, Michael Moolannigan boasted that he had paid his rent. His widow complains that she can’t hold a decent wake on a pair of braces and two buttons. She wants more of him, to give the funeral a respectable appearance.”

This special correspondence continued to be telegraphed from the editorial sanctum, and dated Sligo or Cahirciveen or Letterkenny, according to the scene of the last big thing in murders, until readers began to get kind of hardened to it, and didn’t mind half-a-dozen murders in Ireland quarter as much as they would the same number of errors in a base-ball match. Under the circumstances, it was thought as well to drop the Irish agency. “You had better return,” observed the chief, as they sat smoking together at the hospitable bar next door. “We’ll wind up your Irish tour with an interview. I’ll interview you. Just throw us in a few spicy maimings or strangulations for this issue, and you can be home next Saturday, and your interviewing will be handy for Sunday’s edition.” I give the interview as it appeared in the _Sparrow_, to show how scrupulously truthful was that Irish correspondent:--

“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville. As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores, and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to abbreviate.

“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound, whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.

“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They were worn to threads.

“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could produce anything like a respectable shade.

“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the others.

“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.

“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.

“‘I gave the man a shilling for him--in two sixpences, so that he could balance himself. If he had got the shilling to carry in either side pocket, it would have brought him down.

“‘I shall always take credit to myself for preserving that poor man’s centre of gravity.

“‘I brought the dog to my hotel. I left him in the dining-room, but, fearing he might slip under the door, I tied a double knot on his tail. In my brief temporary absence he smelt some scraps of meat in the bottom of a cupboard. He got through the keyhole as far as his tail. He couldn’t get the double knot through but he was able to reach the meat. He fed. You see the result. He could get no farther in, and after his feed he couldn’t get back past his stomach. I found him in that position when I returned. To save him from a lingering death, I had to vivisect his tail.’

“We ventured to hint that there might be a mistake about the double knot. The dog was of a breed whose tails are naturally short; so much so, that it would require hydraulic pressure to squeeze a double knot out of one. Our special was too virtuously indignant to reply for a moment, but, coming to, he explained that, going to rest supperless, the Irish landlords’ dogs had acquired a habit of sleeping with their tails in their mouths, which filled their minds with dreams of food. This had a tendency to lengthen out the canine latter end. ‘And, at any rate,’ concluded our contributor, ‘I would scorn to tell a lie for the sake of a knot on a dog’s tail!’”

THE IRISH BRIGADE.

When in sorrow and darkness they left their lov’d home, They won, far away, o’er the ocean’s salt foam, A bright wreath of laurels that never shall fade. A welcome they found from fair France and proud Spain, Whose honor and glory they fought to maintain; And wherever the Sassenach showed his false face, ’Twas to meet the avengers of Erin’s disgrace, And front the bright steel of the Irish Brigade!

Oh wild was their rush and exultant their shout, When the signal to charge from the bugle rang out,-- The fire of their hearts seemed to temper each blade. They thought of the land they had left o’er the sea, And the brave who had perished, dear Erin, for thee, Then one cheer for Old Ireland, a curse on her foes, Like the peal of the thunder to heaven arose From the lips and the souls of the Irish Brigade!

When France, torn and bleeding, her chivalry slain, Lay gasping and faint upon Fontenoy’s plain, Not vain the appeal that her proud monarch made; The war-cry of Erin, a wild slogan, rang O’er the clamor of battle, as swiftly they sprang From their feet to the charge, and with avalanche might Swept down on the victors, who scattered in flight, Borne back by the steel of the Irish Brigade!

Then, hurrah! for the fame of our faithful and brave, Unforgotten they rest, though across the deep wave, In far distant lands, are their weary bones laid. Long, long be remembered the lesson they taught, They loved the green island, and died where they fought; With face to the foeman unconquered they fell. May we fight the battle of freedom as well For the flag and the cause of the Irish Brigade!

SNOOKS.

Justice in Ireland, as administered by those awful instruments of the law, the omniscient J. P.’s, is a profoundly solemn thing. The high priest of the Jewish sanctuary, the sacred Brahmin of the Buddhist temple, the Sheikh-ul-Islam of the Mohammedan faith, has only about one-tenth the idea of his own stupendous importance that a West British honorary magistrate possesses. They believe themselves to be not only pillars and ornaments of the glorious English Constitution, but its very corner-stones. Therefore, when one of these Olympic deities condescends to unbend to our more humble level, and actually makes a joke, we should be grateful to his Mightiness for letting us know that, great as he is, he is but human after all. Such an incident is worthy of imperishable record, and we eagerly copy the following from an Irish exchange:--

“In giving his decision at the Abbeyfeale quarter sessions relative to an alleged insult to a sub-constable, which insult consisted of the defendant’s whistling ‘Harvey Duff,’ the chairman said: ‘There is a difference between a policeman and an ordinary individual. When a policeman is hooted or whistled at, it is the office he holds is held up to contempt. It is not Sub-Constable Snooks [_laughter_] that is insulted, but it is the office that is held by Snooks.’ [_Laughter._]”

Who but an Irish J. P. could have emitted from his brilliant intellect that bright sparkle about Snooks? The delicacy and yet the pungency of the wit, added to the simplicity and yet profundity of the reasoning, deserve immortalizing in glowing verse, and with feelings of deepest admiration I dedicate this rhythmic paraphrase of his wonderful ideas to that gorgeous Abbeyfeale chairman:--

If you notice a policeman at the corner of a street In an energetic struggle with a pair of erring feet, A decided inclination to lie down upon his beat, And confusion quite apparent in his looks, An odor floating round him you’d no reason to expect, You have not got the slightest cause to cavil or object; The law is oft mysterious, and, stranger, recollect, ’Tis the law’s inebriated, and not Snooks.

A policeman is no ordinary mortal; so suppose It unfortunately happens, as it might do, that there grows A pimple at the end of 27’s Roman nose, Which his dignity but very little brooks. You must not, at your peril, venture carelessly to laugh, And avoid like trichinosis any tendency to chaff, Unless you wish to seek the rude acquaintance of his staff-- ’Tis the law that has that pimple, and not Snooks!

CALEDONIAN CANDLESTICKS.

Towards the close of the year 1867, that mighty empire, the drum-beat of whose soldiers welcomes the sun all round the world, was plunged into one of those periodical visitations of panic which have afflicted her like an intermittent nightmare since the naughty pranks of Fenianism first disturbed the digestions of her statesmen. Three brave men had just been hanged in the city of Manchester for the rescue of two rebel leaders, and Ireland mourned them as martyrs, while the guilty conscience of England quaked in hourly fear of a retribution which was felt to be deserved, and of which more than one indication had been foreshadowed. For, to say nothing of the terrible explosion at Clerkenwell, London, by which some twenty people were killed and hundreds more or less seriously wounded, every metropolitan and provincial paper shrieked forth dire warnings of mysterious plots, awful conspiracies, and blood-curdling revelations. A red-headed Irishman had been discovered prowling round the Warrington Gas Works. That smoky Lancashire town was instantly declared in a state of siege. The volunteers were called out, every male between the ages of twelve and eighty was sworn in as a special constable, and in the terrible confusion of the time many of the sturdy Anglo-Saxons so far lost their presence of mind as to beat other fellows’ wives instead of their own, while some of them became such hopeless imbeciles as to behave like Christians for a whole week. Soon after the bodies of two dead cats were seen in the canal at Crewe, within a hundred yards of the mayor’s residence. So convinced was that functionary that they were stuffed with nitro-glycerine or fulminate of mercury that he took the first express for London, and thence telegraphed to the chief constable to seize the suspicious feline carcasses. With the assistance of a detachment of engineers and the entire police force of Crewe, the remains of the defunct tabbies were brought to land, but there wasn’t a chemist in England’s borders would undertake a post-mortem examination, so they were carefully conveyed far out into St. George’s channel, and committed to the depths of the silent waters.

It was in Manchester, however, that the most abject state of alarm existed. The military guards were trebled, the police force was augmented by all the men that could be spared from the county constabulary, the Irish population was placed under the closest surveillance; watchmen patrolled the neighborhood of all public buildings and important warehouses, which were amply supplied with bags of sand and buckets of water in view of any possible conflagration, the sand being for the especial contingency of Greek-fire, which is like Irish eloquence in one respect, that it can’t be quenched by cold water, and must therefore be smothered. So overwhelmed was the superintendent of the Manchester police, Capt. Palin, by his responsibilities, that he ran away from them along with the wife of the resident magistrate, Mr. Fowler. In his absence, the duty of guarding the city from the Fenian bombs, dynamite, powder, bullets, daggers, and shillelaghs devolved upon the commandant of the Ninety-second Highlanders, who were then in garrison at Manchester. It is easy to imagine the horror of this officer when, a few days after his appointment, he received a letter containing the details of a diabolical plot to destroy the city and annihilate the troops. On a given night the gas mains were to be severed, and in the ensuing darkness the town was to be fired in a hundred places, the barracks attacked by a few thousand wild Irishmen, armed with pikes, bowie-knives, hand grenades, bottles of vitriol, Remington rifles, sledge-hammers, and revolvers, and the devoted Cameron men chopped into as many fragments as the squares of their tartans.

Their chief at first was overwhelmed. He swallowed three mutchkins of Glenlivat and consumed a quarter-pound of snuff in two minutes without knowing it. Recovering somewhat, he summoned a hasty council of the Macintoshes and the Mackenzies and the Macgregors of those various ilks, and after many applications of the barley bree and sundry inhalations of Lundyfoot, a plan of defence was agreed upon. The sentries were doubled, and the remainder of the garrison ordered to sleep upon their arms. Sand-bags were piled in every convenient corner, barrels and buckets and tubs of water ranged on every staircase, and, greatest effort of the entire strategy, each kilted warrior was provided with two tallow candles and a box of matches. Unfortunately, they received no orders as to how the illuminating agents were to be utilized in the event of an Egyptian darkness suddenly enshrouding them in gloom. Consequently they were much divided in opinion as to whether one Highlander was to hold the candles while the other did the shooting; or should each Highlander carry his own candle in his bonnet or his kilt; or were they to pile the candles in a pyramid on the ground, and form a square around them; or was it possible the candles were intended for rations, should the siege last any time. Luckily no occasion arose for testing the brilliancy of the candle idea or of the candles themselves, but for days afterwards a doughty mountaineer from Inverness or Aberfeldy would be surprised, when at the friendly fireside of some hospitable countryman in Manchester, to find Niagaras of grease rolling impetuously down his nether limbs, and would learn too late that he had forgotten to take his strange munitions of war out of his pocket, and was consequently indulging in a warm tallow bath. In time the story oozed out, and until this day that battalion of the Ninety-second is known to the gamins of Manchester as the Caledonian Candlesticks.

FAITHFUL TO THE LAST.

So they’ve found another victim and another rebel dies, A sacrifice to prejudice, to perjury and lies; Another name is added to our country’s martyr-roll, And our English rulers send to heaven another Irish soul; All the tricks and all the meanness that their lawyers and their spies, With months of preparation, could imagine and devise, Like a network planned by Satan, round his gallant life was passed, But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

When the abject, wretched Judas shrank and cowered like a hound, Though thrice a score protecting British sabres gird him round, Though you saw no friendly feature in that strange and dismal place, Not a quiver stirred your muscles, not a pallor blanched your face; With a smile upon your lips that spoke the gallant heart within, With a courage that has never yet been known to fraud or sin, You saw the hangman’s rope for you spun furiously and fast, But God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

No guilt was on your soul, but what had that to do with slaves? You were far too grand and noble to recruit their band of knaves; You were Irish, and a Fenian, blood and nerve and brain and bone, And those were crimes which nothing but your young life could atone; But not all the jailer’s terrors, and not all death’s awful gloom, The horror of the dungeon, nor the silence of the tomb, A shadow o’er your spirit for a single hour could cast, So, God be with you, bouchal, you were faithful to the last!

FENIAN BATTLE-SONG.

Hurrah! we stand on Irish land, Our hated foe before us, And once for all, to rise or fall, The green flag flying o’er us, We’ve raised it proudly overhead. God prosper our endeavor, Unite our bands, and nerve our hands, To keep it there forever!

We marched away at break of day, And sweethearts left behind us, To strike one blow at yon false foe, Whose rusty fetters bind us. For while we bear the name of men, We’ll crouch no more as slaves, boys, Oh, Ireland shall be free again, Or we’ll be in our graves, boys!

We’ve listened long to traitors mean, False England’s scarlet praising; We’ve heard them mock our Irish green Until our blood seemed blazing! And chieftains, too, who should be true, Have kept our ranks asunder, But Faction’s sound to-day is drowned In Freedom’s battle-thunder!

Then here’s hurrah for all the brave, No matter who may lead ’em, And here’s a curse on every slave Who mars the cause of freedom! Let leaders vain aside remain Until their feuds are ended, ’Tis by the man who knows no clan Our flag must be defended.

We’ve men from Galway to Kildare, From Limerick’s walls to Derry, Bold ramblers from the County Clare And mountaineers from Kerry. We’ll chase our alien foes away, We’ll tear our bonds asunder; We care not who’s to lead to-day, _We’ll_ fight and conquer under!

THE GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS.[D]

Far away from the home and the friends they love best, ’Mid murd’rers and felons all silent they rest; Not a cross, not a stone, marks the desolate spot Where the bones of our martyred ones crumble and rot!

In the cold prison ground, sad and lone, side by side, With their faces to Ireland, they sleep as they died; And the Angel of Liberty, hovering near, On the consecrate grave drops a pitying tear!

Surrounded by foemen, ’mid jeering and hate, True as steel to the last, they went forth to their fate, With a prayer for thy cause on the high gallows-tree-- Dear home of our fathers! they perished for thee!

When they took them away from that desolate place, They found death had left a bright smile on each face, So they buried them quickly, lest true men should see How the hosts of the tyrant were baffled by Three!

For still are they free, as no tyrant can bind The proud, chainless soul or the fetterless mind; And though the cold limbs may be laid in the grave, Soul and mind are enshrined in the hearts of the brave!