_ CHAPTER VI. "THOUGHTS THAT BREATHE, AND WORDS THAT BURN"
We lamented, in our last chapter, that there is nothing new under the sun; yet, perhaps, the thoughts and phraseology of the following story may not be familiar to the English.
"Plase your honour," says a man, whose head is bound up with a garter, in token and commemoration of his having been at a fair the preceding night--"Plase your honour, it's what I am striving since six o'clock and before, this morning, becaase I'd sooner trouble your honour's honour than any man in all Ireland, on account of your character, and having lived under your family, me and mine, twinty years, aye, say forty again to the back o' that, in the old gentleman's time, as I well remember before I was born; that same time I heard tell of your own honour's riding a little horse in green with your gun before you, a grousing over our town-lands, which was the mill and abbey of Ballynagobogg, though 'tis now set away from me (owing to them that belied my father) to Christy Salmon, becaase he's an Orangeman--or his wife--though he was once (let him deny it who can), to
my certain knowledge, behind the haystack in Tullygore,
sworn in a United man by Captain Alick, who was hanged----Pace to the dead any how!------Well, not to be talking too much of that now, only for this Christy Salmon, I should be still living under your honour."
"Very likely; but what has all this to do with the present business? If you have any complaint to make against Christy Salmon, make it--if not, let me go to dinner."
"Oh, it would be too bad to be keeping your honour from your dinner, but I'll make your honour sinsible immadiately. It is not of Christy Salmon at-all-at-all I'm talking. May be your honour is not sinsible yet who I am--I am Paddy M'Doole, of the Curragh, and I've been a flax-dresser and dealer since I parted your honour's land, and was last night at the fair of Clonaghkilty, where I went just in a quiet way thinking of nothing at all, as any man might, and had my little yarn along with me, my wife's and the girl's year's spinning, and all just hoping to bring them back a few honest shillings as they desarved--none better!--Well, plase your honour, my beast lost a shoe, which brought me late to the fair, but not so late but what it was as throng as ever; you could have walked over the heads of the men, women, and childer, a foot and a horseback, all buying and selling; so I to be sure thought no harm of doing the like; so I makes the best bargain I could of the little hanks for my wife and the girl, and the man I sold them to was just weighing them at the crane, and I standing forenent him--'Success to myself!'said I, looking at the shillings I was putting into my waistcoat pocket for my poor family, when up comes the inspector, whom I did not know, I'll take my oath, from Adam, nor couldn't know, becaase he was the deputy inspector, and had been but just made, of which I was ignorant, by this book and all the books that ever were shut and opened--but no matter for that; he seizes my hanks out of the scales that I had just sold, saying they were unlawful and forfeit, becaase by his watch it was past four o'clock, which I denied to be possible, plase your honour, becaase not one, nor two, nor three, but all the town and country were selling the same as myself in broad day, only when the deputy came up they stopped, which I could not, by rason I did not know him.--'Sir,' says I (very civil), 'if I had known you, it would have been another case, but any how I hope no jantleman will be making it a crime to a poor man to sell his little matter of yarn for his wife and childer after four o'clock, when he did not know it was contrary to law at-all-at-all.'
"'I gave you notice that it was contrary to law at the fair of Edgerstown,' said he.--'I axe your pardon, sir,' said I, 'it was my brother, for I was by." With that he calls me liar, and what not, and takes a grip[1] of me, and I a grip of my flax, and he had a shilala[2] and I had none; so he gave it me over the head, I crying 'murder! murder!' and clinging to the scales to save me, and they set a swinging and I with them, plase your honour, till the bame comes down a'top o' the back o' my head, and
kilt me, as your honour sees."
[Footnote 1: A gripe or fast hold.]
[Footnote 2: An oak stick, supposed to be cut from the famous wood of Shilala.]
"I see that you are alive still, I think."
"It's not his fault if I am, plase your honour, for he left me for dead, and I am as good as dead still: if it be plasing to your honour to examine my head, you'll be sinsible I'm telling nothing but the truth. Your honour never
seen a man kilt as I was and am--all which I'm ready (when convanient) to swear before your honour." [3]
[Footnote 3: This is nearly verbatim from a late Irish complainant.]
The reiterated assurances which this hero gives us of his being killed, and the composure with which he offers to swear to his own assassination and decease, appear rather surprising and ludicrous to those who are not aware that
kilt is here used in a metaphorical sense, and that it has not the full force of our word killed. But we have been informed by a lady of unquestionable veracity, that she very lately received a petition worded in this manner--
"To the Right Hon. Lady E---- P----.
"Humbly showeth;
"That your poor petitioner is now lying dead in a ditch," &c.
This poor Irish petitioner's expression, however preposterous it sounds, might perhaps be justified, if we were inclined to justify an Irishman by the example, not only of poets comic and tragic, but of prose writers of various nations. The evidence in favour both of the fact and the belief, that people can speak and walk after they are dead, is attested by stout warriors and grave historians. Let us listen to the solemn voice of a princess, who comes sweeping in the sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy, to inform us that half herself has buried the other half.
"Weep, eyes; melt into tears these cheeks to lave:
One half myself lays t'other in the grave." [4]
[Footnote 4:
"Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau,
La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau."]
For six such lines as these Corneille received six thousand livres, and the admiration of the French court and people during the Augustan age of French literature. But an Italian is not content with killing by halves. Here is a man from Italy who goes on fighting, not like Witherington, upon his stumps, but fairly after he is dead.
"Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled,
But still fought on, nor knew that he was dead." [5]
[Footnote 5:
"Il pover uomo che non sen' era accorto,
Andava combattendo, ed era morto."]
Common sense is somewhat shocked at this single instance of an individual fighting after he is dead; but we shall, doubtless, be reconciled to the idea by the example of a gallant and modern commander, who has declared his opinion, that nothing is more feasible than for a garrison to fight, or at least to surrender, after they are dead, nay, after they are buried.--Witness this public document.
"Liberty and Equality.
"May 29th, | Garrison of Ostend.
30th Floreal, 6 |
"Muscar, commandant of Ostend, to the commandant in
chief of his British majesty.
"General,
"The council of war was sitting when I received the honour
of your letters. We have unanimously resolved not to surrender
the place until we shall have been buried in its ruins," &c.
One step further in hyperbole is reserved for him, who, being buried, carries about his own sepulchre.
"To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried; but oh, yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave!"
No person, if he heard this passage for the first time from the lips of an Irishman, could hesitate to call it a series of bulls; yet these lines are part of the beautiful complaint of Samson Agonistes on his blindness. Such are the hyperboles sanctioned by the genius, or, what with some judges may have more influence, the name of Milton. The bounds which separate sublimity from bombast, and absurdity from wit, are as fugitive as the boundaries of taste. Only those who are accustomed to examine and appraise literary goods are sensible of the prodigious change that can be made in their apparent value by a slight change in the manufacture. The absurdity of a man's swearing he was killed, or declaring that he is now dead in a ditch, is revolting to common sense; yet the
living death of Dapperwit, in the "Rape of the Lock," is not absurd, but witty; and representing men as dying many times before their death is in Shakspeare sublime:
"Cowards die many times before their death; The brave can never taste of death but once."
The most direct contradictions in words do not (
in English writers) destroy the eflect of irony, wit, pathos, or sublimity.
In the classic ode on Eton College, the poet exclaims--
"To each their sufferings, all are men
Condemned alike to groan;
The feeling for another's pain,
Th'
unfeeling for their own."
Who but a half-witted dunce would ask how those that are unfeeling can have sufferings? When Milton in melodious verse inquires,
"Who shall tempt with
wandering feet The dark
unbottom'd infinite abyss,
And through the
palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way!"--
what Zoilus shall dare interrupt this flow of poetry to object to the palpable obscure, or to ask how feet can wander upon that which has no bottom?
It is easy, as Tully has long ago observed, to fix the brand of ridicule upon the
verbum ardens of orators and poets--the "Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." _