Part 1

THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

NUMBER 18. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1840. VOLUME I.

Woodlands, the seat of one of our good resident landlords, Colonel White, considered in connection with its beautiful demesne, may justly rank as the finest aristocratic residence in the immediate vicinity of our metropolis. As an architectural composition, indeed, the house, or castle, as it is called, will not bear a comparison, either for its classical correctness of details, or its general picturesqueness of outline, with the Castle of Clontarf--the architectural gem of our vicinity; but its proportions are on a grander scale, and its general effect accordingly more imposing, while its demesne scenery, in its natural beauties, the richness of its plantations, and other artificial improvements, is without a rival in our metropolitan county, and indeed is characterised by some features of such exquisite beauty as are very rarely found in park scenery any where, and which are nowhere to be surpassed. Well might the Prince Pückler Muskau, who despite of his strange name has undoubtedly a true taste for the beautiful and picturesque, describe the entrance to this demesne as “indeed the most delightful in its kind that can be imagined.” “Scenery,” he continues, “by nature most beautiful, is improved by art to the highest degree of its capability, and, without destroying its free and wild character, a variety and richness of vegetation is produced which enchants the eye. Gay shrubs and wild flowers, the softest turf and giant trees, festooned with creeping plants, fill the narrow glen through which the path winds, by the side of the clear dancing brook, which, falling in little cataracts, flows on, sometimes hidden in the thicket, sometimes resting like liquid silver in an emerald cup, or rushing under overhanging arches of rock, which nature seems to have hung there as triumphal gates for the beneficent Naïad of the valley to pass through.”

This description may appear somewhat enthusiastic, but we can truly state as our own opinion, formed on a recent visit to Woodlands, that it is by no means overdrawn, but, on the contrary, that it would be equally difficult, if not impossible, either for the pencil or the pen to convey an adequate idea of the peculiar beauties of this little tract of fairy land.

Singularly beautiful, however, as this sylvan glen unquestionably is, it is only one of the many features for which Woodlands is pre-eminently distinguished. Its finely undulating surface--its sheets of water, though artificially formed--its noble forest timber--but above all, its woodland walks, commanding vistas of the exquisite valley of the Liffey, with the more remote scenery bounded by the Dublin and Wicklow mountains--all are equally striking, and present a combination of varied and impressive features but rarely found within the bounds of even a princely demesne.

Though Woodlands derives very many of its attractions from modern improvements, its chief artificial features are of no recent creation, and are such as it would require a century or two to bring to their present perfection. Woodlands is emphatically an old place, and is said to have been granted by King John to Sir Geoffry Lutterel, an Anglo-Norman knight who accompanied him into Ireland, and in possession of whose descendants it remained, and was their residence from the close of the fifteenth till the commencement of the present century, when it was sold to Mr Luke White by the last Earl of Carhampton. Up to this period it was known by the name of Lutterelstown, a name which, for various reasons, the family into whose possession it has passed have wisely changed.

The principal parts of the mansion were rebuilt about fifty years back. But a portion of the original castle still remains, and an apartment in it bears the name of King John’s chamber. It has also received additional extension from its present proprietor, who is now making further additions to the structure.

Woodlands is situated on the north bank of the Liffey, about five miles from Dublin.

P.

PEGGY THE PISHOGUE.

“And now, Mickey Brennan, it’s not but I have a grate regard for you, for troth you’re a dacint boy, and a dacint father and mother’s child; but you see, avick, the short and the long of it is, that you needn’t be looking after my little girl any more.”

Such was the conclusion of a long and interesting harangue pronounced by old Brian Moran of Lagh-buoy, for the purpose of persuading his daughter’s sweetheart to waive his pretensions--a piece of diplomacy never very easy to effect, but doubly difficult when the couple so unceremoniously separated have laboured under the delusion that they were born for each other, as was the ease in the affair of which our story tells; and certainly, whatever Mr Michael Brennan’s other merits may have been, he was very far from exhibiting himself as a pattern of patience on the occasion.

“Why, thin, Brian Moran!” he outrageously exclaimed, “in the name of all that’s out of the way, will you give me one reason, good, bad, or indifferent, and I’ll be satisfied?”

“Och, you unfortunate gossoon, don’t be afther axing me,” responded Brian dolefully.

“Ah, thin, why wouldn’t I?” replied the rejected lover. “Aren’t we playing together since she could walk--wasn’t she the light of my eyes and the pulse of my heart these six long years--and when did one of ye ever either say or sign that I was to give over until this blessed minute?--tell me that.”

“Widdy Eelish!” groaned the closely interrogated parent; “’tis true enough for you. Botheration to Peggy, I wish she tould you herself. I knew how it ’ud be; an’ sure small blame to you; an’ it’ll kill Meny out an’ out.”

“Is it that I amn’t rich enough?” he asked impetuously.

“No, avich machree, it isn’t; but, sure, can’t you wait an’ ax Peggy.”

“Is it because there’s any thing against me?” continued he, without heeding this reference to the mother of his fair one--“Is it because there’s any thing against me, I say, now or evermore, in the shape of warrant, or summons, or bad word, or any thing of the kind?”

“Och, _forrear, forrear_!” answered poor Brian, “but can’t you ax Peggy!” and he clasped his hands again and again with bitterness, for the young man’s interest had been, from long and constant habit, so interwoven in his mind with those of his darling Meny, that he was utterly unable to check the burst of agony which the question had excited. The old man’s evident grief and evasion of the question were not lost upon his companion.

“I’m belied--I know I am--I have it all now,” shouted he, utterly losing all command of himself. “Come, Brian Moran, this is no child’s play--tell me at once who dared to spake one word against me, an’ if I don’t drive the lie down his throat, be it man, woman, or child, I’m willing to lose her and every thing else I care for!”

“No, then,” answered Brian, “the never a one said a word against you--you never left it in their power, avich; an’ that’s what’s breaking my heart. Millia murther, it’s all Peggy’s own doings.”

“What!” he replied--“I’ll be bound Peggy had a bad dhrame about the match. Arrah, out with it, an’ let us hear what Peggy the Pishogue has to say for herself--out with it, man; I’m asthray for something to laugh at.”

“Oh, whisht, whisht--don’t talk that way of Peggy any how,” exclaimed Brian, offended by this imputation on the unerring wisdom of his helpmate. “Whatever she says, doesn’t it come to pass? Didn’t it rain on Saturday last, fine as the day looked? Didn’t Tim Higgins’s cow die? Wasn’t Judy Carney married to Tom Knox afther all? Ay, an’ as sure as your name is Mickey Brennan, what she says will come true of yourself too. _Forrear, forrear!_ that the like should befall one of your dacint kin!”

“Why, what’s going to happen me?” inquired he, his voice trembling a little in spite of all his assumed carelessness: for contemptuously as he had alluded to the wisdom of his intended mother-in-law, it stood in too high repute not to create in him some dismay at the probability of his figuring unfavourably in any of her prognostications.

“Don’t ax me, don’t ax me,” was the sorrowing answer; “but take your haste out of the stable at once, and go straight to Father Coffey; and who knows but he might put you on some way to escape the bad luck that’s afore you.”

“Psha! fudge! ’pon my sowl it’s a shame for you, Brian Moran.”

“Divil a word of lie in it,” insisted Brian; “Peggy found it all out last night; an’ troth it’s troubling her as much as if you were her own flesh and blood. More betoken, haven’t you a mole there under your ear?”

“Well, and what if I have?” rejoined he peevishly, but alarmed all the while by the undisguised pity which his future lot seemed to call forth. “What if I have?--hadn’t many a man the same afore me?”

“No doubt, Mickey, agra, and the same bad luck came to them too,” replied Brian. “Och, you unfortunate ignorant crathur, sure you wouldn’t have me marry my poor little girl to a man that’s sooner or later to end his days on the gallows!”

“The gallows!” he slowly exclaimed. “Holy Virgin! is that what’s to become of me after all?” He tried to utter a laugh of derision and defiance, but it would not do; such a vaticination from such a quarter was no laughing matter. So yielding at last to the terror which he had so vainly affected to combat, he buried his face in his hands, and threw himself violently on the ground; while Brian, scarcely less moved by the revelation he had made on the faith of his wife’s far-famed sagacity, seated himself compassionately beside him to administer what consolation he could.

Mickey Brennan, in the parlance of our country, was a snug gossoon, well to do in the world, had a nice bit of land, a comfortable house, good crops, a pig or two, a cow or two, a sheep or two, a handsome good-humoured face, a good character; and, what made him more marriageable than all the rest, he had the aforementioned goods all to himself, for his father and mother were dead, and his last sister had got married at Shrove-tide. With all these combined advantages he might have selected any girl in the parish; but his choice was made long years before: it was Meny Moran or nobody--a choice in which Meny Moran herself perfectly concurred, and which her father, good, easy, soft-hearted Brian, never thought of disputing, although he was able to give her a fortune probably amounting to double what her suitor was worth. But was the fair one’s mother ever satisfied when such a disparity existed? Careful creatures! pound for pound is the maternal maxim in all ages and countries, and to give Peggy Moran her due, she was as much influenced by it as her betters, and murmured loud and long at the acquiescence of her husband in such a sacrifice. She murmured in vain, however: much as Brian deferred to her judgment and advice in all other matters, his love for his fond and pretty Meny armed him with resolution in this. When she wept at her mother’s insinuations, he always found a word of comfort for her; and if words wouldn’t do, he managed to bring Mickey and her together, and left them to settle the matter after their own way--a method which seldom failed of success. But Peggy was not to be baulked of her will. What! she whose mere word could make or break any match for five miles round, to be forbidden all interference in her own daughter’s: it was not to be borne. So at last she applied herself in downright earnest to the task. She dreamed at the match, tossed cups at it, saw signs at it: in fine, called her whole armoury of necromancy into requisition, and was rewarded at last by the discovery that the too highly-favoured swain was inevitably destined to end his days on the gallows--a discovery which, as has been already seen, fulfilled her most sanguine wishes.

Whatever may be the opinion of other and wiser people on the subject, in the parish of Ballycoursey or its vicinity it was rather an ugly joke to be thus devoted to the infernal gods by a prophetess of such unerring sagacity as Peggy Moran, or, as she was sometimes styled with reference to her skill in all supernatural matters, Peggy the Pishogue--that cognomen implying an acquaintance with more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy; and most unquestionably it was no misnomer: the priest himself was not more deeply read in his breviary than was she in all the signs and omens whereby the affairs of this moving world are shadowed and foretokened--nothing was too great or too small for her all-piercing ken--in every form of augury she was omniscient, from cup-tossing up to necromancy--in vain the mystic dregs of the tea-cup assumed shapes that would have puzzled Doctor Wall himself: with her first glance she detected at once the true meaning of the hieroglyphic symbol, and therefrom dealt out deaths, births, and marriages, with the infallibility of a newspaper--in vain Destiny, unwilling to be unrolled, shrouded itself in some dream that would have bothered King Solomon. Peggy no sooner heard it than it was unravelled--there was not a ghost in the country with whose haunts and habits she was not as well acquainted as if she was one of the fraternity--not a fairy could put his nose out without being detected by her--the value of property was increased tenfold all round the country by the skill with which she wielded her charms and spells for the discovery of all manner of theft. But I must stop; for were I to recount but half her powers, the eulogium would require a _Penny Journal_ for itself, and still leave matter for a supplement. It would be a melancholy instance indeed of Irish ingratitude if for all these superhuman exertions she was not rewarded by universal confidence. To the credit of the parish be it said that no such stigma was attached to it: nothing could equal the estimation in which all her words and actions were held by her neighbours--nothing but the estimation in which they were held in her own household by her husband and daughter.

Such being the gifted personage who had foretold the coming disasters of Mickey Brennan, it is not to be wondered at that the matter created a sensation, particularly as sundry old hags to whom she had imparted her discovery were requested to hush it up for the poor gossoon’s sake. His friends sorrowed over him as a gone man, for not the most sceptical among them ventured to hazard even a doubt of Peggy’s veracity--in fact, they viewed the whole as a matter requiring consolation and sympathy rather than as a scrutiny into the sources of her information, which by common consent were viewed as indubitable, while some, more compassionate than the rest, went so far as to declare “that since the thing could not be avoided, and Mickey, poor fellow, must be hanged, they hoped it might be for something dacint, not robbing, or coining, or the like.”

The hardest task of all is to describe the feelings of poor Brennan himself on the occasion; for much as he had affected to disparage the sybilline revelations of the wierd woman of Ballycoursey, there was not one in the neighbourhood who was more disposed to yield them unlimited credence in any case but his own; and even in his own case he was not long enabled to struggle against conviction. Let people prate as they may about education and its effects, it will require a period of more generations than one to root the love of the marvellous out of the hearts of our countrymen; and until that be effected, every village in the land will have its wise woman, and with nine-tenths of her neighbours what she says will be regarded as gospel. Some people of course will laugh to scorn such an assertion, and more will very respectfully beg leave to doubt it, but still it is true; and in the more retired inland villages circumstances are every day occurring far more extravagant than anything detailed in this story, as is very well known to all who are much conversant with such places. But to return to the doomed man:--How could he be expected to bear up against this terrible denunciation, when all the consolation he could receive from his nearest and dearest was that “it was a good man’s death?” Death! poor fellow, he had suffered the pains of a thousand deaths already, in living without the hope of ever being the husband of his Meny. Death, instant and immediate, would have been a relief to him; and it was not long until, by his anxiety to obtain that relief, he afforded an opportunity to Peggy of displaying her own reliance on the correctness of her prognostications. Goaded into madness by his present sufferings and his fears for the future, he made an attempt upon his life by plunging into an adjacent lake when no one, as he thought, was near to interrupt his intentions. It was not so, however--a shepherd had observed him, but at such a distance that before help could be obtained to rescue him he was to all appearance lifeless. The news flew like wildfire: he was dead, stone dead, they said--had lain in the water ten minutes, half an hour, half the day, since last night; but in one point they all concurred--dead he was; dead as St Dominick.

“Troth he’s not,” was Peggy’s cool rejoinder. “Be quiet, and I’ll engage he’ll come to. _Nabocklish_, he that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned. Wait a while an’ hould your tongues. _Nabocklish_, I tell you he’ll live to spoil a market yet, an’ more’s the pity.”

People shook their heads, and almost began to think their wise woman had made a mistake, and read hemp instead of water. It was no such thing, however: slowly and beyond all hopes, Brennan recovered the effects of his rash attempt, thereby fulfilling so much of his declared destiny, and raising the reputation of Mrs Moran to a point that she never had attained before. That very week she discovered no less than six cases of stolen goods, twice detected the good people taking unauthorised liberties with their neighbours’ churns, and spaed a score of fortunes, at the very least; and he, poor fellow, satisfied at last that Fortune was not to be bilked so easily, resigned himself to his fate like a man, and began to look about him in earnest for some opportunity of gracing the gallows without disgracing his people.

And Meny--poor heart-stricken Meny--loving as none but the true and simple-minded can love, the extent of her grief was such as the true and simple-minded only can know; and yet there was worse in store for her. Shortly after this consummation of her mother’s fame, a whisper began to creep through the village--a whisper of dire import, portending death and disaster on some luckless wight unknown--“Peggy Moran has something on her mind.” What could it be? Silent and mysterious she shook her head when any one ventured to question her--the pipe was never out of her jaw unless when she slept or sat down to her meals--she became as cross as a cat, which to do her justice was not her wont, and eschewed all sorts of conversation, which most assuredly was not her wont either. The interest and curiosity of her neighbours was raised to a most agonising pitch--every one trembled lest the result should be some terrible revelation affecting himself or herself, as the case might be: it was the burden of the first question asked in the morning, the last at night. Every word she uttered during the day was matter of speculation to an hundred anxious inquirers; and there was every danger of the good people of Ballycoursey going absolutely mad with fright if they were kept any longer in the dark on the subject.

At length there was a discovery; but, as is usually the case in all scrutinies into forbidden matters, it was at the cost of the too-daring investigator. Peggy and Brian were sitting one night before the fire, preparing for their retirement, when a notion seized the latter to probe the sorrows of his helpmate.

“’Deed it well becomes you to ax,” quoth the wierd woman in answer to his many and urgent inquiries; “for Brian, achorra machree, my poor ould man, there’s no use in hiding it--it’s all about yourself.”

“No, then!” exclaimed the surprised interrogator; “the Lord betune us an’ harm, is it?”

“’Deed yes, Brian,” responded the sybil with a melancholy tone, out of the cloud of smoke in which she had sought to hide her troubles. “I’m thinking these last few days you’re not yourself at all at all.”

“Tare an ounties! maybe I’m not,” responded he of the doubtful identity.

“Do you feel nothing on your heart, Brian achree?”

“I do; sure enough I do,” gasped poor Brian, ready to believe anything of himself.

“Something like a _plurrisy_, isn’t it?” inquired the mourner.

“Ay, sure enough, like a plurrisy for all the world, Lord betune us an’ harm!”

“An’ you do be very cold, I’ll engage, these nights, Brian?” continued she.

“Widdy Eelish! I’m as could as ice this minute,” answered Brian, and his teeth began to chatter as if he was up to his neck in a mill-pond.

“An’ your appetite is gone entirely, achra?” continued his tormentor.

“Sorra a word o’ lie in it,” answered the newly discovered invalid, forgetful however that he had just finished discussing a skib of potatoes and a mug of milk for his supper.

“And the cat, the crathur, looked at you this very night after licking her paw.”

“I’ll engage she did. Bad luck to her,” responded Brian, “I wouldn’t put it beyant her.”

“Let me feel your pulse, asthore,” said Peggy in conclusion; and Brian submitted his trembling wrist to her inspection, anxiously peering into her face all the while to read his doom therein. A long and deep sigh broke from her lips, along with a most voluminous puff of smoke, as she let the limb drop from her hold, and commenced rocking herself to and fro, uttering a low and peculiar species of moan, which to her terrified patient sounded as a death summons.

“Murther-an’-ages, Peggy, sure it’s not going to die I am!” exclaimed Brian.

“Och, widdy! widdy!” roared the afflicted spouse, now giving full vent to her anguish, “it’s little I thought, Brian asthore machree, when I married you in your beauty and your prime, that I’d ever live to cry the keen over you--ochone, ochone! ’tis you was the good ould man in airnest--och! och!”

“Arrah, Peggy!” interposed the object of her rather premature lamentations.

“Oh, don’t talk to me--don’t talk to me. I’ll never hould up my head again, so I won’t!” continued the widow that was to be, in a tone that quickly brought all the house about her, and finally all the neighbours. Great was the uproar that ensued, and noisy the explanations, which, however, afforded no small relief to the minds of all persons not immediately concerned in the welfare of the doomed Brian. Peggy was inconsolable at the prospect of such a bereavement. Meny clung in despair to the poor tottering old man, her grief too deep for lamentation, while he hobbled over his prayers as fast and as correctly as his utter dismay would permit him. Next morning he was unable to rise, refused all nourishment, and called vehemently for the priest. Every hour he became worse; he was out of one faint into another; announced symptoms of every complaint that ever vexed mankind, and declared himself affected by a pain in every member, from his toe to his cranium. No wonder it was a case to puzzle the doctor. The man of science could make nothing of it--swore it was the oddest complication of diseases that ever he had heard of--and strongly recommended that the patient be tossed in a blanket, and his wife treated to a taste of the horse-pond. Father Coffey was equally nonplussed.

“What ails you, Brian?”