Chapter 1. A Strong Farmer's Establishment And Family

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_ CHAPTER I. A strong Farmer's Establishment and Family

It was one summer morning, about nine o'clock, when a little man, in the garb and trim of a mendicant, accompanied by a slender but rather handsome looking girl about sixteen, or it may be a year more, were upon their way to the house of a man, who, from his position in life, might be considered a wealthy agriculturist, and only a step or two beneath the condition of a gentleman farmer, although much more plain and rustic in his manners. The house and place had about them that characteristic appearance of abundance and slovenly neglect which is, unfortunately, almost peculiar to our country. The house was a long slated one, and stood upon a little eminence, about three or four hundred yards from the highway. It was approached by a broad and ragged boreen or mock avenue, as it might be called, that was in very good keeping with the premises to which it led. As you entered it from the road, you had to pass through an iron gate, which it was a task to open, and which, when opened, it was another task to shut. In consequence of this difficulty, foot passengers had made themselves a way upon each side of it, through which they went to and came from the house; and in this they were sanctioned by the example of the family themselves, who, so long as these side paths were passable, manifested as much reluctance to open or close the gate as any one else.

The month was May; and nothing could be more delightful and exhilarating than the breeze which played over the green fields that were now radiant with the light which was flooded down upon them from the cloudless sun. Around them, in every field, were the tokens of that pleasant labor from which the hopes of ample and abundant harvests always spring. Here, fixed in the ground, stood the spades of a boon* of laborers, who, as was evident from that circumstance, were then at breakfast; in another place might be seen the plough and a portion of the tackle lying beside it, being expressive of the same fact. Around them, on every side, in hedges, ditches, green fields, and meadows, the birds seemed animated into joyous activity or incessant battle, by the business of nest-building or love. Whilst all around, from earth and air, streamed the ceaseless voice of universal melody and song.

* A considerable number of men working together.

On reaching the gate, Peety Dhu and his pretty daughter turned up towards the house we have alluded to--which was the residence of a man named Burke. On reaching it they were observed by a couple of large dogs, who, partaking of the hospitable but neglected habits of the family, first approached and looked at them for a moment, then wagged their tails by way of welcome, and immediately scampered off into the kitchen to forage for themselves.

Burke's house and farmyard, though strongly indicative of wealth and abundance in the owner, were, notwithstanding, evidently the property of a man whose mind was far back in a knowledge of agriculture, and the industrial pursuits that depend upon it. His haggard was slovenly in the extreme, and his farmyard exceedingly offensive to most of the senses; everything lay about in a careless and neglected manner;--wheelbarrows without their trundles--sacks for days under the rain that fell from the eaves of the houses--other implements embedded in mud--car-houses tumbling down--the pump without a handle--the garden-gate open, and the pigs hard at work destroying the vegetables, and rooting up the garden in all directions. In fact, the very animals about the house were conscious of the character of the people, and acted accordingly. If one of the dogs, for instance, was hunted at the pigs, he ran in an apparent fury towards that which happened to be nearest him, which merely lifted its head and listened for a time--the dog, with loud and boisterous barking, seizing its ear, led it along for three or four yards in that position, after which, upon the pig demurring to proceed any further, he very quietly dropped it and trotted in again, leaving the destructive animal to resume its depredations.

The house inside bore the same character. Winter and summer the hall-door, which had long lost the knocker, lay hospitably open. The parlor had a very equivocal appearance; for the furniture, though originally good and of excellent materials, was stained and dinged and hacked in a manner that denoted but little sense of care or cleanliness. Many of the chairs, although not worn by age, wanted legs or backs, evidently from ill-usage alone--the grate was without fire-irons--a mahogany bookcase that stood in a recess to the right of the fireplace, with glass doors and green silk blinds, had the glass all broken and the silk stained almost out of its original color; whilst inside of it, instead of books, lay a heterogeneous collection of garden seeds in brown paper--an almanac of twenty years' standing, a dry ink-bottle, some broken delf, and a large collection of blue-moulded shoes and boots, together with an old blister of French flies, the lease of their farm, and a great number of their receipts for rent. To crown all, the clock in the other recess stood cobwebbed about the top, deprived of the minute hand, and seeming to intimate by its silence that it had given note of time's progress to this idle and negligent family to no purpose.

On the drawing-room stairs there lay what had once been a carpet, but so inseparable had been their connection that the stairs were now worn through it, and it required a sharp eye to distinguish such fragments of it as remained from the color of the dirty boards it covered and the dust that lay on both.

On entering the kitchen, Peety and his little girl found thirteen or fourteen, in family laborers and servants of both sexes, seated at a long deal table, each with a large wooden noggin of buttermilk and a spoon of suitable dimensions, digging as if for a wager into one or other of two immense wooden bowls of stirabout, so thick and firm in consistency that, as the phrase goes, a man might dance on it. This, however, was not the only picture of such enjoyment that the kitchen afforded. Over beside the dresser was turned upon one side the huge pot in which the morning meal had been made, and at the bottom of which, inside of course, a spirit of rivalry equally vigorous and animated, but by no means so harmonious, was kept up by two dogs and a couple of pigs, which were squabbling and whining and snarling among each other, whilst they tugged away at the scrapings, or residuum, that was left behind after the stirabout had been emptied out of it. The whole kitchen, in fact, had a strong and healthy smell of food--the dresser, a huge one, was covered with an immense quantity of pewter, wood, and delf; and it was only necessary to cast one's eye towards the chimney to perceive, by the weighty masses of black hung beef and the huge sides and flitches of deep yellow bacon which lined it, that plenty and abundance, even to overflowing, predominated in the family.

The "chimney-brace" projected far out over the fire-place towards the floor, and under it on each side stretched two long hobs or chimney corner seats, on which nearly a dozen persons could sit of a winter evening. Mrs. Burke, a smart, good-looking little woman, though somewhat advanced in years, kept passing in a kind of perpetual motion from one part of the house to the other, with a large bunch of bright keys jingling at one side, and a huge house-wife pocket, with a round pin-cushion dangling beside it, at the other. Jemmy Burke himself, a placid though solemn-faced man, was sitting on the hob in question complacently smoking his pipe, whilst over the glowing remnants of an immense turf fire hung a singing kettle, and beside it on three crushed coals was the teapot, "waitin'," as the servants were in the habit of expressing it, "for the masther and misthress's breakfast."

Peety, who was well known and a great favorite on his rounds, received a warm and hospitable welcome from Jemmy Burke, who made him and the girl sit upon the hob, and immediately ordered them breakfast.

"Here, Nancy Devlin, get Peety and the girsha their skinfuls of stirabout an' milk. Sit over to the fire, alanna, an' warm yourself."

"Warm, inagh!" replied Peety; "why, sure it's not a fire sich a blessed mornin' as this she'd want--an' a blessed mornin' it is, glory be to God!"

"Troth, an' you're right, sure enough, Peety," replied the good-natured farmer; "a blessed saison it is for gettin' down the crops. Go over there, now, you an' the girsha, to that other table, an'--whish!--kick them pigs an' dogs out o' the house, an' be d--d to them! One can't hear their ears for them--you an' the girsha, an' let us see what you can do. Nancy, achora, jist dash a gawliogue o' sweet milk into their noggins--they're not like us that's well fed every day--. it's but seldom they get the likes, the creatures--so dash in a brave gawliogue o' the sweet milk for them. Take your time, Peety,--aisy, alanna, 'till you get what I'm sayin; it'll nourish an put strinth in you."

"Ah, Misther Burke," replied Peety, in a tone of gratitude peculiar to his class, "you're the ould* man still--ever an' always the large heart an' lavish hand--an' so sign's on it--full an' plinty upon an' about you--an' may it ever be so wid you an' yours, a chierna, I pray. An how is the misthress, sir?"

* That is to say, the same man still.

"Throth, she's very well, Peety--has no raison to complain, thank God!"

"Thank God, indeed! and betther may she be, is my worst wish to her--an' Masther Hycy, sir?--but I needn't ax how he is. Isn't the whole country ringin' wid his praises;--the blessin' o' God an you, acushla"--this was to Nancy Devlin, on handing them the new milk--"draw over, darlin', nearer to the table--there now"--this to his daughter, whom he settled affectionately to her food. "Ay, indeed," he proceeded, "sure there's only the one word of it over the whole Barony we're sittin' in--that there's neither fetch nor fellow for him through the whole parish. Some people, indeed, say that Bryan M'Mahon comes near him; but only some, for it's given up to Masther Hycy all to pieces."

"Faix, an' I for one, although I'm his father--amn't I, Rosha?" he added, good-humoredly addressing his wife, who had just come into the kitchen from above stairs.

"Throth," said the wife, who never replied with good humor unless when addressed as Mrs. Burke, "you're ill off for something to speak about. How are you, Peety? an' how is your little girl?"

"In good health, ma'am, thank God an' you; an' very well employed at the present time, thanks to you still!"

To this Mrs. Burke made no reply; for it may be necessary to state here, that although she was not actually penurious or altogether without hospitality, and something that might occasionally be termed charity, still it is due to honest Jemmy to inform the reader in the outset, that, as Peety Dhu said, "the large heart and the lavish hand" were especially his own. Mrs. Burke was considered to have been handsome--indeed, a kind of rustic beauty in her day--and, like many of that class, she had not been without a due share of vanity, or perhaps we might say coquetry, if we were to speak the truth. Her teeth were good, and she had a very pretty dimple in one of her cheeks when she smiled, two circumstances which contributed strongly to sustain her good humor, and an unaccountable tendency to laughter, when the poverty of the jest was out of all proportion to the mirth that followed it. Notwithstanding this apparently light and agreeable spirit, she was both vulgar and arrogant, and labored under the weak and ridiculous ambition of being considered a woman of high pretensions, who had been most unfortunately thrown away, if not altogether lost, upon a husband whom she considered as every way unworthy of her. Her father had risen into the possession of some unexpected property when it was too late to bestow upon her a suitable education, and the consequence was that, in addition to natural vanity, on the score of beauty, she was a good deal troubled with purse-pride, which, with a foolish susceptibility of flattery, was a leading feature in her disposition. In addition to this, she was an inveterate and incurable slattern, though a gay and lively one; and we need scarcely say that whatever she did in the shape of benevolence or charity, in most instances owed its origin to the influences of the weaknesses she was known to possess.

Breakfast, at length, was over, and the laborers, with an odd hiccup here and there among them, from sheer repletion, got their hats and began to proceed towards the farm.

"Now, boys," said Jemmy, after dropping a spittle into his pipe, pressing it down with his little finger, and putting it into his waistcoat pocket, "see an' get them praties down as soon as you can, an' don't work as if you intended to keep your Christmas there; an' Paddy the Bounce, I'll thank you to keep your jokes an' your stories to yourself, an' not to be idlin' the rest till afther your work's done. Throth it was an unlucky day I had anything to do wid you, you divartin' vagabone--ha! ha! ha! When I hired him in the Micklemas fair," proceeded Jemmy, without addressing himself to any particular individual, "he killed me wid laughin' to such a degree, that I couldn't refuse the mehony whatsomever wages he axed; an' now he has the men, insteed o' mindin' their work, dancin' through the field, an' likely to split at the fun he tells them, ha! ha! ha! Be off, now, boys. Pettier Murphy, you randletree, let,the girl alone. That's it Peggy, lay on him; ha! devil's cure to you! take what you've got any way--you desarve it."

These latter observations were occasioned by a romping match that took place between a young laborer and a good-looking girl who was employed to drop potatoes for the men.

At length those who were engaged in the labor of the field departed in a cheerful group, and in a few minutes the noise of a horse's feet, evidently proceeding at a rapid trot, was heard coming up the boreen or avenue towards the house.

"Ay," exclaimed Burke, with a sigh, "there comes Hycy at a trot, an' the wondher is it's not a gallop. That's the way he'll get through life, I fear; an' if God doesn't change him he's more likely to gallop himself to the Staff an' Bag (* Beggary.) than to anything else I know. I can't nor I won't stand his extravagance--but it's his mother's fault, an' she'll see what it'll come to in the long run."

He had scarcely concluded when his son entered the kitchen, alternately singing and whistling the Foxhunter's jig in a manner that betokened exuberant if not boisterous spirits. He was dressed in top boots, a green riding-coat, yellow waistcoat, and drab cassimere small clothes--quite in jockey trim, in fact.

Hycy rather resembled his father in the lineaments of his face, and was, consequently, considered handsome. He was about the middle size, and remarkably well proportioned. In fact, it would be exceedingly difficult to find a young fellow of manlier bearing or more striking personal attractions. His features were regular, and his complexion fresh and youthful looking, and altogether there was in his countenance and whole appearance a cheerful, easy, generous, unreflecting dash of character that not only made him a favorite on first acquaintance, but won confidence by an openness of manner that completely disarmed suspicion. It might have been observed, however, that his laugh, like his mother's, never, or at least seldom, came directly from the heart, and that there was a hard expression about his otherwise well-formed mouth, such as rarely indicated generosity of feeling, or any acquaintance with the kinder impulses of our nature. He was his mother's pet and favorite, and her principal wish was that he should be looked upon and addressed as a gentleman, and for that purpose she encouraged him to associate with those only whose rank and position in life rendered any assumption of equality on his part equally arrogant and obtrusive. In his own family his bearing towards his parents was, in point of fact, the reverse of what it ought to have been. He not only treated his father with something bordering on contempt, but joined his mother in all that ignorant pride which kept her perpetually bewailing the fate by which she was doomed to become his wife. Nor did she herself come off better at his hands. Whilst he flattered her vanity, and turned her foibles to his own advantage, under the guise of a very dutiful affection, his deportment towards her was marked by an ironical respect, which was the more indefensible and unmanly because she could not see through it. The poor woman had taken up the opinion, that difficult and unintelligible language was one test of a gentleman; and her son by the use of such language, let no opportunity pass of confirming her in this opinion, and establishing his own claims to the character.

"Where did you ride to this mornin' Misther Hycy?"

"Down to take a look at Tom Burton's mare, Crazy Jane, ma'am:--

"'Away, my boys, to horse away,
The Chase admits of no delay--'"

"Tom Burton!" re-echoed the father with a groan; "an so you're in Tom Burton's hands! A swindlin', horse-dalin' scoundrel that would chate St. Pether. Hycy, my man, if you go to look for wool to Tom you'll come home shorn."

"'Our vicar still preaches that Peter and Poule
Laid a swinging long curse on the bonny brown bowl,
That there's wrath and despair--"

Thank you, father--much obliged; you entertain a good opinion of me."

"Do I, faith? Don't be too sure of that."

"I've bought her at any rate," said Hycy--"thirty-five's the figure; but she's a dead bargain at fifty."

"Bought her!" exclaimed the father; "an' how, in God's name, do you expect to pay for her?"

"By an order on a very excellent, worthy man and gentleman-farmer--ycleped James Burke, Esquire--who has the honor of being father to that ornament of the barony, Hycy Burke, the accomplished. My worthy sire will fork out."

"If I do, that I may--"

"Silence, poor creature!" said his wife, clapping her hand upon his mouth--"make no rash or vulgar oaths. Surely, Misther Burke--"

"How often did I bid you not to misther me? Holy scrapers, am I to be misthered and pesthered this way, an' my name plane Jemmy Burke!"

"You see, Hycy, the vulgarian will come out," said his mother. "I say, Misther Burke, are you to see your son worse mounted at the Herringstown Hunt than any other gentleman among them? Have you no pride?

"No, thank God! barin' that I'm an honest man an' no gentleman; an', as for Hycy, Rosha--"

"Mrs. Burke, father, if you please," interposed Hycy; "remember who your wife is at all events."

"Faith, Hycy, she'll come better off if I forget that same; but I tell you that instead of bein' the laughin'-stock of the same Hunt, it's betune the stilts of a plough you ought to be, or out in the fields keepin' the men to their business."

"I paid three guineas earnest money, at all events," said the son; "but 'it matters not,' as the preacher says--

"'When I was at home I was merry and frisky,
My dad kept a pig and my mother sold whiskey'--

Beg pardon, mother, no allusion--my word and honor none--to you I mean--

"'My uncle was rich, but would never be aisy
Till I was enlisted by Corporal Casey.'

Fine times in the army, Mr. Burke, with every prospect of a speedy promotion. Mother, my stomach craves its matutinal supply--I'm in excellent condition for breakfast."

"It's ready. Jemmy, you'll--Misther Burke, I mane--you'll pay for Misther Hycy's mare."

"If I do--you'll live to see it, that's all. Give the boy his breakwhist."

"Thank you, worthy father--much obliged for your generosity--

"'Oh, love is the soul of a nate Irishman
He loves all that's lovely, loves all that he can,
With his sprig of--'

Ah, Peety Dhu, how are you, my worthy peripatetic? Why, this daughter of yours is getting quite a Hebe on our hands. Mrs. Burke, breakfast--breakfast, madam, as you love Hycy, the accomplished." So saying, Hycy the accomplished proceeded to the parlor we have described, followed by his maternal relative, as he often called his mother.

"Well, upon my word and honor, mother," said the aforesaid Hycy, who knew and played upon his mother's weak points, "it is a sad thing to see such a woman as you are, married to a man who has neither the spirit nor feelings of a gentleman--my word and honor it is."

"I feel that, Hycy, but there's no help for spilt milk; we must only make the best of a bad bargain. Are you coming to your breakfast," she shouted, calling to honest Jemmy, who still sat on the hob ruminating with a kind of placid vexation over his son's extravagance--"your tay's filled out!"

"There let it," he replied, "I'll have none of your plash to-day; I tuck my skinful of good stiff stirabout that's worth a shipload of it. Drink it yourselves--I'm no gintleman."

"Arrah, when did you find that out, Misther Burke?" she shouted back again.

"To his friends and acquaintances it is anything but a recent disco very," added Hycy; and each complimented the observation of the other with a hearty laugh, during which the object of it went out to the fields to join the men.

"I'm afraid it's no go, mother," proceeded the son, when breakfast was finished--"he won't stand it. Ah, if both my parents were of the same geometrical proportion, there would be little difficulty in this business; but upon my honor and reputation, my dear mother, I think between you and me that my father's a gross abstraction--a most substantial and ponderous apparition."

"An' didn't I know that an' say that too all along?" replied his mother, catching as much of the high English from him as she could manage: "however, lave the enumeration of the mare to me. It'll go hard or I'll get it out of him."

"It is done," he replied; "your stratagetic powers are great, my dear mother, consequently it is left in your hands."

Hycy, whilst in the kitchen, cast his eye several times upon the handsome young daughter of Peety Dhu, a circumstance to which we owe the instance of benevolent patronage now about to be recorded.

"Mother," he proceeds, "I think it would be a charity to rescue that interesting little girl of Peety Dhu's from a life of mendicancy."

"From a what?" she asked, staring at him.

"Why," he replied, now really anxious to make himself understood--"from the disgraceful line of life he's bringin' her up to. You should take her in and provide for her."

"When I do, Hycy," replied his mother, bridling, "it won't be a beggar's daughter nor a niece of Philip Hogan's--sorrow bit."

"As for her being a niece of Hogan's, you know it is by his mother's side; but wouldn't it be a feather in her cap to get under the protection of a highly respectable woman, though? The patronage of a person like you, Mrs. Burke, would be the making of her--my word and honor it would."

"Hem!--ahem!--do you think so, Hycy?"

"Tut, mother--that indeed!--can there be a doubt about it?"

"Well then, in that case, I think she may stay--that is, if the father will consent to it."

"Thank you, mother, for that example of protection and benevolence. I feel that all my virtues certainly proceed from your side of the house and are derived from yourself--there can be no doubt of that."

"Indeed I think so myself, Hycy, for where else would you get them? You have the M'Swiggin nose; an' it can't be from any one else you take your high notions. All you show of the gentleman, Hycy, it's not hard to name them you have it from, I believe."

"Spoken like a Sybil. Mother, within the whole range of my female acquaintances I don't know a woman that has in her so much of the gentleman as yourself--my word and honor, mother."

"Behave, Hycy--behave now," she replied, simpering; "however truth's truth, at any rate."

We need scarcely say that the poor mendicant was delighted at the notion of having his daughter placed in the family of so warm and independent a man as Jemmy Burke. Yet the poor little fellow did not separate from the girl without a strong manifestation of the affection he bore her. She was his only child--the humble but solitary flower that blossomed for him upon the desert of life.

"I lave her wid you," he said, addressing Mrs. Burke with tears in his eyes, "as the only treasure an' happiness I have in this world. She is the poor man's lamb, as I have hard read out of Scripture wanst; an' in lavin' her undher your care, I lave all my little hopes in this world wid her. I trust, ma'am, you'll guard her an' look afther her as if she was one of your own."

This unlucky allusion might have broken up the whole contemplated arrangement, had not Hycy stepped in to avert from Peety the offended pride of the patroness.

"I hope, Peety," he said, "that you are fully sensible of the honor Mrs. Burke does you and your daughter by taking the girl under her protection and patronage?"

"I am, God knows."

"And of the advantage it is to get her near so respectable a woman--so highly respectable a woman?"

"I am, in troth."

"And that it may be the making of your daughter's fortune?"

"It may, indeed, Masther Hycy."

"And that there's no other woman of high respectability in the parish capable of elevating her to the true principles of double and simple proportion?"

"No, in throth, sir, I don't think there is."

"Nor that can teach her the newest theories in dogmatic theology and metaphysics, together with the whole system of Algebraic Equations if the girl should require them?"

"Divil another woman in the barony can match her at them by all accounts," replied Peety, catching the earnest enthusiasm of Hycy's manner.

"That will do, Peety; you see yourself, mother," he added, taking her aside and speaking in a low voice, "that the little fellow knows right well the advantages of having her under your care and protection; and it's very much to his credit, and speaks very highly for his metempsychosis that he does so--hem!"

"He was always a daicent, sinsible, poor creature of his kind," replied his mother "besides, Hycy, between you and me, she'll be more than worth her bit."

"There now, Peety," said her son, turning towards the mendicant; "it's all settled--wait now for a minute till I write a couple of notes, which you must deliver for me."

Peety sat accordingly, and commenced to lay down for his daughter's guidance and conduct such instructions as he deemed suitable to the situation she was about to enter and the new duties that necessarily devolved upon her.

In due time Hycy appeared, and placing two letters in Peety's hands, said--"Go, Peety, to Gerald Cavanagh's, of Fenton's Farm, and if you can get an opportunity, slip that note into Kathleen's hands--this, mark, with the corner turned down--you won't forget that?"

"No, sir."

"Very well--you're then to proceed to Tom M'Mahon's, and if you find Bryan, his son, there, give him this; and if he's at the mountain farm of Ahadarra, go to him. I don't expect an answer from Kathleen Cavanagh, but I do from Bryan M'Mahon; and mark me, Peety."

"I do, sir."

"Are you sure you do?"

"Sartin, sir."

"Silent as the grave then is the word in both cases--but if I ever hear--"

"That's enough, Masther Hycy; when the grave spakes about it so will I."

Peety took the letters and disappeared with an air rendered important by the trust reposed in him; whilst Mrs. Burke looked inquiringly at her son, as if her curiosity were a good deal excited.

"One of them is to Kate or Kathleen Cavanagh, as they call her," said Hycy, in reply to her looks; "and the other for Bryan M'Mahon, who is soft and generous--probatum est. I want to know if he'll stand for thirty-five--and as for Kate, I'm making love to her, you must know."

"Kathleen Cavanagh," replied his mother; "I'll never lend my privileges to sich match."

"Match!" exclaimed Hycy, coolly.

"Ah," she replied warmly; "match or marriage will never--"

"Marriage!" he repeated, "why, my most amiable maternal relative, do you mean to insinuate to Hycy the accomplished, that he is obliged to propose either match or marriage to every girl he makes love to? What a prosaic world you'd have of it, my dear Mrs. Burke. This, ma'am, is only an agreeable flirtation--not but that it's possible there may be something in the shape of a noose matrimonial dangling in the background. She combines, no doubt, in her unrivalled person, the qualities of Hebe, Venus, and Diana--Hebe in youth, Venus in beauty, and Diana in wisdom; so it's said, but I trust incorrectly, as respects one of them--good-bye, mother--try your influence as touching Crazy Jane, and report favorably--

"'Friend of my soul, this goblet sip,
'Twill chase the pensive tear. &c.;'" _

Read next: Chapter 2. Gerald Cavanagh And His Family


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