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




Independently of this, she had a prejudice against singing the Irish
airs to English words; an old custom of the country was thereby invaded,
and an association disturbed which habit had rendered dear to her. I
remember on one occasion, when she was asked to sing the English version
of that touching melody, "The Red-haired Man's Wife," she replied,
"I will sing it for you; but the English words and the air are like a
quarrelling man and wife: the Irish melts into the tune, but the English
doesn't," an expression scarcely less remarkable for its beauty than its
truth. She spoke the words in Irish.

This gift of singing with such sweetness and power the old sacred songs
and airs of Ireland, was not the only one for which she was remarkable.
Perhaps there never lived a human being capable of giving the Irish cry,
or Keene, with such exquisite effect, or of pouring into its wild notes
a spirit of such irresistible pathos and sorrow. I have often been
present when she has "raised the keene" over the corpse of some relative
or neighbor, and my readers may judge of the melancholy charm which
accompanied this expression of her sympathy, when I assure them that
the general clamor of violent grief was gradually diminished, from
admiration, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard
but her own--wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty. This pause, it
is true, was never long, for however great the admiration might be which
she excited, the hearts of those who heard her soon melted, and even
strangers were often forced to confess her influence by the tears which
she caused them to shed for those whose deaths could, otherwise, in no
other way have affected them. I am the youngest, I believe, of fourteen
children, and of course could never have heard her until age and the
struggles of life had robbed her voice of its sweetness. I heard enough,
however, from her blessed lips, to set my heart to an almost painful
perception of that spirit which steeps these fine old songs in a
tenderness which no other music possesses. Many a time, of a winter
night, when seated at her spinning-wheel, singing the _Trougha_, or
_Shuil agra_, or some other old "song of sorrow," have I, then little
more than a child, gone over to her, and with a broken voice and eyes
charged with tears, whispered, "Mother dear, don't sing that song, it
makes me sorrowful;" she then usually stopped, and sung some one which I
liked better because it affected me less. At this day I am in possession
of Irish airs, which none of our best antiquaries in Irish music have
heard, except through me, and of which neither they nor I myself know
the names.

Such, gentle reader, were my humble parents, under whose untaught, but
natural genius, setting all other advantages aside, it is not to be
wondered at that my heart should have been so completely moulded into
that spirit and, those feelings which characterize my country and her
children.

These, however, were my domestic advantages; but I now come to others,
which arose from my position in life as the son of a man who was one
of the people. My father, at the farthest point to which my memory goes
back, lived in a townland called Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, and
county of Tyrone; and I only remember living there in a cottage. From
that the family removed to a place called Tonagh, or, more familiarly,
Towney, about an English mile from Prillisk. It was here I first went to
school to a Connaught-man named Pat Frayne, who, however, remained there
only for a very short period in the neighborhood. Such was the neglected
state of education at that time, that for a year or two afterwards there
was no school sufficiently near to which I could be sent. At length it
was ascertained that a master, another Connaught-man by the way, named
O'Beirne, had opened a school--a hedge-school of course--at Pindramore.
To this I was sent, along with my brother John, the youngest of the
family next to myself. I continued with him for about a year and a
half, when who should return to our neighborhood but Pat Frayne, the
redoubtable prototype of Mat Kavanagh in "The Hedge School." O'Beirne,
it is true, was an excellent specimen of the hedge-schoolmaster, but
nothing at all to be compared to Frayne. About the period I write of,
there was no other description of school to which any one could be sent,
and the consequence was, that rich and poor (I speak of the peasantry),
Protestant and Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist, boys and girls,
were all congregated under the same roof, to the amount of from a
hundred to a hundred and fifty, or two hundred. In this school I
remained for about a year or two, when our family removed to a place
called Nurchasy, the property of the Rev. Dr. Story, of Corick. Of
us, however, he neither could nor did know anything, for we were
under-tenants, our immediate landlord being no less a person than Hugh
Traynor, then so famous for the distillation, sub rosa, of exquisite
mountain dew, and to whom the reader will find allusions made in that
capacity more than once in the following volume. Nurchasy was within
about half a mile of Findramore, to which school, under O'Beirne, I was
again sent. Here I continued, until a classical teacher came to a place
called Tulnavert, now the property of John Birney, Esq., of Lisburn,
to whom I had the pleasure of dedicating the two first volumes of my
"Traits and Stories." This tyrannical blockhead, whose name I do not
choose to mention, instead of being allowed to teach classics, ought to
have been put into a strait-waistcoat or the stocks, and either whipped
once in every twenty-four hours, or kept in a madhouse until the day of
his death. He had been a student in Maynooth, where he became deranged,
and was, of course, sent home to his friends, with whom he recovered
sufficiently to become cruel and hypocritical, to an extent which I have
never yet seen equalled. Whenever the son of a rich man committed an
offence, he would grind his teeth and growl like a tiger, but in no
single instance had he the moral courage or sense of justice to correct
him. On the contrary, he uniformly "nursed his wrath to keep it warm,"
until the son of a poor man transgressed, and on his unfortunate body
he was sure to wreak signal vengeance for the stupidity or misconduct of
the wealthy blockhead. This was his system, and my readers may form some
opinion of the low ebb at which knowledge and moral feeling were at the
time, when I assure them, that not one of the humbler boys durst make a
complaint against the scoundrel at home, unless under the certainty of
being well flogged for their pains. A hedge-schoolmaster was then held
in such respect and veneration, that no matter how cruel or profligate
he might be, his person and character, unless in some extraordinary case
of cruelty, resulting in death or mutilation, were looked upon as free
from all moral or legal responsibility. This certainly was not the fault
of the people, but of those laws, which, by making education a crime,
generated ignorance, and then punished it for violating them.

For the present it is enough to say, that a most interesting child,
a niece of my own, lost her life by the severity of Pat Frayne, the
Connaught-man. In a fit of passion he caught the poor girl by the ear,
which he nearly plucked out of her head. The violence of the act broke
some of the internal muscles or tendons,--suppuration and subsequently
inflammation, first of the adjoining Parts and afterwards of the brain,
took place, and the fine intelligent little creature was laid in
a premature grave, because the ignorance of the people justified a
pedantic hedge-schoolmaster in the exercise of irresponsible cruelty.
Frayne was never prosecuted, neither was the classical despot, who by
the way sits for the picture of the fellow in whose school, and at whose
hands, the Poor Scholar receives the tyrannical and heartless treatment
mentioned in that tale. Many a time the cruelty exercised towards that
unhappy boy, whose name was Qum, has wrung my heart and brought the
involuntary tears to my eyes,--tears which I was forced to conceal,
being very well assured from experience, that any sympathy of mine, if
noticed, would be certain to procure me or any other friend of his, an
ample participation in his punishment. He was, in truth, the scape-goat
of the school, and it makes my blood boil, even whilst I write, to think
how the poor friendless lad, far removed from either father or mother,
was kicked, and cuffed, and beaten on the naked head, with a kind of
stick between a horse-rod and a cudgel, until his poor face got pale,
and he was forced to totter over to a seat in order to prevent himself
from fainting or falling in consequence of severe pain.

At length, however, the inhuman villain began to find, when it was too
late, that his ferocity, in spite of the terror which it occasioned, was
soon likely to empty his school. He now became as fawning and slavish as
he had before been insolent and savage; but the wealthy farmers of the
neighborhood, having now full cognizance of his conduct, made common
cause with the poorer men whose children were so shamefully treated, and
the result was, that in about six weeks they forced him to leave that
part of the country for want of scholars, having been literally groaned
out of it by the curses and indignation of all who knew him.

Here then was I once more at a loss for a school, and I must add, in no
disposition at all to renew my acquaintance with literature. Our family
had again removed from Nurchasy, to a place up nearer the mountains,
called Springtown, on the northern side of the parish. I was now
about fourteen, and began to feel a keen relish for all the sports and
amusements of the country, into which I entered with a spirit of youth
and enthusiasm rarely equalled. For about two years I attended no
school, but it was during this period that I received, notwithstanding,
the best part of my education. Our farm in Springtown was about sixteen
or eighteen acres, and I occasionally assisted the family in working at
it, but never regularly, for I was not called upon to do so, nor would I
have been permitted even had I wished it. It was about six months after
our removal to Springtown, that an incident in my early life occurred
which gave rise to one of the most popular tales perhaps, with the
exception of "The Miser," that I have written--that is "The Poor
Scholar." There being now no classical school within eighteen or twenty
miles of Springtown, it was suggested to our family by a nephew of the
parish priest, then a young man of six or eight and twenty, that, under
the circumstances, it would be a prudent step on their part to prepare
an outfit, and send me up to Munster as a poor scholar, to complete my
education. Pat Frayne, who by the way had been a poor scholar himself,
had advised the same thing before, and as the name does not involve
disgrace I felt no reluctance in going, especially as the priest's
nephew, who proposed it, had made up his mind on accompanying me for
a similar purpose. Indeed, the poor scholars who go to Munster are
indebted for nothing but their bed and board, which they receive
kindly and hospitably from the parents of the scholars. The masters are
generally paid their full terms by these pitiable beings, but this rule,
like all others, of course, has its exceptions. At all events, my
outfit was got ready, and on a beautiful morning in the month of May
I separated from my family to go in quest of education. There was no
collection, however, in my case, as mentioned in the tale; as my own
family supplied the funds supposed to be necessary. I have been present,
however, at more than one collection made for similar purposes, and
heard a good-natured sermon not very much differing from that given in
the story.

The priest's nephew, on the day we were to start, suddenly changed his
mind, and I consequently had to undertake the journey alone, which I
did with a heavy heart. The farther I got from home, the more my spirits
sank, or in the beautiful image of Goldsmith,

"I dragged at each remove a lengthening chain."

I travelled as far as the town of Granard, and during the journey, it
is scarcely necessary to say, that the almost parental tenderness
and hospitality which I received on my way could not be adequately
described. The reader will find an attempt at it in the story. The
parting from home and my adventures on the road are real.

Having reached Granard my courage began to fail, and my family at home,
now that I had departed from them, began also to feel something like
remorse for having permitted one so young and inexperienced as I then
was, to go abroad alone upon the world. My mother's sorrow, especially,
was deep, and her cry was, "Oh, why did I let my boy go? maybe I will
never see him again!"

At this time, as the reader may be aware from my parental education,
there was not a being alive more thoroughly imbued with superstition;
and, whether for good or ill, at all events that superstition returned
me to my family. On reaching Granard, I felt, of course, fatigued,
and soon went to bed, where I slept soundly. It was not, however, a
dreamless sleep: I thought I was going along a strange path to some
particular place, and that a mad bull met me on the road, and pursued
me with such speed and fury that I awoke in a state of singular terror.
That was sufficient; my mind had been already wavering, and the
dream determined me. The next morning after breakfast I bent my steps
homewards, and, as it happened, my return took a weighty load of bitter
grief from the heart of my mother and family. The house I stopped at
in Granard was a kind of small inn, kept by a man whose name was Peter
Grehan. Such were the incidents which gave rise to the tale of "The Poor
Scholar."

I was now growing up fast, and began to feel a boyish ambition of
associating with, those who were older and bigger than myself. Although
miserably deficient in education--for I had been well beaten but never
taught--yet I was looked upon as a prodigy of knowledge; and I can
assure the reader that I took very good care not to dispel that
agreeable delusion. Indeed, at this time, I was as great a young
literary coxcomb as ever lived, my vanity being high and inflated
exactly in proportion to my ignorance, which was also of the purest
water. This vanity, however, resulted as much from my position and
circumstances as from any strong disposition to be vain on my part.
It was generated by the ignorance of the people, and their extreme
veneration for any thing in the shape of superior knowledge. In fact,
they insisted that I knew every earthly subject, because I had been a
couple of years at Latin, and was designed for a priest. It was useless
to undeceive men who would not be convinced, so I accordingly gave them,
as they say, "the length of their tether;" nay, to such, purpose did I
ply them with proofs of it, that my conversation soon became as fine a
specimen of pedantic bombast as ever was uttered. Not a word under
six feet could come out of my lips, even of English; but as the best
English, after all, is but commonplace, I peppered them with vile
Latin, and an occasional verse in Greek, from St. John's Gospel, which
I translated for them into a wrong meaning, with an air of lofty
superiority that made them turn up their eyes with wonder. I was then,
however, but one of a class which still exists, and will continue to do
so until a better informed generation shall prevent those who compose it
from swaggering about in all the pompous pride of young impostors,
who boast of knowing "the seven languages." The reader will find an
illustration of this in the sketch of "Denis O'Shaughnessy going to
Maynooth."

In the meantime, I was unconsciously but rapidly preparing myself for
a position in Irish literature, which I little dreamt I should ever
occupy. I now mingled in the sports and pastimes of the people, until
indulgence in them became the predominant passion of mv youth. Throwing
the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description
of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I
attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry-making in the neighborhood,
and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs, and reels, that I
was soon without a rival in the parish.

This kind of life, though very delightful to a boy of my years, was not,
however, quite satisfactory, as it afforded me no ultimate prospect, and
the death of my father had occasioned the circumstances of the family
to decline. I heard, about this time, that a distant relative of mine,
a highly respectable priest, had opened a classical school near
Glasslough, in the county of Monaghan. To him I accordingly went,
mentioned our affinity, and had my claims allowed. I attended his school
with intermission for about two years, at the expiration of which period
I once more returned to our family, who were then very much reduced.

I was now about nineteen, strong, active, and could leap two-and-twenty
feet on a dead level; but though thoroughly acquainted with Irish life
among my own class, I was as ignorant of the world as a child. Ever
since my boyhood, in consequence of the legends which I had heard from
my father, about the far-famed Lough-derg, or St. Patrick's Purgatory, I
felt my imagination fired with a romantic curiosity to perform a station
at that celebrated place. I accordingly did so, and the description of
that most penal performance, some years afterwards, not only constituted
my debut in literature, but was also the means of preventing me from
being a pleasant, strong-bodied parish priest at this day; indeed, it
was the cause of changing the whole destiny of my subsequent life.

"The Loughderg Pilgrim" is given in the present edition, and may be
relied on, not so much as an ordinary narrative, as a perfect transcript
of what takes place during the stations which are held there in the
summer months.

Having returned from this, I knew not exactly how to dispose of myself.
On one thing I was determined--never to enter the Church;--but this
resolution I kept faithfully to myself. I had nothing for it now but to
forget my sacerdotal prospects, which, as I have said, had already been
renounced, or to sink down as many others like me had done, into a mere
tiller of the earth,--a character in Ireland far more unpopular than
that which the Scotch call "a sticket minister!"

It was about this period, that chance first threw the inimitable
Adventures of the renowned Gil Bias across my path. During my whole
life I had been an insatiable reader of such sixpenny romances and
history-books as the hedge-schools afforded. Many a time have I given
up my meals rather than lose one minute from the interest excited by
the story I was perusing. Having read _Gil Bias_, however, I felt an
irrepressible passion for adventure, which nothing could divert; in
fact, I was as much the creature of the impulse it excited, as the ship
is of the helmsman, or the steam-engine of the principle that guides it.

Stimulated by this romantic love of adventure, I left my native place,
and directed my steps to the parish of Killanny, in the county of Louth,
the Catholic clergyman of which was a nephew of our own Parish Priest,
brother to him who proposed going to Munster with me, and an old
school-fellow of my own, though probably twenty years my senior. This
man's residence was within a quarter or half a mile's distance of the
celebrated Wild-goose Lodge, in which, some six months before, a
whole family, consisting of, I believe, eight persons, men, women, and
children, had been, from motives of personal vengeance, consumed to
ashes. I stopped with him for a fortnight, and succeeded in procuring
a tuition in the house of a wealthy farmer named Piers Murphy, near
Corcreagh. This, however, was a tame life, and a hard one, so I resolved
once more to give up a miserable salary and my board, for the fortunate
chances which an ardent temperament and a strong imagination perpetually
suggested to me as likely to be evolved out of the vicissitudes of life.
Urged on, therefore, by a spirit of romance, I resolved to precipitate
myself on the Irish Metropolis, which I accordingly entered with two
shillings and ninepence in my pocket; an utter stranger, of course
friendless; ignorant of the world, without aim or object, but not
without a certain strong feeling of vague and shapeless ambition, for
the truth was I had not yet begun to think, and, consequently, looked
upon life less as a reality than a vision.

Thus have I, as a faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader
from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along
those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of
the peasant alone, until I enter upon the highways of the world, and
strike into one of its greatest and most crowded thoroughfares--the
Metropolis. Whether this brief sketch of my early and humble life, my
education, my sports, my hopes and struggles, be calculated to excite
any particular interest, I know not; I can only assure my reader that
the details, so far as they go, are scrupulously correct and authentic,
and that they never would have been obtruded upon him, were it not from
an anxiety to satisfy him that in undertaking to describe the Irish
peasantry as they are, I approach the difficult task with advantages of
knowing them, which perhaps few Irish writers ever possessed; and this
is the only merit which I claim.

A few words now upon the moral and physical condition of the people may
not be unsuitable before I close, especially for the sake of those who
may wish to acquire a knowledge of their general character, previous to
their perusal of the following volume. This task, it is true, is not
one of such difficulty now as it was some years ago. Much light has
been thrown on the Irish character, not only by the great names I have
already enumerated, but by some equally high which I have omitted. On
this subject it would be impossible to overlook the names of
Lever, Maxwell, or Otway, or to forget the mellow hearth-light and
chimney-corner tone, the happy dialogue and legendary truth which
characterize the exquisite fairy legends of Crofton Croker. Much of the
difficulty of the task, I say, has been removed by these writers,
but there remains enough still behind to justify me in giving a short
dissertation upon the habits and feelings of my countrymen.

Of those whose physical state has been and is so deplorably wretched, it
may not be supposed that the tone of morals can be either high or pure;
and yet if we consider the circumstance in which he has been for such
a lengthened period placed, it is undeniable that the Irishman is a
remarkably moral man. Let us suppose, for instance, that in England
and Scotland the great body of the people had for a couple or three
centuries never received an adequate or proper education: in that case,
let us ask what the moral aspect of society in either country would be
to-day? But this is not merely the thing to be considered. The Irishman
was not only not educated, but actually punished for attempting to
acquire knowledge in the first place, and in the second, punished also
for the ignorance created by its absence. In other words, the penal
laws rendered education criminal, and then caused the unhappy people to
suffer for the crimes which proper knowledge would have prevented them
from, committing. It was just like depriving a man of his sight, and
afterwards causing him to be punished for stumbling. It is beyond
all question, that from the time of the wars of Elizabeth and the
introduction of the Reformation, until very recently, there was no fixed
system of wholesome education in the country. The people, possessed
of strong political and religious prejudices, were left in a state of
physical destitution and moral ignorance, such as were calculated to
produce ten times the amount of crime which was committed. Is it any
wonder, then, that in such a condition, social errors and dangerous
theories should be generated, and that neglect, and poverty, and
ignorance combined should give to the country a character for turbulence
and outrage? The same causes will produce the same effects in any
country, and were it not that the standard of personal and domestic
comfort was so low in Ireland, there is no doubt that the historian
would have a much darker catalogue of crime to record than he has. The
Irishman, in fact, was mute and patient under circumstances which would
have driven the better fed and more comfortable Englishman into open
outrage and contempt of all authority. God forbid that I for a moment
should become the apologist of crime, much less the crimes of my
countrymen! but it is beyond all question that the principles upon which
the country was governed have been such as to leave down to the present
day many of their evil consequences behind them. The penal code, to be
sure, is now abolished, but so are not many of its political effects
among the people. Its consequences have not yet departed from the
country, nor has the hereditary hatred of the laws, which unconsciously
descended from father to son, ceased to regulate their conduct and
opinions. Thousands of them are ignorant that ever such a thing as a
penal code existed; yet the feeling against law survives, although the
source from which it has been transmitted may be forgotten. This will
easily account for much of the political violence and crime which
moments of great excitement produce among us; nor need we feel surprised
that this state of things should be continued, to the manifest injury
of the people themselves, by the baneful effects of agitation.

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

Sir John Barrow - "The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure"

William Wood - "Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador"

Various - "Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892"