A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

The Ned M'Keown Stories by William Carleton

W >> William Carleton >> The Ned M\'Keown Stories




"The wild and fearful cry of horror that succeeded this cannot be laid
on paper. The eldest sister fell into strong convulsions, and several
of the other females fainted on the spot. The mother did not faint;
but, like Lot's wife, she seemed to be translated into stone: her hands
became clenched convulsively, her teeth locked, her nostrils dilated,
and her eyes shot half way out of her head. There she stood, looking
upon her daughter struggling in the flood, with a fixed gaze or wild and
impotent frenzy, that, for fearful ness, beat the thunder-storm all to
nothing. The father rushed to the edge of the river, oblivious of his
incapability to swim, determined to save her or lose his own life, which
latter would have been a dead certainty, had he ventured; but he was
prevented by the crowd, who pointed out to him the madness of such a
project.

"'For God's sake, Paddy, don't attimpt it,' they exclaimed, 'except
you wish to lose your own life, without being able to save hers: no man
could swim in that flood, and it upwards of ten feet deep.'

"Their arguments, however, were lost upon him; for, in fact, he was
insensible to everything but his child's preservation. He, therefore,
only answered their remonstrances by attempting to make another plunge
into the river.

"'Let me alone, will yez,' said he--'let me alone! I'll either save my
child, Rose, or die along with her! How could I live after her? Merciful
God, any of them but her! Oh! Rose, darling,' he exclaimed, 'the
favorite of my heart--will no one save you?' All this passed in less
than a minute.

"'Just as these words were uttered, a plunge was heard a few yards below
the bridge, and a man appeared in the flood, making his way with rapid
strokes to the drowning girl. Another cry now arose from the spectators:
'It's John O'Callaghan,' they shouted--'it's John O'Callaghan, and
they'll both be lost.' 'No,' exclaimed others; 'if it's in the power of
man to save her, he will!' 'O, blessed father, she's lost!' now burst
from all present; for, after having struggled and been kept floating for
some time by her garments, she at length sunk, apparently exhausted and
senseless, and the thief of a flood flowed over her, as if she had not
been under it's surface.

"When O'Callaghan saw that she went down, he raised himself up in the
water, and cast his eye towards that part of the bank opposite which she
disappeared, evidently, as it proved, that he might have a mark to guide
him in fixing on the proper spot where to plunge after her. When he came
to the place, he raised himself again in the stream, and, calculating
that she must by this time have been borne some distance from the spot
where she sank, he gave a stroke or two down the river, and disappeared
after her. This was followed by another cry of horror and despair,
for somehow, the idea of desolation which marks, at all times, a deep,
over-swollen torrent, heightened by the bleak mountain scenery around
them, and the dark, angry voracity of the river where they had sunk,
might have impressed the spectators with utter hopelessness as to the
fate of those now engulfed in its vortex. This, however, I leave to
those who are deeper read in philosophy than I am.

"An awful silence succeeded the last shrill exclamation, broken only by
the hoarse rushing of the waters, whose wild, continuous roar, booming
hollowly and dismally in the ear, might be heard at a great distance
over all the country. But a new sensation soon invaded the multitude;
for after the lapse of about half a minute, John O'Callaghan emerged
from the flood, bearing in his sinister hand the body of his own Rose
Galh--for it's he that loved her tenderly. A peal of joy congratulated
them from the assembled crowd; hundreds of directions were given to him
how to act to the best advantage. Two young men in especial, who were
both dying about the lovely creature that he held, were quite anxious to
give advice.

"'Bring her to the other side, John, ma bouchal; it's the safest,' said
Larry Carty.

"'Will you let him alone, Carty?' said Simon Tracy, who was the other,
'you'll only put him in a perplexity.'

"But Carty should order in spite of every thing. He kept bawling out,
however, so loud, that John raised his eye to see what he meant, and was
near losing hold of Rose. This was too much for Tracy, who ups with his
fist, and downs him--so they both at it; for no one there could take
themselves off those that were in danger, to interfere between them.
But at all events, no earthly thing can happen among Irishmen without a
fight.

"The father, during this, stood breathless, his hands clasped, and
his eyes turned to heaven, praying in anguish for the delivery of his
darling. The mother's look was still wild and fixed, her eyes glazed,
and her muscles hard and stiff; evidently she was insensible to all that
was going forward; while large drops of paralytic agony hung upon her
cold brow. Neither of the sisters had yet recovered, nor could those
who supported them turn their eyes from the more imminent danger, to pay
them any particular attention. Many, also, of the other females, whose
feelings were too much wound up when the accident occurred, now fainted,
when they saw she was likely to be rescued; but most of them were
weeping with delight and gratitude.

"When John brought her to the surface, he paused for a moment to recover
breath and collectedness; he then caught her by the left arm, near
the shoulder, and cut, in a slanting direction, down the stream, to a
watering place, where a slope had been formed in the bank. But he was
already too far down to be able to work across the stream to this point;
for it was here much stronger and more rapid than under the planks.
Instead, therefore, of reaching the slope, he found himself in spite
of every effort to the contrary, about a perch below it; and, except he
could gain this point, against the strong rush of the flood, there was
very little hope of being able to save either her or himself--for he was
now much exhausted.

"Hitherto, therefore, all was still doubtful, whilst strength was fast
failing him. In this trying and almost hopeless situation, with an
admirable presence of mind, he adopted the only expedient which could
possibly enable him to reach the bank. On finding himself receding down,
instead of advancing up the current, he approached the bank, which was
here very deep and perpendicular; he then sank his fingers into and
pressed his right foot against the firm blue clay with which it was
stratified, and by this means advanced, bit by bit, up the stream,
having no other force by which to propel himself against it. After this
mode did he breast the current with all his strength--which must have
been prodigious, or he never could have borne it out--until he reached
the slope, and got from the influence of the tide, into dead water. On
arriving here, his hand was caught by one of the young men present, who
stood up to the neck, waiting his approach. A second man stood behind
him, holding his other hand, a link being thus formed, that reached out
to the firm bank; and a good pull now brought them both to the edge
of the river. On finding bottom, John took his Colleen Galh in his own
arms, carried her out, and pressing his lips to hers, laid her in
the bosom of her father; then, after taking another kiss of the young
drowned flower, he burst into tears, and fell powerless beside her. The
truth is, the spirit that had kept him firm was now exhausted; both his
legs and arms having become nerveless by the exertion.

"Hitherto her father took no notice of John, for how could he? seeing
that he was entirely wrapped up in his daughter; and the question was,
though rescued from the flood, if life was in her. The sisters were by
this time recovered, and weeping over her, along with the father--and,
indeed, with all present; but the mother could not be made to comprehend
what they were about at all at all. The country people used every means
with which they were intimate to recover Rose; she was brought instantly
to a farmer's house beside the spot, put into a warm bed, covered over
with hot salt, wrapped in half-scorched blankets, and made subject to
every other mode of treatment that could possibly revoke the functions
of life. John had now got a dacent draught of whiskey, which revived
him. He stood over her, when he could be admitted, watching for the
symptomatics of her revival; all, however, was vain. He now determined
to try another course: by-and-by he stooped, put his mouth to her mouth,
and, drawing in his breath, respired with all his force from the bottom
of his very heart into hers; this he did several times rapidly--faith,
a tender and agreeable operation, any how. But mark the consequence:
in less than a minute her white bosom heaved--her breath returned--her
pulse began to play--she opened her eyes, and felt his tears of love
raining warmly on her pale cheek!

"For years before this no two of these opposite factions had spoken, nor
up to this minute had John and they, even upon this occasion, exchanged
a monosyllable. The father now looked at him--the tears stood afresh in
his eyes; he came forward--stretched out his hand--it was received; and
the next moment he fell upon John's neck, and cried like an infant.

"When Rose recovered, she seemed as if striving to recordate what had
happened; and, after two or three minutes, inquired from her sister, in
a weak but sweet voice, 'Who saved me?'

"''Twas John O'Callaghan, Rose darling,' replied the sister, in tears,
'that ventured his own life into the boiling flood, to save yours--and
did save it, jewel!'

"Rose's eye glanced at John--and I only wish, as I am a bachelor not
further than my forty-fourth, that I may ever have the happiness to get
such a glance from two blue eyes, as she gave him that moment--a faint
smile played about her mouth, and a slight blush lit up her fair cheek,
like the evening sunbeams on the virgin snow, as the poets have said for
the five-hundredth time, to my own personal knowledge. She then extended
her hand, which John, you may be sure, was no way backward in receiving,
and the tears of love and gratitude ran silently down her cheeks.

"It is not necessary to detail the circumstances of this day farther;
let it be sufficient to say, that a reconciliation took place between
those two branches of the O'Hallaghan and O'Callaghan families, in
consequence of John's heroism and Rose's soft persuasion, and that there
was, also, every perspective of the two factions being penultimately
amalgamated. For nearly a century they had been pell-mell at it,
whenever and wherever they could meet. Their forefathers, who had been
engaged in the lawsuit about the island which I have mentioned, wore
dead and petrified in their graves; and the little peninsula in the glen
was gradationally worn away by the river, till nothing remained but
a desert, upon a small scale, of sand and gravel. Even the ruddy,
able-bodied squire, with the longitudinal nose, projecting out of his
face like a broken arch, and the small, fiery magistrate--both of whom
had fought the duel, for the purpose of setting forth a good example,
and bringing the dispute to a peaceable conclusion--were also dead. The
very memory of the original contention! had been lost (except that it
was preserved along with the cranium of my grandfather), or became so
indistinct that the parties fastened themselves on some more modern
provocation, which they kept in view until another fresh motive would
start up, and so on. I know not, however, whether it was fair to expect
them to give up at once the agreeable recreation of fighting. It's not
easy to abolish old customs, particularly diversions; and every one
knows that this is our national amusement.

"There were, it is true, many among both, factions who saw the matter in
this reasonable light, and who wished rather, if it were to cease, that
it should die away by degrees, from the battle of the whole parish,
equally divided between the factions, to the subordinate row between
certain members of them--from that to the faint broil of certain
families, and so on to the single-handed play between individuals. At
all events, one-half of them were for peace, and two-thirds of them were
equally divided between peace and war.

"For three months after the accident which befell Rose Galh O'Hallaghan,
both factions had been tolerantly quiet--that is to say, they had no
general engagement. Some slight skirmishes certainly did take place on
market-nights, when the drop was in, and the spirits up; but in those
neither John nor Rose's immediate families took any part. The fact was,
that John and Rose were on the evening of matrimony; the match had been
made--the day appointed, and every other necessary stipulation
ratified. Now, John was as fine a young man as you would meet in a day's
traveling; and as for Rose, her name went far and near for beauty: and
with justice, for the sun never shone on a fairer, meeker, or modester
virgin than Rose Galh O'Hallaghan.

"It might be, indeed, that there were those on both sides who thought
that, if the marriage was obstructed, their own sons and daughters would
have a better chance. Rose had many admirers; they might have envied
John his happiness; many fathers, on the Other side, might have
wished their sons to succeed with Rose. Whether I am sinister in this
conjecture is more than I can say. I grant, indeed, that a great portion
of it is speculation on my part. The wedding-day, however, was arranged;
but, unfortunately, the fair-day of Knockimdowny occurred, in the
rotation of natural time, precisely one week before it. I know not from
what motive it proceeded, but the factions on both sides were never
known to make a more light-hearted preparation for battle. Cudgels
of all sorts and sizes (and some of them, to my own knowledge, great
beauties) were provided.

"I believe I may as well take this opportunity of saying that real
Irish cudgels must be root-growing, either oak, black-thorn, or
crab-tree--although crab-tree, by the way, is apt to fly. They should
not be too long--three feet and a few inches is an accommodating length.
They must be naturally top-heavy, and have around the end that is
to make acquaintance with the cranium three or four natural lumps,
calculated to divide the flesh in the natest manner, and to leave, if
possible, the smallest taste in life of pit in the skull. But if a good
root-growing _kippeen_ be light at the fighting-end, or possess not the
proper number of knobs, a hole, a few inches deep, is to be bored in
the end, which must be filled with melted lead. This gives it a
widow-and-orphan-making quality, a child-bereaving touch, altogether
very desirable. If, however, the top splits in the boring--which, in
awkward hands, is not uncommon--the defect may be remediated by putting
on an iron ferrule, and driving two or three strong nails into it,
simply to preserve it from flying off; not that an Irishman is ever at a
loss for weapons when in a fight, for so long as a scythe, flail, spade,
pitchfork, or stone is at hand, he feels quite contented with the lot
of war. No man, as they say of great statesmen, is more fertile in
expedients during a row; which, by the way, I take to be a good quality,
at all events.

"I remember the fair-day of Knockimdowny well; it has kept me from
griddle-bread and tough nutriment ever since. Hard fortune to Jack Roe
O'Hallaghan! No man had better teeth than I had till I met with him that
day. He fought stoutly on his own side; but he was ped then for the
same basting that fell to me, though not by my hands, if to get his jaw
dacently divided into three halves could be called a fair liquidation of
an old debt--it was equal to twenty shillings in the pound, any how.

"There had not been a larger fair in the town of Knockimdowny for years.
The day was dark and sunless, but sultry. On looking through the crowd,
I could see no man! without a cudgel; yet, what was strange, there was
no certainty of any sport. Several desultory skrimmages had locality,
but they I were altogether sequestered from the great factions of the
O's. Except that it was pleasant and stirred one's blood to look at
them, or occasioned the cudgels to be grasped more firmly, there was no
personal interest felt by any of us in them; they therefore began and
ended, here and there, through the fair, like mere flashes in the pan,
dying in their own smoke.

"The blood of every prolific nation is naturally hot; but when that hot
blood is inflamed by ardent spirits, it is not to be supposed that men
should be cool; and God he knows, there is not on the level surface of
this habitable globe, a nation that has been so thoroughly inflamed by
ardent spirits of all kinds as Ireland.

"Up till four o'clock that day, the factions were quiet. Several
relations on both sides had been invited to drink by John and Rose's
families, for the purpose of establishing a good feeling between them.
But this was, after all, hardly to be expected, for they hated one
another with an ardency much too good-humored and buoyant; and, between
ourselves, to bring Paddy over a bottle is a very equivocal mode of
giving him an anti-cudgeling disposition. After the hour of four,
several of the factions were getting very friendly, which I knew at the
time to be a bad sign. Many of them nodded to each other, which I
knew to be a worse one; and some of them shook hands with the greatest
cordiality, which I no sooner saw than I slipped the knot of my cravat,
and held myself in preparation for the sport.

"I have often had occasion to remark--and few men, let me tell you, had
finer opportunities of doing so--the differential symptomatics between a
Party Fight, that is, a battle between Orangemen and Ribbon-men, and one
between two Roman Catholic Factions. There is something infinitely more
anxious, silent, and deadly, in the compressed vengeance, and the hope
of slaughter, which characterize a party fight, than is to be seen in
a battle between factions. The truth is, the enmity is not so deep
and well-grounded in the latter as in the former. The feeling is not
political nor religious between the factions; whereas, in the other, it
is both, which is a mighty great advantage; for when this is adjuncted
to an intense personal hatred, and a sense of wrong, probably arising
from a too intimate recollection of the leaded black thorn, or the
awkward death of some relative, by the musket or the bayonet, it is apt
to produce very purty fighting, and much respectable retribution.

"In a party fight, a prophetic sense of danger, hangs, as it were, over
the crowd--the very air is loaded with apprehension; and the vengeance
burst is proceeded by a close, thick darkness, almost sulphury, that is
more terrifical than the conflict itself, though dearly less dangerous
and fatal. The scowl of the opposing parties, the blanched cheeks, the
knit brows, and the grinding teeth, not pretermitting the deadly gleams
that shoot from their kindled eyes, are ornaments which a plain battle
between factions cannot boast, but which, notwithstanding, are very
suitable to the fierce and gloomy silence of that premeditated vengeance
which burns with such intensity in the heart, and scorches up the vitals
into such a thirst for blood. Not but that they come by different means
to the same conclusion; because it is the feeling, and not altogether
the manner of operation, that is different.

"Now a faction fight doesn't resemble this at all at all. Paddy's at
home here; all song, dance, good-humor, and affection. His cheek is
flushed with delight, which, indeed, may derive assistance from the
consciousness of having no bayonets or loaded carabines to contend with;
but anyhow, he's at home--his eye is lit with real glee--he tosses his
hat in the air, in the height of mirth--and leaps, like a mounteback,
two yards from the ground. Then, with what a gracious dexterity he
brandishes his cudgel! what a joyous spirit is heard in his shout at the
face of a friend from another faction! His very 'who!' is contagious,
and would make a man, that had settled on running away, return and join
the sport with an appetite truly Irish. He is, in fact, while under the
influence of this heavenly afflatus, in love with every one, man, woman,
and child. If he meet his sweetheart, he will give her a kiss and a hug,
and that with double kindness, because he is on his way to thrash her
father or brother. It is the acumen of his enjoyment; and woe be to him
who will adventure to go between him and his amusements. To be sure,
skulls and bones are broken, and lives lost; but they are lost in
pleasant fighting--they are the consequences of the sport, the beauty
of which consists in breaking as many heads and necks as you can; and
certainly when a man enters into the spirit of any exercise, there is
nothing like elevating himself to the point of excellence. Then a man
ought never to be disheartened. If you lose this game, or get your
head good-humoredly beaten to pieces, why you may win another, or your
friends may mollify two or three skulls as a set-off to yours; but that
is nothing.

"When the evening became more advanced, maybe, considering the poor look
up there was for anything like decent sport--maybe, in the early part of
the day, it wasn't the delightful sight to see the boys on each side of
the two great factions beginning to get frolicsome. Maybe the songs and
the shouting, when they began, hadn't melody and music in them, any
how! People may talk about harmony; but what harmony is equal to that in
which five or six hundred men sing and shout, and leap and caper at each
other, as a prelude to neighborly fighting where they beat time upon
the drums of each other's ears and heads with oak drumsticks? That's an
Irishman's music; and hard fortune to the _garran_* that wouldn't have
friendship and kindness in him to join and play a stave along with them!
'Whoo; your sowl! Hurroo! Success to our side! Hi for the O'Callaghans!
Where's the blackguard to--,' I beg pardon, decent reader; I forgot
myself for a moment, or rather I got new life in me, for I am nothing at
all at all for the last five months--a kind of nonentity I may say, ever
since that vagabond Burges occasioned me to pay a visit to my distant
relations, till my friends get that last matter of the collar-bone
settled.

* Garran--a horse; but it is always used as meaning a bad
one--one without mettle. When figuratively applied to a man,
it means a coward

"The impulse which faction fighting gives to trade and business in
Ireland is truly surprising; whereas party fighting depreciates both. As
soon as it is perceived that a party fight is to be expected, all buying
and selling are nearly suspended for the day; and those who are not
_up_*, and even many who are, take themselves and their property home as
quickly as may be convenient. But in a faction fight, as soon as there
is any perspective of a row, depend upon it, there is quick work at
all kinds of negotiation; and truly there is nothing like brevity and
decision in buying and selling; for which reason, faction fighting,
at all events, if only for the sake of national prosperity, should be
encouraged and kept up.

* Initiated into Whiteboyism

"Towards five o'clock, if a man was placed on an exalted station; so
that he could look at the crowd, and wasn't able to fight, he could have
seen much that a man might envy him for. Here a hat went up, or maybe
a dozen of them; then followed a general huzza. On the other side, two
dozen caubeens sought the sky, like so many scaldy crows attempting
their own element for the first time, only they were not so black.
Then another shout, which was answered by that of their friends on the
opposite side; so that you would hardly know which side huzzaed loudest,
the blending of both was so truly symphonius. Now there was a shout for
the face of an O'Callaghan; this was prosecuted on the very heels
by another for the face of an O'Hallaghan. Immediately a man of the
O'Hallaghan side doffed his tattered frieze, and catching it by the
very extremity of the sleeve, drew it with a tact, known only by an
initiation of half a dozen street days, up the pavement after him.
On the instant, a blade from the O'Callaghan side peeled with equal
alacrity, and stretching his _home-made_ * at full length after him,
proceeded triumphantly up the street, to meet the other.

* Irish frieze is mostly manufactured at home, which
accounts for the expression here.

"Thunder-an-ages, what's this for, at all, at all! I wish I hadn't begun
to manuscript an account of it, any how; 'tis like a hungry man dreaming
of a good dinner at a feast, and afterwards awaking and finding his
front ribs and back-bone on the point of union. Reader, is that a
black-thorn you carry--tut, where is my imagination bound for?----to
meet the other, I say.

"'Where's the rascally O'Callaghan that will place his toe or his
shillely on this frieze?' 'Is there no blackguard O'Hallaghan jist to
look crucked at the coat of an O'Callaghan, or say black's the white of
his eye?'

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Archibald H. Grimke - "William Lloyd Garrison"

Various - "The Philippine Islands, 1493 1898: Volume XVIII, 1617 1620"

Marguerite Stockman Dickson - "Vocational Guidance for Girls"

John Holland Rose - "The Development of the European Nations, 1870 to 1914 (5th ed.)"