Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2. Lever Charles James
telling,
‘I want thee, Rossmore!’
“And then fast came his breath,
And more fixed grew his eye;
And the shadow of death
Told his hour was nigh.
Ere the dawn of that morning
The struggle was o’er,
For when thrice came the warning
A corpse was Rossmore!”
The plaintive air to which these words were sung fell heavily upon my heart, and it needed but the low and nervous condition I was in to make me feel their application to myself. But so it is; the very superstition your reason rejects and your sense spurns, has, from old association, from habit, and from mere nationality too, a hold upon your hopes and fears that demands more firmness and courage than a sick-bed possesses to combat with success; and I now listened with an eager ear to mark if the Banshee cried, rather than sought to fortify myself by any recurrence to my own convictions. Meanwhile Mike’s attitude became one of listening attention. Not a finger moved; he scarce seemed even to breathe; the state of suspense I suffered from was maddening; and at last, unable to bear it longer, I was about to speak, when suddenly, from the floor beneath us, one long-sustained note swelled upon the air and died away again, and immediately after, to the cheerful sounds of a guitar, we heard the husky voice of our Portuguese guide indulging himself in a love-ditty.
Ashamed of myself for my fears, I kept silent; but Mike, who felt only one sensation, – that of unmixed satisfaction at his mistake, – rubbed his hands pleasantly, filled up his glass, drank it, and refilled; while with an accent of reassured courage, he briefly remarked, —
“Well, Mr. José, if that be singing, upon my conscience I wonder what crying is like!”
I could not forbear a laugh at the criticism; and in a moment, the poor fellow, who up to that moment believed me sleeping, was beside me. I saw from his manner that he dreaded lest I had been listening to his melancholy song, and had overheard any of his gloomy forebodings; and as he cheered my spirits and spoke encouragingly, I could remark that he made more than usual endeavors to appear light-hearted and at ease. Determined, however, not to let him escape so easily, I questioned him about his belief in ghosts and spirits, at which he endeavored, as he ever did when the subject was an unpleasing one, to avoid the discussion; but rather perceiving that I indulged in no irreverent disrespect of these matters, he grew gradually more open, treating the affair with that strange mixture of credulity and mockery which formed his estimate of most things, – now seeming to suppose that any palpable rejection of them might entail sad consequences in future, now half ashamed to go the whole length in his credulity.
“And so, Mike, you never saw a ghost yourself? – that you acknowledge?”
“No, sir, I never saw a real ghost; but sure there’s many a thing I never saw; but Mrs. Moore, the housekeeper, seen two. And your grandfather that’s gone – the Lord be good to him! – used to walk once a year in Lurra Abbey; and sure you know the story about Tim Clinchy that was seen every Saturday night coming out of the cellar with a candle and a mug of wine and a pipe in his mouth, till Mr. Barry laid him. It cost his honor your uncle ten pounds in Masses to make him easy; not to speak of a new lock and two bolts on the cellar door.”
“I have heard all about that; but as you never yourself saw any of these things – ”
“But sure my father did, and that’s the same any day. My father seen the greatest ghost that ever was seen in the county Cork, and spent the evening with him, that’s more.”
“Spent the evening with him! – what do you mean?”
“Just that, devil a more nor less. If your honor wasn’t so weak, and the story wasn’t a trying one, I’d like to tell it to you.”
“Out with it by all means, Mike; I am not disposed to sleep; and now that we are upon these matters, my curiosity is strongly excited by your worthy father’s experience.”
Thus encouraged, having trimmed the fire and reseated himself beside the blaze, Mike began; but as a ghost is no every-day personage in our history, I must give him a chapter to himself.
CHAPTER VIII
“Well, I believe your honor heard me tell long ago how my father left the army, and the way that he took to another line of life that was more to his liking. And so it was, he was happy as the day was long; he drove a hearse for Mr. Callaghan of Cork for many years, and a pleasant place it was; for ye see, my father was a ‘cute man, and knew something of the world; and though he was a droll devil, and could sing a funny song when he was among the boys, no sooner had he the big black cloak on him and the weepers, and he seated on the high box with the six long-tailed blacks before him, you’d really think it was his own mother was inside, he looked so melancholy and miserable. The sexton and gravedigger was nothing to my father; and he had a look about his eye – to be sure there was a reason for it – that you’d think he was up all night crying; though it’s little indulgence he took that way.
“Well, of all Mr. Callaghan’s men, there was none so great a favorite as my father. The neighbors were all fond of him.
“‘A kind crayture, every inch of him!’ the women would say. ‘Did ye see his face at Mrs. Delany’s funeral?’
“‘True for you,’ another would remark; ‘he mistook the road with grief, and stopped at a shebeen house instead of Kilmurry church.’
“I need say no more, only one thing, – that it was principally among the farmers and the country people my father was liked so much. The great people and the quality – ax your pardon; but sure isn’t it true, Mister Charles? – they don’t fret so much after their fathers and brothers, and they care little who’s driving them, whether it was a decent, respectable man like my father, or a chap with a grin on him like a rat-trap. And so it happened that my father used to travel half the county; going here and there wherever there was trade stirring; and faix, a man didn’t think himself rightly buried if my father wasn’t there; for ye see, he knew all about it: he could tell to a quart of spirits what would be wanting for a wake; he knew all the good criers for miles round; and I’ve heard it was a beautiful sight to see him standing on a hill, arranging the procession as they walked into the churchyard, and giving the word like a captain, —
“‘Come on, the stiff; now the friends of the stiff; now the pop’lace.’
“That’s what he used to say, and troth he was always repeating it, when he was a little gone in drink, – for that’s the time his spirits would rise, and he’d think he was burying half Munster.
“And sure it was a real pleasure and a pride to be buried in them times; for av it was only a small farmer with a potato garden, my father would come down with the black cloak on him, and three yards of crape behind his hat, and set all the children crying and yelling for half a mile round; and then the way he’d walk before them with a spade on his shoulder, and sticking it down in the ground, clap his hat on the top of it, to make it look like a chief mourner. It was a beautiful sight!”
“But Mike, if you indulge much longer in this flattering recollection of your father, I’m afraid we shall lose sight of the ghost entirely.”
“No fear in life, your honor; I’m coming to him now. Well, it was this way it happened: In the winter of the great frost, about forty-two or forty-three years ago, the ould priest of Tullonghmurray took ill and died. He was sixty years priest of the parish, and mightily beloved by all the people, and good reason for it; a pleasanter man, and a more social crayture never lived, – ‘twas himself was the life of the whole country-side. A wedding nor a christening wasn’t lucky av he wasn’t there, sitting at the top of the table, with may be his arm round the bride herself, or the baby on his lap, a smoking jug of punch before him, and as much kindness in his eye as would make the fortunes of twenty hypocrites if they had it among them. And then he was so good to the poor; the Priory was always so full of ould men and ould women sitting around the big fire in the kitchen that the cook could hardly get near it.