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Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories by William Carleton

W >> William Carleton >> Phelim O\'toole\'s Courtship and Other Stories



TRAITS AND STORIES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY

BY WILLIAM CARLETON



Contents:

Phelim O'toole's Courtship
Wildgoose Lodge
Tubber Derg; Or, The Red Well.
Neal Malone
Art Maguire; Or, The Broken Pledge.




PHELIM O'TOOLE'S COURTSHIP.


Phelim O'Toole, who had the honor of being that interesting personage,
an only son, was heir to a snug estate of half an acre, which had been
the family patrimony since the time of his grandfather, Tyrrell O'Toole,
who won it from the Sassenah at the point of his reaping-hook, during a
descent once made upon England by a body of "spalpeens," in the month
of August. This resolute little band was led on by Tyrrell, who, having
secured about eight guineas by the excursion, returned to his own
country, with a coarse linen travelling-bag slung across his shoulder, a
new hat in one hand, and a staff in the other. On reaching once more his
native village of Teernarogarah, he immediately took half an acre, for
which he paid a moderate rent in the shape of daily labor as a cotter.
On this he resided until death, after which event he was succeeded by
his son, Larry O'Toole, the father of the "purty boy" who is about to
shine in the following pages.

Phelim's father and mother had been married near seven years without
the happiness of a family. This to both was a great affliction. Sheelah
O'Toole was melancholy from night to morning, and Larry was melancholy
from morning to night. Their cottage was silent and solitary; the floor
and furniture had not the appearance of any cottage in which Irish
children are wont to amuse themselves. When they rose in the morning,
a miserable stillness prevailed around them; young voices were not
heard--laughing eyes turned not on their parents--the melody of angry
squabbles, as the urchins, in their parents' fancy, cuffed and scratched
each other--half, or wholly naked among the ashes in the morning,
soothed not the yearning hearts of Larry and his wife. No, no; there was
none of this.

Morning passed in a quietness hard to be borne: noon arrived, but the
dismal dreary sense of childlessness hung upon the house and their
hearts; night again returned, only to add its darkness to that which
overshadowed the sorrowful spirits of this disconsolate couple.

For the first two or three years, they bore this privation with a strong
confidence that it would not last. The heart, however, sometimes becomes
tired of hoping, or unable to bear the burthen of expectation, which
time only renders heavier. They first began to fret and pine, then to
murmur, and finally to recriminate.

Sheelah wished for children, "to have the crathurs to spake to," she
said, "and comfort us when we'd get ould an' helpless."

Larry cared not, provided they had a son to inherit the "half acre."
This was the burthen of his wishes, for in all their altercations, his
closing observation usually was--"well, but what's to become of the half
acre?"

"What's to become of the half acre? Arrah what do I care for the half
acre? It's not that you ought to be thinkin' of, but the dismal poor
house we have, wid not the laugh or schreech of a _single pastiah_ (*
child) in it from year's end to year's end."

"Well, Sheelah?--"

"Well, yourself, Larry? To the diouol I pitch your half acre, man."

"To the diouol you--pitch--What do you fly at me for?"

"Who's flyin' at you? They'd have little tow on their rock that 'ud fly
at you."

"You are flyin' at me; an' only you have a hard face, you wouldn't do
it."

"A hard face! Indeed it's well come over wid us, to be tould that by the
likes o' you! ha!"

"No matther for that! You had betther keep a soft tongue in your head,
an' a civil one, in the mane time. Why did the divil timpt you to take a
fancy to me at all?"

"That's it. Throw the _grah_ an' love I _once_ had for you in my teeth,
now. It's a manly thing for you to do, an' you may be proud, of it. Dear
knows, it would be betther for me I had fell in consate wid any face
but yours."

"I wish to goodness you had! I wouldn't be as I am to-day. There's that
half acre--"

"To the diouol, I say, I pitch yourself an' your half acre! Why do you
be comin' acrass me wid your half acre? Eh?--why do you?"

"Come now; don't be puttin' your hands agin your sides, an waggin' your
impty head at me, like a rockin' stone."

"An' why do you be aggravatin' at me wid your half acre?"

"Bekase I have a good right to do it. What'll become of it when I d--"

"----That for you an' it, you poor excuse!"

"When I di--"

"----That for you an' it, I say! That for you an' it, you atomy!"

"What'll become of my half acre when I die? Did you hear that?"

"You ought to think of what'll become of yourself, when you die; that's
what you ought to think of; but little it throubles you, you sinful
reprobate! Sure the neighbors despises you."

"That's falsity; but they know the life I lade wid you. The edge of your
tongue's well known. They pity me, for bein' joined to the likes of you.
Your bad tongue's all you're good for."

"Aren't you afeard to be flyin' in the face o' Providence the way you
are? An' to be ladin' me sich a heart-scalded life for no rason?"

"It's your own story you're tellin'. Sure I haven't a day's pace wid
you, or ever had these three years. But wait till next harvest, an' if
I'm spared, I'll go to England. Whin I do, I've a consate in my head,
that you'll never see my face agin."

"Oh, you know that's an' ould story wid you. Many a time you threatened
us wid that afore. Who knows but you'd be dhrowned on your way, an' thin
we'd get another husband."

"An' be these blessed tongs, I'll do it afore I'm much oulder!"

"An' lave me here to starve an' sthruggle by myself! Desart me like a
villain, to poverty an' hardship! Marciful Mother of Heaven, look down
upon me this day! but I'm the ill-thrated, an' ill-used poor crathur,
by a man that I don't, an' never did, desarve it from! An' all in regard
that that 'half acre' must go to strangers! Och! oh!"

"Ay! now take to the cryin', do; rock yourself over the ashes, an' wipe
your eyes wid the corner of your apron; but, I say agin, _what's to
become of the half acre?_"

"Oh, God forgive you, Larry! That's the worst I say to you, you poor
half-dead blaguard!"

"Why do you massacray me wid your tongue as you do?"

"Go. an--go an. I won't make you an answer, you atomy! That's what I'll
do. The heavens above turn your heart this day, and give me strinth to
bear my throubles an' heart burnin', sweet Queen o' Consolation! Or take
me into the arms of Parodies, sooner nor be as I am, wid a poor baste of
a villain, that I never turn my tongue on, barrin' to tell him the kind
of a man he is, the blaguard!"

"You're betther than you desarve to be!"

To this, Sheelah made no further reply; on the contrary, she sat
smoking her pipe with a significant silence, that was only broken by an
occasional groan, an ejaculation, or a singularly devout upturning
of the eyes to heaven, accompanied by a shake of the head, at once
condemnatory and philosophical; indicative of her dissent from what he
said, as well as of her patience in bearing it.

Larry, however, usually proceeded to combat all her gestures by viva
voce argument; for every shake of her head he had an appropriate answer:
but without being able to move her from the obstinate silence she
maintained. Having thus the field to himself, and feeling rather annoyed
by the want of an antagonist, he argued on in the same form of dispute,
whilst she, after first calming her own spirit by the composing effects
of the pipe, usually cut him short with--

"Here, take a blast o' this, maybe it'll settle you."

This was received in silence. The good man smoked on, and every puff
appeared, as an evaporation of his anger. In due time he was as placid
as herself, drew his breath in a grave composed manner, laid his pipe
quietly on the hob, and went about his business as if nothing had
occurred between them.

These bickerings were strictly private, with the exception of some
disclosures made to Sheelah's mother and sisters. Even these were
thrown out rather as insinuations that all was not right, than as direct
assertions that they lived unhappily. Before strangers they were perfect
turtles.

Larry, according to the notices of his life furnished by Sheelah, was
"as good a husband as ever broke the world's bread;" and Sheelah "was
as good a poor man's wife as ever threw a gown over her shoulders."
Notwithstanding all this caution, their little quarrels took wind; their
unhappiness became known. Larry, in consequence of a failing he had, was
the cause of this. He happened to be one of those men who can conceal
nothing when in a state of intoxication. Whenever he indulged in
liquor too freely, the veil which discretion had drawn over their
recriminations was put aside, and a dolorous history of their
weaknesses, doubts, hopes, and wishes, most unscrupulously given to
every person on whom the complainant could fasten. When sober, he had no
recollection of this, so that many a conversation of cross-purposes took
place between him and his neighbors, with reference to the state of his
own domestic inquietude, and their want of children.

One day a poor mendicant came in at dinner hour, and stood as if to
solicit alms. It is customary in Ireland, when any person of that
description appears during meal times, to make him wait until the meal
is over, after which he is supplied with the fragments. No sooner had
the boccagh--as a certain class of beggars is termed--advanced past the
jamb, than he was desired to sit until the dinner should be concluded.
In the mean time, with the tact of an adept in his calling, he began
to ingratiate himself with Larry and his wife; and after sounding the
simple couple upon their private history, he discovered that want of
children was the occasion of their unhappiness.

"Well good people," said the pilgrim, after listening to a dismal story
on the subject, "don't be cast down, sure, whether or not. There's a
Holy Well that I can direct yez to in the county--. Any one, wid trust
in the Saint that's over it, who'll make a pilgrimage to it on the
Patthern day, won't be the worse for it. When you go there," he added,
"jist turn to a Lucky Stone that's at the side of the well, say a Rosary
before it, and at the end of every dicken (decade) kiss it once, ache of
you. Then you're to go round the well nine times, upon your bare knees,
sayin' your Pathers and Avers all the time. When that's over, lave a
ribbon or a bit of your dress behind you, or somethin' by way of an
offerin', thin go into a tent an' refresh yourselves, an' for that
matther, take a dance or two; come home, live happily, an' trust to the
holy saint for the rest."

A gleam of newly awakened hope might be discovered lurking in the
eyes of this simple pair, who felt that natural yearning of the, heart
incident to such as are without offspring.

They looked forward with deep anxiety to the anniversary of the Patron
Saint; and when it arrived, none certainly who attended it, felt a more
absorbing interest in the success of the pilgrimage than they did.

The days on which these pilgrimages are performed at such places are
called Pattern or Patron days. The journey to holy wells or holy lakes
is termed a Pilgrimage, or more commonly a Station. It is sometimes
enjoined by the priest, as an act of penance; and sometimes undertaken
voluntarily, as a devotional, work of great merit in the sight of God.
The crowds in many places amount to from five hundred to a thousand, and
often to two, three, four, or five thousand people.

These Stations have, for the most part, been placed in situations
remarkable for wild and savage grandeur, or for soft, exquisite, and
generally solitary beauty. They may be found on the high and rugged
mountain top; or sunk in the bottom of some still and lonely glen, far
removed from the ceaseless din of the world. Immediately beside them, or
close in their vicinity, stand the ruins of probably a picturesque
old abbey, or perhaps a modern chapel. The appearance of these gray,
ivy-covered walls is strongly calculated to stir up in the minds of
the people the memory of bygone times, when their religion, with its
imposing solemnities, was the religion of the land. It is for this
reason, probably, that patrons are countenanced; for if there be not
a political object in keeping them up, it is beyond human ingenuity to
conceive how either religion or morals can be improved by debauchery,
drunkenness, and bloodshed.

Let the reader, in order to understand the situation of the place we are
describing, imagine to himself a stupendous cliff overhanging a green
glen, into which tumbles a silver stream down a height of two or three
hundred feet. At the bottom of this rock, a few yards from the basin
formed by the cascade, in a sunless nook, was a well of cool, delicious
water. This was the "Holy Well," out of which issued a slender stream,
that joined the rivulet formed by the cascade. On the shrubs which
grew out of the crag-cliffs around it, might be seen innumerable rags
bleached by the weather out of their original color, small wooden
crosses, locks of human hair, buttons, and other substitutes for
property; poverty allowing the people to offer it only by fictitious
emblems. Lower down in the glen, on the river's bank, was a smooth
green, admirably adapted for the dance, which, notwithstanding the
religious rites, is the heart and soul of a Patron.

On that morning a vast influx of persons, male and female, old and
young, married and single, crowded eagerly towards the well. Among them
might be noticed the blind, the lame, the paralytic, and such as were
afflicted with various other diseases; nor were those good men and their
wives who had no offspring to be omitted. The mendicant, the pilgrim,
the boccagh, together with every other description of impostors,
remarkable for attending such places, were the first on the ground, all
busy in their respective vocations. The highways, the fields, and the
boreens, or bridle-roads, were filled with living streams of people
pressing forward to this great scene of fun and religion. The devotees
could in general be distinguished from the country folks by their
Pharisaical and penitential visages, as well as by their not wearing
shoes; for the Stations to such places were formerly made with bare
feet: most persons now, however, content themselves with stripping off
their shoes and stockings on coming within the precincts of the holy
ground. Human beings are not the only description of animals that
perform pilgrimages to holy wells and blessed lakes. Cows, horses, and
sheep are made to go through their duties, either by way of prevention,
or cure, of the diseases incident to them. This is not to be wondered
at, when it is known that in their religion every domestic animal has
its patron saint, to whom its owner may at any time pray on its behalf.
When the crowd was collected, nothing in the shape of an assembly
could surpass it in the originality of its appearance. In the glen were
constructed a number of tents, where whiskey and refreshments might be
had in abundance. Every tent had a fiddler or a piper; many two of them.
From the top of the pole that ran up from the roof of each tent, was
suspended the symbol by which the owner of it was known by his friends
and acquaintances. Here swung a salt herring or a turf; there a
shillelah; in a third place a shoe, in a fourth place a whisp of hay, in
a fifth an old hat, and so on with the rest.

The tents stood at a short distance from the scene of devotion at the
well, but not so far as to prevent the spectator from both seeing and
hearing what went on in each. Around the well, on bare knees, moved a
body of people thickly wedged together, some praying, some screaming,
some excoriating their neighbors' shins, and others dragging them out of
their way by the hair of the head. Exclamations of pain from the sick
or lame, thumping oaths in Irish, recriminations in broken English, and
prayers in bog Latin, all rose at once to the ears of the patron
saint, who, we are inclined to think--could he have heard or seen his
worshippers--would have disclaimed them altogether.

"For the sake of the Holy Virgin, keep your sharp elbows out o' my
ribs."

"My blessin' an you, young man, an' don't be lanin' an me, i' you
plase!"

"_Damnho sherry orth a rogarah ruah!_* what do you mane? Is it my back
you're brakin'?"

* Eternal perdition on you, you red rogue.

"Hell pershue you, you ould sinner, can't you keep the spike of your
crutch out o' my stomach! If you love me tell me so; but, by the livin'
farmer, I'll take no such hints as that!"

"I'm a pilgrim, an' don't brake my leg upon the rock, an' my blessin' an
you!"

"Oh, murdher sheery! my poor child'll be smothered!"

"My heart's curse an you! is it the ould cripple you're trampin' over?"

"Here, Barny, blood alive, give this purty young girl a lift, your sowl,
or she'll soon be undhermost!"

"'Och, 'twas on a Christmas mornin'
That Jeroosillim was born in
The Holy Land'----'

"Oh, my neck's broke!--the curse----Oh! I'm kilt fairly, so I am! The
curse o' Cromwell an you, an' hould away--

'The Holy Land adornin'
All by the Baltic Say.
The angels on a Station,
Wor takin' raycrayation,
All in deep meditation,
All by the'----

contints o' the book if you don't hould away, I say agin, an' let me go
on wid my _rann_ it'll be worse force for you!--

'Wor takin' raycraytion,
All by the Baltic Say!"

"Help the ould woman there."

"Queen o' Patriots pray for us!--St. Abraham----go to the divil, you
bosthoon; is it crushin' my sore leg you are?--St. Abraham pray for us!
St. Isinglass, pray for us! St. Jonathan,----musha, I wisht you wor
in America, honest man, instid o' twistin' my arm like a gad f-- St.
Jonathan, pray for us; Holy Nineveh, look down upon us wid compression
an' resolution this day. Blessed Jerooslim, throw down compuncture an'
meditation upon us Chrystyeens assembled here afore you to offer up our
sins! Oh, grant us, blessed Catasthrophy, the holy virtues of Timptation
an' Solitude, through the improvement an' accommodation of St.
Kolumbdyl! To him I offer up this button, a bit o' the waistband o' my
own breeches, an' a taste of my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us
having made this holy Station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it
for us at the last day! Amin!"

Such was the character of the prayers and ejaculations which issued from
the lips of the motley group that scrambled, and crushed, and screamed,
on their knees around the well. In the midst of this ignorance and
absurdity, there were visible, however, many instances of piety,
goodness of heart, and simplicity of character. From such you could hear
neither oath nor exclamation. They complied with the usages of the place
modestly and attentively: though not insensible, at the same time, to
the strong disgust which the general conduct of those who were both
superstitious and wicked was calculated to excite. A little from the
well, just where its waters mingled with those of the cascade, men and
women might be seen washing the blood off their knees, and dipping such
parts of their body as Were afflicted with local complaints into the
stream. This part' of the ceremony was anything but agreeable to the
eye. Most of those who went round the well drank its waters; and several
of them filled flasks and bottles with it, which they brought home for
the benefit of such members of the family as could not attend in person.

Whilst all this went forward at the well, scenes of a different kind
were enacted lower down among the tents. No sooner had the penitents
got the difficult rites of the Station over, than they were off to the
whiskey; and decidedly, after the grinding of their bare knees upon
the hard rock--after the pushing, crushing, and exhaustion of bodily
strength which they had been forced to undergo--we say, that the
comforts and refreshments to be had in the tents were very seasonable.
Here the dancing, shouting, singing, courting, drinking, and fighting,
formed one wild uproar of noise, that was perfectly astounding. The
leading boys and the prettiest girls of the parish were all present,
partaking in the rustic revelry. Tipsy men were staggering in every
direction; fiddles were playing, pipes were squeaking, men were rushing
in detached bodies to some fight, women were doctoring the heads of such
as had been beaten, and factions were collecting their friends for a
fresh battle. Here you might see a grove of shillelahs up, and hear
the crash of the onset; and in another place, the heads of the dancing
parties bobbing up and down in brisk motion among the crowd that
surrounded them.

The pilgrim, having now gone through his Station, stood hemmed in by a
circle of those who wanted to purchase his beads or his scapulars. The
ballad-singer had his own mob, from among whom his voice might be heard
rising in its purest tones to the praise of--

"Brave O'Connell, the Liberathur,
An' great Salvathur of Ireland's Isle!"

As evening approached, the whiskey brought out the senseless prejudices
of parties and factions in a manner quite consonant to the habits of the
people. Those who, in deciding their private quarrels, had in the
early part of the day beat and abused each other, now united as the
subordinate branches of a greater party, for the purpose of opposing in
one general body some other hostile faction. These fights are usually
commenced by a challenge from one party to another, in which a person
from the opposite side is simply, and often very good-humoredly, invited
to assert, that "black is the white of his enemy's eye;" or to touch the
old coat which he is pleased to trail after him between the two opposing
powers. This characteristic challenge is soon accepted; the knocking
down and yelling are heard; stones fly, and every available weapon
is pressed into the service on both sides. In this manner the battle
proceeds, until, probably, a life or two is lost. Bones, too, are
savagely broken, and blood copiously spilled, by men who scarcely know
the remote cause of the enmity between the parties.

Such is a hasty sketch of the Pattern, as it is called in Ireland, at
which Larry and Sheelah duly performed their station. We, for our parts,
should be sorry to see the innocent pastimes of a people abolished; but,
surely, customs which perpetuate scenes of profligacy and crime should
not be suffered to stain the pure and holy character of religion.

It is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that Larry O'Toole and
Sheelah complied with every rite of the Station. To kiss the "Lucky
Stone," however, was their principal duty. Larry gave it a particularly
honest smack, and Sheelah impressed it with all the ardor of a devotee.
Having refreshed themselves in the tent, they returned home, and, in
somewhat less than a year from that period, found themselves the happy
parents of an heir to the half-acre, no less a personage than young
Phelim, who was called after St. Phelim, the patron of the "Lucky
Stone."

The reader perceives that Phelim was born under particularly auspicious
influence. His face was the herald of affection everywhere.

From the moment of his birth, Larry and Sheelah were seldom known to
have a dispute. Their whole future life was, with few exceptions, one
unchanging honeymoon. Had Phelim been deficient in comeliness, it would
have mattered not a _crona baun_. Phelim, on the contrary, promised to
be a beauty; both, his parents thought it, felt it, asserted it; and who
had a better right to be acquainted, as Larry said, "wid the outs an'
ins, the ups an' downs of his face, the darlin' swaddy!"

For the first ten years of his life Phelim could not be said to owe
the tailor much; nor could the covering which he wore be, without more
antiquarian loire than we can give to it, exactly classed under any
particular term by which the various parts of human dress are known. He
himself, like some of our great poets, was externally well acquainted
with the elements. The sun and he were particularly intimate; wind and
rain were his brothers, and frost also distantly related to him. With
mud he was hand and glove, and not a bog in the parish, or a quagmire
in the neighborhood, but sprung up under Phelim's tread, and threw him
forward with the brisk vibration of an old acquaintance. Touching his
dress, however, in the early part of his life, if he was clothed with
nothing else, he was clothed with mystery. Some assert that a cast-off
pair of his father's nether garments might be seen upon him each Sunday,
the wrong side foremost, in accommodation with some economy of his
mother's, who thought it safest, in consequence of his habits, to join
them in this inverted way to a cape which he wore on his shoulders. We
ourselves have seen one, who saw another, who saw Phelim in a pair of
stockings which covered him from his knee-pans to his haunches, where,
in the absence of waistbands, they made a pause--a breach existing from
that to the small of his back. The person who saw all this affirmed, at
the same time, that there was a dearth of cloth about the skirts of
the integument which stood him instead of a coat. He bore no bad
resemblance, he said, to-a moulting fowl, with scanty feathers, running
before a gale in the farm yard.

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Various - "Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885"

William J Long - "Wilderness Ways"

Various - "A Psychiatric Milestone"

Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70"