Part 2

O, had these twain, and he, the third, The Lord of Mourne, O’Niall’s son, Their mate in death-- A prince in look, in deed, and word-- Had these three heroes yielded on The field their breath, O, had they fallen on Criffan’s plain, There would not be a town or clan From shore to sea, But would with shrieks bewail the Slain, Or chant aloud the exulting _rann_[3] Of jubilee!

When high the shout of battle rose, On fields where Freedom’s torch still burned Through Erin’s gloom, If one, if barely one of those Were slain, all Ulster would have mourned The hero’s doom! If at Athboy, where hosts of brave Ulidian horsemen sank beneath The shock of spears, Young Hugh O’Neill had found a grave, Long must the North have wept his death With heart-wrung tears!

If on the day of Ballach-myre The Lord of Mourne had met, thus young, A warrior’s fate, In vain would such as thou desire To mourn, alone, the champion sprung From Niall the Great! No marvel this--for all the Dead, Heaped on the field, pile over pile, At Mullach-brack, Were scarce an _eric_[4] for his head, If Death had stayed his footsteps while On victory’s track!

If on the Day of Hostages The fruit had from the parent bough Been rudely torn In sight of Munster’s bands--Mac-Nee’s Such blow the blood of Conn, I trow, Could ill have borne. If on the day of Ballach-boy Some arm had laid, by foul surprise, The chieftain low, Even our victorious shout of joy Would soon give place to rueful cries And groans of woe!

If on the day the Saxon host Were forced to fly--a day so great For Ashanee[5]-- The Chief had been untimely lost, Our conquering troops should moderate Their mirthful glee. There would not lack on Lifford’s day, From Galway, from the glens of Boyle, From Limerick’s towers, A marshalled file, a long array. Of mourners to bedew the soil With tears in showers!

If on the day a sterner fate Compelled his flight from Athenree, His blood had flowed, What numbers all disconsolate Would come unasked, and share with thee Affliction’s load! If Derry’s crimson field had seen His life-blood offered up, though ’twere On Victory’s shrine, A thousand cries would swell the _keen_, A thousand voices of despair Would echo thine!

O, had the fierce Dalcassian swarm That bloody night on Fergus’ banks, But slain our Chief, When rose his camp in wild alarm-- How would the triumph of his ranks Be dashed with grief! How would the troops of Murbach mourn If on the Curlew Mountains’ day, Which England rued, Some Saxon hand had left them lorn, By shedding there, amid the fray, Their prince’s blood!

Red would have been our warriors’ eyes Had Roderick found on Sligo’s field A gory grave, No Northern Chief would soon arise So sage to guide, so strong to shield, So swift to save. Long would Leith-Cuinn have wept, if Hugh Had met the death he oft had dealt Among the foe; But, had our Roderick fallen too, All Erin must, alas! have felt The deadly blow!

What do I say? Ah, woe is me! Already we bewail in vain Their fatal fall: And Erin, once the Great and Free, Now vainly mourns her breakless chain, And iron thrall! Then, daughter of O’Donnell! dry Thine overflowing eyes, and turn Thy heart aside! For Adam’s race is born to die, And sternly the sepulchral urn Mocks human pride!

Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne, Nor place thy trust in arm of clay-- But on thy knees Uplift thy soul to GOD alone, For all things go their destined way As He decrees. Embrace the faithful Crucifix, And seek the path of pain and prayer Thy Saviour trod; Nor let thy spirit intermix With earthly hope and worldly care Its groans to GOD!

And Thou, O mighty Lord! whose ways Are far above our feeble minds To understand, Sustain us in these doleful days, And render light the chain that binds Our fallen land! Look down upon our dreary state, And through the ages that may still Roll sadly on, Watch Thou o’er hapless Erin’s fate, And shield at least from darker ill The blood of Conn!

M.

[1] St Peter. This passage is not exactly a blunder, though at first it may seem one: the poet supposes the grave itself transferred to Ireland, and he naturally includes in the transference the whole of the immediate locality around the grave.--TR.

[2] _Caoine._

[3] Song.

[4] A compensation or fine.

[5] Ballyshannon.

BOB PENTLAND, OR THE GAUGER OUTWITTED.

BY WILLIAM CARLETON.

That the Irish are a ready-witted people, is a fact to the truth of which testimony has been amply borne both by their friends and enemies. Many causes might be brought forward to account for this questionable gift, if it were our intention to be philosophical; but as the matter has been so generally conceded, it would be but a waste of logic to prove to the world that which the world cares not about, beyond the mere fact that it is so. On this or any other topic one illustration is worth twenty arguments, and, accordingly, instead of broaching a theory we shall relate a story.

Behind the hill or rather mountain of Altnaveenan lies one of those deep and almost precipitous vallies, on which the practised eye of an illicit distiller would dwell with delight, as a topography not likely to be invaded by the unhallowed feet of the gauger and his red-coats. In point of fact, the spot we speak of was from its peculiarly isolated situation nearly invisible, unless to such as came very close to it. Being so completely hemmed in and concealed by the round and angular projections of the mountain hills, you could never dream of its existence at all, until you came upon the very verge of the little precipitous gorge which led into it. This advantage of position was not, however, its only one. It is true indeed that the moment you had entered it, all possibility of its being applied to the purposes of distillation at once vanished, and you consequently could not help exclaiming, “what a pity that so safe and beautiful a nook should have not a single spot on which to erect a still-house, or rather on which to raise a sufficient stream of water to the elevation necessary for the process of distilling.” If a gauger actually came to the little chasm, and cast his scrutinizing eye over it, he would immediately perceive that the erection of a private still in such a place was a piece of folly not generally to be found in the plans of those who have recourse to such practices.

This absence, however, of the requisite conveniences was only apparent, not real. To the right, about one hundred yards above the entrance to it, ran a ledge of rocks, some fifty feet high, or so. Along their lower brows, near the ground, grew thick matted masses of long heath, which covered the entrance to a cave about as large and as high as an ordinary farm-house. Through a series of small fissures in the rocks which formed its roof, descended a stream of clear soft water, precisely in body and volume such as was actually required by the distiller; but, unless by lifting up this mass of heath, no human being could for a moment imagine that there existed any such grotto, or so unexpected and easy an entrance to it. Here there was a private still-house made by the hand of nature herself, such as no art or ingenuity of man could equal.

Now it so happened that about the period we write of, there lived in our parish two individuals so antithetical to each other in their pursuits of life, that we question whether throughout all the instinctive antipathies of nature we could find any two animals more destructive of each other than the two we mean--to wit, Bob Pentland the gauger, and little George Steen the illicit distiller. Pentland was an old, stanch, well-trained fellow, of about fifty years or more, steady and sure, and with all the characteristic points of the high-bred gauger about him. He was a tallish man, thin but lathy, with a hooked nose that could scent the tread of a distiller with the keenness of a slew-hound; his dark eye was deep-set, circumspect, and roguish in its expression, and his shaggy brow seemed always to be engaged in calculating whereabouts his inveterate foe, little George Steen, that eternally blinked him, when almost in his very fangs, might then be distilling. To be brief, Pentland was proverbial for his sagacity and adroitness in detecting distillers, and little George was equally proverbial for having always baffled him, and that, too, sometimes under circumstances where escape seemed hopeless.

The incidents which we are about to detail occurred at that period of time when the collective wisdom of our legislators thought it advisable to impose a fine upon the whole townland in which the still head and worm might be found; thus opening a door for knavery and fraud, and, as it proved in most cases, rendering the innocent as liable to suffer for an offence they never contemplated as the guilty who planned and perpetrated it. The consequence of such a law was, that still-houses were always certain to be erected either at the very verge of the neighbouring districts, or as near them as the circumstances of convenience and situation would permit. The moment of course that the hue-and-cry of the gauger and his myrmidons was heard upon the wind, the whole apparatus was immediately heaved over the _mering_ to the next townland, from which the fine imposed by parliament was necessarily raised, whilst the crafty and offending district actually escaped. The state of society generated by such a blundering and barbarous statute as this, was dreadful. In the course of a short time, reprisals, law-suits, battles, murders, and massacres, multiplied to such an extent throughout the whole country, that the sapient senators who occasioned such commotion were compelled to repeal their own act as soon as they found how it worked. Necessity, together with being the mother of invention, is also the cause of many an accidental discovery. Pentland had been so frequently defeated by little George, that he vowed never to rest until he had secured him; and George on the other hand frequently told him--for they were otherwise on the best terms--that he defied him, or as he himself more quaintly expressed it, “that he defied the devil, the world, and Bob Pentland.” The latter, however, was a very sore thorn in his side, and drove him from place to place, and from one haunt to another, until he began to despair of being able any longer to outwit him, or to find within the parish any spot at all suitable for distillation with which Pentland was not acquainted. In this state stood matters between them, when George fortunately discovered at the hip of Altnaveenan hill the natural grotto we have just sketched so briefly. Now, George was a man, as we have already hinted, of great fertility of resources; but there existed in the same parish another distiller who outstripped him in that farsighted cunning which is so necessary in misleading or circumventing such a sharp-scented old hound as Pentland. This was little Mickey M’Quade, a short-necked squat little fellow with bow legs, who might be said rather to creep in his motion than to walk. George and Mickey were intimate friends, independently of their joint antipathy against the gauger, and, truth to tell, much of the mortification and many of the defeats which Pentland experienced at George’s hands, were, _sub rosa_, to be attributed to Mickey. George was a distiller from none of the motives which generally actuate others of that class. He was in truth an analytic philosopher--a natural chemist never out of some new experiment--and we have reason to think might have been the Kane or Faraday or Dalton of his day, had he only received a scientific education. Not so honest Mickey, who never troubled his head about an experiment, but only thought of making a good running, and defeating the gauger. The first thing of course that George did, was to consult Mickey, and both accordingly took a walk up to the scene of their future operations. On examining it, and fully perceiving its advantages, it might well be said that the look of exultation and triumph which passed between them was not unworthy of their respective characters.

“This will do,” said George. “Eh--don’t you think we’ll put our finger in Pentland’s eye yet?” Mickey spat sagaciously over his beard, and after a second glance gave one grave grin which spoke volumes. “It’ll do,” said he; “but there’s one point to be got over that maybe you didn’t think of; an’ you know that half a blink, half a point, is enough for Pentland.”

“What is it?”

“What do you intend to do with the smoke when the fire’s lit? There’ll be no keepin’ _that_ down. Let but Pentland see as much smoke risin’ as would come out of an ould woman’s dudeen, an’ he’d have us.”

George started, and it was clear by the vexation and disappointment which were visible on his brow that unless this untoward circumstance could be managed, their whole plan was deranged, and the cave of no value.

“What’s to be done?” he inquired of his cooler companion. “If we can’t get over this, we may bid good bye to it.”

“Never mind,” said Mickey; “I’ll manage it, and _do_ Pentland still.” “Ay, but how?”

“It’s no matter. Let us not lose a minute in settin’ to work. Lave the other thing to me; an’ if I don’t account for the smoke without discoverin’ the entrance to the still, I’ll give you lave to crop the ears off my head.”

George knew the cool but steady self-confidence for which Mickey was remarkable, and accordingly, without any further interrogatory, they both proceeded to follow up their plan of operations.

In those times when distillation might be truly considered as almost universal, it was customary for farmers to build their out-houses with secret chambers and other requisite partitions necessary for carrying it on. Several of them had private stores built between false walls, the entrance to which was only known to a few, and many of them had what were called _Malt-steeps_ sunk in hidden recesses and hollow gables, for the purpose of steeping the barley, and afterwards of turning and airing it, until it was sufficiently hard to be kiln-dried and ground. From the mill it was usually conveyed to the still-house upon what were termed _Slipes_, a kind of car that was made without wheels, in order the more easily to pass through morasses and bogs which no wheeled vehicle could encounter.

In the course of a month or so, George and Mickey, aided by their friends, had all the apparatus of keeve, hogshead, &c., together with still head and worm, set up and in full work.

“And now, Mickey,” inquired his companion, “how will you manage about the smoke? for you know that the two worst informers against a private distiller, barrin’ a _stag_, is a smoke by day an’ a fire by night.”

“I know that,” replied Mickey; “an’ a rousin’ smoke we’ll have, for fraid a little puff wouldn’t do us. Come, now, an’ I’ll show you.”

They both ascended to the top, where Mickey had closed all the open fissures of the roof with the exception of that which was directly over the fire of the still. This was at best not more than six inches in breadth and about twelve long. Over it he placed a piece of strong plate iron perforated with holes, and on this he had a fire of turf, beside which sat a little boy who acted as a vidette. The thing was simple but effective. Clamps of turf were at every side of them, and the boy was instructed, if the gauger, whom he well knew, ever appeared, to heap on fresh fuel, so as to increase the smoke in such a manner as to induce him to suppose that _all_ he saw of it proceeded merely from the fire before him. In fact, the smoke from the cave below was so completely identified with and lost in that which was emitted from the fire above, that no human being could penetrate the mystery, if not made previously acquainted with it. The writer of this saw it during the hottest process of distillation, and failed to make the discovery, although told that the still-house was within a circle of three hundred yards, the point he stood on being considered the centre. On more than one occasion has he absconded from home, and spent a whole night in the place, seized with that indescribable fascination which such a scene holds forth to youngsters, as well as from his irrepressible anxiety to hear the old stories and legends with the recital of which they generally pass the night.

In this way, well provided against the gauger--indeed much better than our readers are yet aware of, as they shall understand by and bye--did George, Mickey, and their friends, proceed for the greater part of a winter without a single visit from Pentland. Several successful runnings had come off, which had of course turned out highly profitable, and they were just now preparing to commence their last, not only for the season, but the last they should ever work together, as George was making preparations to go early in the spring to America. Even this running was going on to their satisfaction, and the singlings had been thrown again into the still, from the worm of which projected the strong medicinal _first-shot_ as the doubling commenced--this last term meaning the spirit in its pure and finished state. On this occasion the two worthies were more than ordinarily anxious, and certainly doubled their usual precautions against a surprise, for they knew that Pentland’s visits resembled the pounces of a hawk or the springs of a tiger more than any thing else to which they could compare them. In this they were not disappointed. When the doubling was about half finished, he made his appearance, attended by a strong party of reluctant soldiers--for indeed it is due to the military to state that they never took delight in harassing the country people at the command of a keg-hunter, as they generally nicknamed the gauger. It had been arranged that the vidette at the iron plate should whistle a particular tune the moment that the gauger or a red-coat, or in fact any person whom he did not know, should appear. Accordingly, about eight o’clock in the morning they heard the little fellow in his highest key whistling up that well-known and very significant old Irish air called “Go to the devil an’ shake yourself”--which in this case was applied to the gauger in any thing but an allegorical sense.

“Be the pins,” which was George’s usual oath, “be the pins, Mickey, it’s over with us--Pentland’s here, for there’s the sign.”

Mickey paused for a moment and listened very gravely; then squirting out a tobacco spittle, “Take it aisy,” said he; “I have half a dozen fires about the hills, any one as like this as your right hand is to your left. I didn’t spare trouble, for I knew that if we’d get over this day, we’d be out of his power.”

“Well, my good lad,” said Pentland, addressing the vidette, “what’s this fire for?”

“What is it for, is it?”

“Yes; if you don’t let me know instantly, I’ll blow your brains out, and get you hanged and transported afterwards.” This he said with a thundering voice, cocking a large horse pistol at the same time.

“Why, sir,” said the boy, “it’s watchin’ a still I am; but be the hole o’ my coat if you tell upon me, it’s broilin’ upon these coals I’ll be soon.”

“Where is the still then? An’ the still-house, where is it?”

“Oh, begorra, as to where the still or still-house is, they wouldn’t tell _me_ that.”

“Why, sirra, didn’t you say this moment you were watching a still?”

“I meant, sir,” replied the lad with a face that spoke of pure idiocy, “that it was the gauger I was watchin’, an’ I was to whistle upon my fingers to let the boy at that fire on the hill there above know that he was comin’.”

“Who told you to do so?”

“Little George, sir, an’ Mickey M’Quade.”

“Ay, ay, right enough there, my lad--two of the most notorious schemers unhanged they are both. But now, like a good boy, tell me the truth, an’ I’ll give you the price of a pair of shoes. Do you know where the still or still-house is? Because if you do, an’ won’t tell me, here are the soldiers at hand to make a prisoner of you; an’ if they do, all the world can’t prevent you from being hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

“Oh, bad cess may seize the morsel o’ me knows that; but if you’ll give me the money, sir, I’ll tell you who can bring you to it, for he tould me yestherday mornin’ that he knew, an’ offered to bring me there last night, if I’d steal him a bottle that my mother keeps the holy water in at home, tal he’d put whisky in it.”

“Well, my lad, who is this boy?”

“Do you know Harry Neil, or Mankind, sir?”

“I do, my good boy.”

“Well, it’s a son of his, sir; an’ look, sir; do you see the smoke farthest up to the right, sir?”

“To the right? Yes.”

“Well, ’tis there, sir, that Darby Neil is watchin’; and he _says_ he knows.”

“How long have you been watching here?”

“This is only the third day, sir, for _me_; but the rest, them boys above, has been here a good while.”

“Have you seen nobody stirring about the hills since you came?”

“Only once, sir, yesterday, I seen two men having an empty sack or two, runnin’ across the hill there above.”

At this moment the military came up, for he had himself run forward in advance of them, and he repeated the substance of his conversation with our friend the vidette. Upon examining the stolidity of his countenance, in which there certainly was a woful deficiency of meaning, they agreed among themselves that his appearance justified the truth of the story which he told the gauger, and upon being still further interrogated, they were confirmed that none but a stupid lout like himself would entrust to his keeping any secret worth knowing. They now separated themselves into as many detached parties as there were fires burning on the hills about them, the gauger himself resolving to make for that which Darby Neil had in his keeping, for he could not help thinking that the vidette’s story was too natural to be false. They were just in the act of separating themselves to pursue their different routes, when the lad said,

“Look, sir! look, sir! bad scran be from me but there’s a still any way. Sure I often seen a still; that’s jist like the one that Philip Hogan the tinker mended in George Steen’s barn.”

“Hollo, boys,” exclaimed Pentland, “stoop! stoop! they are coming this way, and don’t see us: no, hang them, no! they have discovered us now, and are off towards Mossfield. By Jove this will be a bitter trick if they succeed; confound them, they are bent for Ballagh, which is my own property; and may I be hanged if we do not intercept them; but it is I myself who will have to pay the fine.”