The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

At one side sat the fat and somewhat comely figure of Mary herself, a woman of some five-and-forty years, with that expression of rough and ready temperament, the habits of a wayside inn will teach. She had a clear, full eye – a wide, but not unpleasant mouth – and a voice that suited well the mellifluous intonation of a Kerry accent. Opposite to her were two thin, attenuated old men, who, for dress, look, age, voice, and manner, it would have been almost impossible to distinguish from each other; for while the same weather-beaten, shrivelled expression was common to both, their jackets of blue cloth, leather breeches, and top boots, were so precisely alike, that they seemed the very Dromios brought back to life, to perform as postillions. Such they were – such they had been for above fifty years. They had travelled the country from the time they were boys – they entered the career together, and together they were jogging onward to the last stage of all, the only one where they hoped to be at rest! Joe and Jim Daly were two names no one ever heard disunited; they were regarded as but one corporeally, and although they affected at times to make distinctions themselves, the world never gave them credit for any consciousness of separate identity. These were the postillions of the travelling carriage, which having left at its destination, about two miles distant, they were now regaling themselves at Mary’s, where the horses were to rest for the night.

“Faix, ma’am, and it’s driving ye may call it,” said one of the pair, as he sipped a very smoking compound the hostess had just mixed, “a hard gallop every step of the way, barrin’ the bit of a hill at Carrignacurra.”

“Well, I hope ye had the decent hansel for it, any how, Jim?”

“I’m Joe, ma’am, av its plazing to ye; Jim is the pole-end boy; he rides the layders. And it’s true for ye – they behaved dacent.”

“A goold guinea, divil a less” – said the other, “there’s no use in denying it. Begorra, it was all natural, them’s as rich as Crasis; sure didn’t I see the young lady herself throwing out the tenpenny bits to the gossoons, as we went by, as if it was dirt; bad luck to me, but I was going to throw down the Bishop of Cloyne.”

“Throw down who?” said the hostess.

“The near wheeler, ma’am; he’s a broken-kneed ould divil, we bought from the bishop, and called him after him; and as I was saying, I was going to cross them on the pole, and get a fall, just to have a scramble for the money, with the gaffers.”

“‘They look so poor,’ says she. God help her – it’s little poverty she saw – there isn’t one of them crayters hasn’t a sack of potatoes.”

“Ay – more of them a pig.”

“And hens,” chimed in the first speaker, with a horror at the imposition of people so comfortably endowed, affecting to feel any pressure or poverty.

“And what’s bringing them here at all?” said Mrs. M’Kelly, with a voice of some asperity; for she foresaw no pleasant future in the fact of a resident great man, who would not be likely to give any encouragement to the branch of traffic her principal customers followed.

“Sorrow one of me knows,” was the safe reply of the individual addressed, who not being prepared with any view of the matter, save that founded on the great benefit to the country, preferred this answer to a more decisive one.

“‘Tis to improve the property, they say,” interposed the other, who was not equally endowed with caution. “To look after the estate himself he has come.”

“Improve, indeed!” echoed the hostess. “Much we want their improving! Why didn’t they leave us the ould families of the country? It’s little we used to hear of improving, when I was a child. God be good to us. – There was ould Miles O’Donoghue, the present man’s father, I’d like to see what he’d say, if they talked to him about improvement. Ayeh! sure I mind the time a hogshead of claret didn’t do the fortnight. My father, rest his soul, used to go up to the house every Monday morning for orders; and ye’d see a string of cars following him at the same time, with tay, and sugar, and wine, and brandy, and oranges, and lemons. Them was the raal improvements!”

“‘Tis true for ye, ma’am. It was a fine house, I always heerd tell.”

“Forty-six in the kitchen, besides about fourteen colleens and gossoons about the place; the best of enthertainment up stairs and down.”

“Musha! that was grand.”

“A keg of sperits, with a spigot, in the servants’ hall, and no saying by your leave, but drink while ye could stand over it.”

“The Lord be good to us!” piously ejaculated the twain.

“The hams was boiled in sherry wine.”

“Begorra, I wish I was a pig them times.”

“And a pike daren’t come up to table without an elegant pudding in his belly that cost five pounds!”

“‘Tis the fish has their own luck always,” was the profound meditation at this piece of good fortune.

“Ayeh! ayeh!” continued the hostess in a strain of lamentation, “When the ould stock was in it, we never heerd tell of improvements. He’ll be making me take out a license, I suppose,” said she, in a voice of half contemptuous incredulity.

“Faix, there’s no knowing,” said Joe, as he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded his head sententiously, as though to say, that in the miserable times they’d fallen upon, any thing was possible.

“Licensed for sperits and groceries,” said Mrs. M’Kelly, with a sort of hysterical giggle, as if the thought were too much for her nerves.

“I wouldn’t wonder if he put up a pike,” stammered out Jim, thereby implying that human atrocity would have reached its climax.

The silence which followed this terrible suggestion, was now loudly interrupted by a smart knocking at the door of the cabin, which was already barred and locked for the night.

“Who’s there?” said Mary, as she held a cloak across the blaze of the fire, so as to prevent the light being seen through the apertures of the door – “‘tis in bed we are, and late enough, too.”

“Open the door, Mary, it’s me,” said a somewhat confident voice. “I saw the fire burning brightly – and there’s no use hiding it.”

“Oh, troth, Mr. Mark, I’ll not keep ye out in the cowld,” said the hostess, as, unbarring the door, she admitted the guest whom we had seen some time since in the glen. “Sure enough, ‘tisn’t an O’Donoghue we’d shut the door agin, any how.”

“Thank ye, Mary,” said the young man; “I have been all day in the mountains, and had no sport; and as that pleasant old Scotch uncle of mine gives me no peace, when I come home empty-handed, I have resolved to stay here for the night, and try my luck to-morrow. Don’t stir, Jim – there’s room enough, Joe: Mary’s fire is never so grudging, but there’s a warm place for every one. What’s in this big pot here, Mary?”

“It’s a stew, sir; more by token, of your honour’s providin’.” “Mine – how is that?”

“The hare ye shot afore the door, yesterday morning; sure it’s raal luck we have it for you now;” and while Mary employed herself in the pleasant hustle of preparing the supper, the young man drew near to the fire, and engaged the others in conversation.

“That travelling carriage was going on to Bantry, Joe, I suppose?” said the youth, in a tone of easy indifference.

“No sir; they stopped at the lodge above.”

“At the lodge! – surely you can’t mean that they were the English family – Sir Marmaduke.”

“‘Tis just himself, and his daughter. I heerd them say the names, as we were leaving Macroom. They were not expected here these three weeks; and Captain Hemsworth, the agent, isn’t at home; and they say there’s no servants at the lodge, nor nothin’ ready for the quality at all; and sure when a great lord like that – ”

“He is not a lord you fool; he has not a drop of noble blood in his body: he’s a London banker – rich enough to buy birth, if gold could do it.” The youth paused in his vehemence; then added, in a muttering voice – “Rich enough to buy up the inheritance of those who have blood in their veins.”

The tone of voice in which the young man spoke, and the angry look which accompanied these words, threw a gloom over the party, and for some time nothing was said on either side. At last he broke silence abruptly by saying —

“And that was his daughter, then?”

“Yes, sir; and a purty crayture she is, and a kind-hearted. The moment she heerd she was on her father’s estate, she began asking the names of all the people, and if they were well off, and what they had to ate, and where was the schools.”

“The schools!” broke in Mary, in an accent of great derision – “musha, it’s great schooling we want up the glen, to teach us to bear poverty and cowld, without complaining: learning is a fine thing for the hunger – ”

Her irony was too delicate for the thick apprehension of poor Jim, who felt himself addressed by the remark, and piously responded —

“It is so, glory be to God!”

“Well,” said the young man, who now seemed all eagerness to resume the subject – “well, and what then?”

“Then, she was wondering where was the roads up to the cabins on the mountains, as if the likes of them people had roads!”

“They’ve ways of their own – the English,” interrupted Jim, who felt jealous of his companion being always referred to – “for whenever we passed a little potatoe garden, or a lock of oak, it was always, ‘God be good to us, but they’re mighty poor hereabouts;’ but when we got into the raal wild part of the glen, with divil a house nor a human being near us, sorrow word out of their mouths but ‘fine, beautiful, elegant!’ till we came to Keim-an-eigh, and then, ye’d think that it was fifty acres of wheat they were looking at, wid all the praises they had for the big rocks, and black cliffs oyer our heads.”

“I showed them your honour’s father’s place on the mountains,” said Joe.

“Yes, faith,” broke in Jim; “and the young lady laughed and said, ‘you see, father, we have a neighbour after all.’”