"Bekaise the fire's not out of Croppy yet," said the chasseur-àcheval, in allusion to the animal he rode, an infuriated old grey with his ears shaved to the roots, and a rat-tail which stood up nearly at right angles with his back-bone. "And what good's in you, you bosthoon, that you don't belt the fire out of the coushuming ould garrawn?" inquired the highly indignant "look-out" on the box, as matters began to get worse, and the carriage began to bump most fearfully. "Belt him! Is it belt him, you said? the divil a boy in the barony daar tell him there was an inch of whipcord within a mile of him barring myself. [bump, bump.] That's the way to do it, Croppy, good horse! [bump, bump, bump.] Arrah the jewel you were[bump] that's the way to leap the ditch, clean over, and a leg to spare. [bump, bump.] 'Pon my conscience, Misther Dooly, you could read the news on his back-whoop! hurroo! we'll be soon up with the hounds, won't we, Croppy? Bump again and again more furiously than ever went the carriage, and "Murder! murder!" exclaimed Mr. Dooly, in front, without any effect on grey Croppy and his rider; the fire of the one so far from being "belted" out of him, being rather increased by the devilment of the other, and both together, as regarded sympathies and adhesiveness, bearing more the appearance of the centaur than that of two distinct existences. "Hanam' an diaoul! Mr. Steel, you'll be left with your small tayparty in the ditch, if we go along at this rate," said our friend on the box mournfully, seeing that all his appeals to the mad postilion were in vain. In another instant we darted through a jungle or copsewood; the branches, as we rushed along, rattling fearfully and tearing our faces sans cérémonie. No serious accident happened, however, and we pierced our way, like the household brigade through the old guard at Waterloo. At length we came to a dead lock and a halt in the softest, but by no means the pleasantest part of the country, and down we had to get, and trudge it ankle deep for a few minutes through a boreen cut up by cart wheels and trampled by bullock tracks in all directions, until we arrived at a farmer's bawn, consisting of a good-sized homestead with grey walls and a thatched roof, one or two smaller dwellings similarly constructed, besides sheds, barns, stables, and pigsties attached. Having quickly surmounted the rude gate of wood, which could not be said to guard the entrance, we commenced beating the réveille on the door of the principal dwelling, one of our party blowing a blast the while loud enough not only to awaken the tenants of the tomb, but to split the tomb-stones, on one of Mr. Peter Purcell's* * A man respected by all parties in Ireland for his genuine patriotism and philanthropy. He enjoyed the Irish Post Office contract for many years, until a Scotchman undertook to coach Rowland Hill's accumulations a farthing a mile cheaper, and his offer was accepted by the government. This circumstance went nearer to light up the flames of civil war than Paddy M'Kew, or the Clontarf proclamation. Mr. Hartley is another of the practical patriots of Ireland who do her real service, by the investment of large capital and the employment of thousands of her needy population. I am glad to perceive that a number of his friends of all parties in England, as well as in Ireland, are about to present him with a tribute of their esteem in the shape of a bust, by Mc Dowall, and a magnificent service of plate to group round it on his sideboard. mail-coach bugles, or it might have been one of Mr. James Hartley's borrowed for the occasion. Mr. Clanchy at the same time was in another, but not distant direction, vociferating in great fury and cracking his whip like the postilion of Longejameau "to quash the dogs," as he epigrammatically explained himself; and sure enough we had need of this especial service, for we might otherwise have afforded half a meal to a canine pack that stood howling and barking at our approach, so furiously and in such numbers that one of our party repeated with little Bill in the Vicar of Wakefield, "Here many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound, "And who are yez that come in the dead of the blessed night, with your fugling, and slashing, and shouting, and your blasts of war to destroy the payce and comfort of a Christian man's dwelling?" said a strong, sonorous voice from a small open casement in the upper end of the chief building. At the same time, a bright iron tube was seen peeping out of the same aperture, and that short, sharp click, indicative of full-cock, was heard, which, notwithstanding what Byron says to the contrary, is not always agreeable, even when "The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice." "My dear Mr. Ruark," said our Prince of the Peace, in a voice of blandishment that might have rivalled Godoy; "we come neither to hurt nor harm you or yours. We only wish to have a little friendly conversation with you about the fate of the nation and the Kilkenny election which is to decide it before the glorious sun descends in the western waves to-morrow afternoon." This touch of native eloquence was not without its salutary effect upon the patriarch, who evidently began to look with less alarm upon the party, his grey hair and finely-marked countenance being plainly discernible in the moonlight. Kilmallock here interposed, and requested him to behave like a fine ould Irish gentleman, one of the oulden time, and that was, to come down and stir up the fire in the hearth, and put a fire under the pump for the punch, as all the Ruarks did afore him, when the stranger rapped at their door! The voice was the voice of Jacob, but the hand was the hand of Esau. Kilmallock grasping a bit of timber as big as the club of Hercules or Fin M Cool's alpeen,* and enveloped in a great bearskin pelisse, with his broad brimmed hat stuck upon three hairs, and drawn up to his full length of six feet two at least, in his wellingtons, looked anything but a guarantee for the peace of Europe at the moment, although his accents might have served to proclaim the age of milk and honey once more upon the earth. The lord's appeal, therefore, did not prove an 66 open sesame" on the instant. Not until various other heads, male and female, of the family, had been popped in and out of the window, whilst old Tony Ruark held a five-minutes' council of war, and he, his children, and grand-children were perfectly satisfied that we were not the advanced guard of Rock's brigade, or the secret tribunal of the Peep o' Day Boys, or a deputation of the White Feet, or a select Alpeen, a shilelagh of great length and thickness, with a crook on one end, made use of at faction-fights and hurling-matches. committee of the Caravats or Shanavests, or any other set of agrarian legislators, did we hear the old door grate on its hinges, and the grateful sounds of "Come in-come all, and welcome, with a blessing; though your mothers had as many more of yez!" The old man, with a politeness that would have done honour to a courtier, under the circumstances, bowed us each and all to the hearth, where the hand-maidens of his family were heaping an enormous turf pyre and slinging a large iron kettle to a chain pendant from the chimney, preparations which, even at the late hour of our entrance, looked very like beginning to spend the evening. We very soon made ourselves at home, and in an incredibly short space of time after the friendly blaze had flared up as if by magic to cheer us (there's nothing for expedition like turf), glasses, teacups, and wooden noggins, filled from a smoking jorum, were handed round to all ages, sexes, and conditions, including the farmer, his wife, their three sons, with their wives, and some dozen children, with their aunts, the three Miss Ruarks, blooming, bouncing beauties, ready for promotion, and an old piper who had asked and obtained a night's lodging "for God's sake," some hours before our arrival. A looker-on from the lower end of the room might have taken us for the real original "Happy Family:" or Maclise might have deemed the group not unworthy of his pencil just at the mo ment it gave reality to the beautiful sentiment of the fine old Rhine song: Send it gaily round, for love our goblet filleth; Our leader," the immortal Tom," was then in the prime of life and vigour, about forty-three years of age, and might have been here likened to Ajax, as to his superior height and broader shoulders, compared with his followers, had not the Earl of Kilmallock been present, who as far as his humeral dimensions were concerned, could have squared the circle with Daniel Lambert himself. Sir Robert Peel once said "Fight the battle in the registration courts ;" if he knew Tom Steel, he would have said, "Fight it on the canvass." His manner and tone of voice was blandishment itself, when he insinuated to some patriotic matron or virgin that it was her duty to put her husband or lover in the right way of thinking. Like Spring Rice, another "City of the Violated Treaty" man, he used to take the youngest child in his arms, and, despite of olfactory prohibitions, kiss the dear dirty little blessed darling in presence of its enchanted mother. I really can't tell the extent of Tom's osculations on the particular occasion I now allude to, but I fancy he kissed some other lips besides the youngest of the famiy cherries. Tom's canvass on this occasion, however, had as much effect as if he had harangued Slieve-na-mon to bow down his proud summit to "the Liberator," or the Rock of Cashel to go a mile or two out to sea. Our mission was utterly fruitless. Old Ruark had been and was still under obligations to the Ponsonbys. He had pledged his word to the agent to plump for their man, between whom and the Colonel, he remarked, "there was no difference in politics after all, barring their ages and the colour of their hair." His sons were determined to follow their father. One of our Kilkenny friends whilst acknowledging, as we all did, the necessity of the old man's case, ventured to observe, that surely his sons who had votes might act independently. "Had you ever a gossoon of your own?" inquired Ruark. "Not that I'm aware of," was the response; and having put the same question round to us all, he received an answer in the negative. "And none of yez was ever married?" Omnes-"None." "I was just after thinking so," said the old man, drily, "or you wouldn't be for telling the boys to layve their ould father alone on the road, wherever it led to." There was no getting over this; so we endeavoured, without abruptness, to change the conversation, modulating as musicians do from one key regularly into another. In this instance we fell happily into the subject of married and single. The singular fact already confessed that not even one of the six visitors had ever had hymen's pine torch shaken in his face, gave room for a hundred innocent jokes at our expense, on the part of the ladies. In due rotation, did they make us show cause why we had not done the state that service, which, in the opinion of more than one ancient philosopher, is one of the greatest; in other words, why we had not settled down quietly in life, and reared large families? To which home thrust we answered as best we might, one saying he was crossed in love; another, that his first love had died, and that "to live with others was less sweet than to remember" her; another, that his "good lady" began to rule him before her time, and on the eve of marriage insisted on a deed from him with the marriage articles which would bind him to an ungentlemanly limitation of liquors; to forswear the use of tobacco, whether slave-grown or the produce of free-labour, for ever; to sell his hunters, cut the turf, and hang up his buckskins at the altar of Minerva; another, that he never thought of it, "upon his honour;" a fifth, that he meditated a change in his melancholy condition on the first auspicious opportunity, which he fancied was not a hundred years away from the present moment, nor a hundred miles distant from a pair of impudent little blue eyes that were quizzing him into a state of delirium tremens. Tom Steele, with Queen Elizabeth, declared he was married to his country. "And for why didn't you marry, Mr. Barney Delany?" said the youngest grandchild, a little rosy-cheeked cherub of about four years old, to the old piper of the barony, who was at that moment sitting in a boss in the chimney-corner. * "Bekaise nobody would have me, alanna machree; and, av coorse I would have nobody." "That same was manners, Mr. Delany, for to wait to be invited; but I always thought the gentlemin axed first," said one of the young ladies. "Faith and may be so, Miss Jenny, asthore, as far as the talk goes, and the blarney, and the rest of it;" answered the piper, and * Boss, an easy chair of capacious dimensions, made of straw; not exactly of the Woburn pattern, although in shape of body not unlike it. The Irish seat has got no legs, but sits as every respectable tub ought; or more classically, although jer haps tritely speaking, "Procumbit humi Bos!" he added, "but sure the ladies can talk without spaking; and they manage to spake first for all that, d'ye see?” Being asked to explain such an apparent paradox, the wandering minstrel, who we afterwards were informed had been in his younger days not remarkable for fixed principles, took a large gulp of his punch, and declared, with all the air of a better born roué, that "love before marriage was the height of divarsion, that love after marriage went very well on the pipes for them that could pay the piper; but with most poor people that he knew, it was all Drive on the cart." "And what's that?" was the anxious query which proceeded from many quarters of the room. The Tityrus of Kilkenny then took up his instrument, to tell us all about it, which he did in the following verses, not exactly after Virgil or Theocritus. DRIVE ON THE CART. Come all ye roving bachelors, that wish to get good wives, Be sure ye be right wary afore you change your lives; For the women are as various as the fishes in the say, And ten times more precayrious than the spring or winter's day. When you think you have them on, 'tis then, kind sir, your work's begun ; For, not content with one young man, they kiss and coort with all they can. Then all ye roving bachelors, that wish to get good wives, Be sure you be right wary afore ye change your lives, Sing fol-de-rol fo-le-ro, sing fol-de-rol-de-ree! DRIVE ON THE CART! [With a monstrously disagreeable accompaniment of the chanter, or bass cleff of the instrument.] There was a victim in a cart a going for to be hanged; But a reprief, d'ye see, from his Majesty, tould the crowd and cart to stand And said the man must marry, or else that he should die- "Oh, why should I corrupt my life," the victim did reply. "There's people here of every sort, and why should I debar their sport? The bargain's bad on every part, but the wife's the worst-DRIVE ON THE CART!" Then all ye roving bachelors, who wish to get good wives, Sing fol-de-rol, &c. DRIVE ON THE CART! Which we all joined in, not excepting the merry-hearted girls, who enjoyed the joke the more as it was, this time, against themselves. Sallying forth with the kind adieux of our hospitable entertainers, we proceeded to beat up till morning the quarters of various other voters, in various parts of the county, with various success, till as the pale and interesting Lady Cynthia began to sink towards the Connaught side of the country, we arrived at Ballyragget, where the chief innkeeper of that far-famed village and his household were roused up from their slumbers by something louder and less able than "The breezy call of incense-breathing morn.” agree The incidents of the eventful day which now broke forth upon the world, and the pranks of the political roysterers, in those parts, I may tell in another chapter. Danaumque dolos. |