Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 3 (of 3). Jonah Barrington

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every body went in character, and every person tried to keep up the character he adopted. Ireland, of all places in the world, is, perhaps, best adapted to a masquerade, as every Irishman is highly amused when he can get an opportunity of assuming, by way of freak, any new character.

It was the custom for the mob, on those occasions, to stop every carriage, and demand of each person, “What’s your character?” I was dreadfully tired of them in the street on the night in question; but fairly put into good-humour by the jeu d’esprit of a mob-man, who opened the carriage-door. After I had satisfied him as to character, he desired to know, where I was going? “Shut the door,” said I. “Ah, but where are you going?” I was vexed. “I’m going to the Devil,” said I. “Ough, then, God send you safe!” replied the blackguard.

3

This was the first instance I recollect of pertinacity conquering privilege.

4

In these times it may not, perhaps, be fully credited when I tell – that four of my father’s sons carried his body themselves to the grave: that his eldest son was in a state bordering on actual distraction at his death; and in the enthusiastic paroxysms of affection which we all felt for our beloved parent at that cruel separation, I do even now firmly believe there was not one of us who would not, on the impulse of the moment, have sprung into, and supplanted him in his grave, to have restored him to animation. But we were all a family of nature and of heart, and decided enemies to worldly objects.

5

I never saw a young woman brought into the dissecting-room but my blood ran cold, and I was immediately set a-moralising. The old song of “Death and the Lady” is a better lecture for the fair sex than all the sermons that ever were preached, including Mr. Fordyce’s. ’Tis a pity that song is not melodised for the use of the fashionables during their campaigns in London.

6

A massacre of the Irish at a place called Mullymart, in the county of Kildare, which is spoken of by Casaubon in his Britannia as a thing prophesied: the prophesy did actually take effect; and it is, altogether, one of the most remarkable traditionary tales of that country.

7

An instrument used in the practice of farriers. It is a piece of cord passed round the nose of a horse (being the most sensitive part of that animal); and being twisted tight by a short stick, it creates a torture so exquisite, that all other tortures go for nothing. Therefore, when a horse is to have his tail cut off, or his legs burned, &c., a touch is put upon his nose, the extreme pain whereof absorbs that of the operation, and, as they term it, makes the beast “stay easy.”

8

Ballaghlanagh was the name of an old Irish bard (by tradition), whose ghost used to come the night before to people who were to be killed fighting in battle on the morning: and as a ghost offers the most convincing proof that the mortal it represents is no longer living, the term Ballaghlanagh, came, figuratively, to signify a “dead man.” I learnt this explanation from the old colloughs, who all joined exactly in the same tradition.

9

Last year, the son of a very great man in England came over to Paris with a considerable sum in his pocket for the very same purpose. The first thing he did was gravely to ask his banker (an excellent and sensible man), “How long six thousand pounds would last him in Paris?” The reply was a true and correct one, “If you play, three days; if you don’t, six weeks.”