Pat o' Nine Tales, and one over

Front matter

PRESS OPINIONS OF "POTHEEN PUNCH." FREEMAN'S JOURNAL. "We have not read anything more characteristically Irish. It professes to be a series of Irish after-dinner stories of 'love-making, fun, and fighting,' and it could not be better described. We have read the book with immense enjoyment. It has a deal of Lever's rollicking fun. 'A Fox-hunt by Moon light,' for example, is like a chapter from Charles O'Malley, told with a rattling humour that never flags. ' The Bight Man Hanged ' and ' Upside Down' are also amongst the stories that will amply repay the reader. The volume has been admirably produced by Messrs. Gill & Son." DAILY NEWS, February 10, 1891. "'Potheen Punch,' by Crom-a-Boo (Gill, Dublin), is a little volume of stories which have appeared in Christmas numbers of United Ireland. The author is Mr. Bodkin, the gentleman who until recently acted as Mr. O'Brien's locum tenens in the editorial chair of that paper, and who was so unceremoni ously ejected by Mr. Parnell.

His idea of stringing these stories together is an ingenious one. The scene is laid in Connemara during the period of Lord Carlyle's lieutenancy. Lord Carlyle was very near to wanting a meal, owing to the unfriendly feeling of Lord Leitrim. Arriving in Maam, he had the door of the inn slammed in his face by Lord Leitrim's order, and the nearest place was Cong, at a distance of twelve miles. The incident is historic. The author then imagines the Lord Lieutenant to have obtained a dinner at Cong only by sitting down at a convivial gathering, where every man has to tell a tale or ' drink a quart of salt water.' There is a good deal of rollicking Irish humour in the tales, as well as some capital character sketching." LITERARY WORLD. " The majority of the stories are ' strong and hot ' enough in all conscience for any Nationalist, however extreme his views may be, and to him they will doubtless be ' sweet ' too ; but we question whether loyalists will find the flavour as much to their liking.

Some of the stories are amusing." NORTHERN WHIC, December 23, 1890. "The stories are of all kinds, /trtmg, hot, and sweet, but none the less funny and interesting." I 13MXS4 GLASGOW HERALD, December 31, 1890. "... There is too much direct and indirect abuse of ' the Castle,' and too much sentimental glorification of the traditional weaknesses of the Irishman, as exhibited, say, in the Boucicaultian plays, to make 'Potheen Punch,' in spite of its rollicking humour, an acceptable ' brew ' for those who are not of the author's political persuasion." MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. "The tales are all racy of the soil; many of them are irresistibly droll, and love-making, fun, and fighting are prominent features in them." CORK DAILY HERALD, November 30, 1891. " They are all thoroughly racy of the soil, and the fact has been appreciated by our American cousins, who, we presume, are extensively utilising them at the present moment.

Chapter II The Irish Slave-driver

That very jovial and pleasant gentleman, Mr. Jemmy Jurden, was little affected by these things. His joke was not less broad nor his laugh less merry because of the young heir's death or the young mother's sickness, and his round, red, handsome face — handsome with a good-humoured, sensuous beauty — shone pleasantly as ever out of its framework of crisp brown curls, with scarcely a touch of silver in them, though Jemmy Jurden was verging on forty. "An easy conscience and lots of good whisky-punch," he was accustomed to say, "keeps a man young for ever." His conscience never troubled him, anyhow — a good-humoured, pleasant-spoken conscience, like its master, and not particular about trifles. Jemmy Jurden found the world a pleasant place, and said so. It smiled upon him, and he paid it back in hearty laughter.

In all kinds of sport he excelled. He was the best shot in the country side. He did not care much for big shooting-parties, it is true ; he liked a quiet day by himself, with "a boy" (meaning thereby a strong man or two) "to carry the bag." The sport was not so good for other visitors when Mr. Jemmy Jurden had had his "quiet day " over the ground. Yachting, too, was a fancy of his, and he had a neat little boat of his own, and could trawl for turbot or sole with more skill than the best fisherman of them all. He could throw a fly like a midge on stream or lake, and the wariest trout or salmon was not proof against his beguilement. He did not care for hunting — "a dare-devil, senseless amusement," he called it. But there were few men with a better eye for a horse, or more adroit in turning an honest (or dishonest) penny on the noble quadruped.

He was popularly and properly supposed to be wealthy. For Geoffrey Lewin was a careless and generous employer, and Jemmy Jurden was a skilful and not over-scrupulous servant. But no beggar ever saw the colour of his money — even the brown colour. He was very popular amongst the richer classes, who wanted nothing from him, and whom it was his interest to please. For, apart from his proficiency in all field sports, he sang a good song and told a good story ; took a hand cheerily in all games of skill or chance in which money was to be lost and won — generally lost by some one else and won by Mr. Jurden. In virtue of these manifold accomplishments, he was known as " a jolly, good natured, good -hearted fellow," who had a kind word for everybody, and for whom everybody had a good word in return.

Nor was he by any means a miser. He was judiciously lavish in everything pertaining to his own en joyment. " The best of everything," he was accustomed to say, "was good enough for the likes of him," and he generally managed to get what he wanted. The windows are wide open in the dining-parlour of Mr. Jemmy Jurden's "little box," as he modestly called it — a square, substantial stone house, with a small flower-plot in front, and a large garden in the rear. The windows were wide open, for the breath of the July evening is sultry, and Mr. Jurden and his single guest have wheeled the table, with the wine decanters and punch materials on it, close up to the window, and are smoking and drinking there, looking out on the trim expanse of garden, where the best fruit and vegetables duly appear in their respective seasons.

"It cannot be done, indeed, Mr. James," says the guest — a lean, long man, with hooked nose and thin lips, whose fixed grin is a ghastly mockery of a smile. " I'm offering you very near once and a quarter what the land brings in at present from all the tenants, besides the little compliment for "— "We won't speak of that, if you please, Mr. Lynam," interposed Mr. jurden, with frank good humour, yet not without a touch of reproach in his tone. " Surely you don't think, sir, that any little compliment to myself would make me forget my duty to my principal ? " Mr. Lynam held up two large, bony hands, palm outward, in virtuous horror at such a thought. " But really now," he urged, " me good sir, I have gone as far as possible to meet your wishes. The price of cattle may go down any day ; then where would I be with money paid down and rent in advance ?

I really cannot afford another farding. Don't be too hard on me now — don't, Mr. James." Very vile did the reptile look at that moment, with thin lips and watery eyes, pleading piteously to be allowed to rob his neighbours at the smallest possible cost to himself. But he had met his match in the jolly, genial gentleman whom he addressed. Jemmy Jurden prided himself — not without cause — that he could drive a hard bargain with the remorselessness of a steel-faced hammer driving a reluctant nail into a tough board, while all the time his face beamed all over with careless good humour. "All right, Lynam," he said, with unabated jollity. "I wouldn't press you for the world. You're the best judge of what's good for yourself, and if you don't want the land you won't take it. Fill your tumbler again — the decanter is with you.

Are you going to the Knockcarren races on Wednesday 1 ' Lynam fidgeted uneasily in his chair. He felt as an intelligent salmon may be supposed to feel when the hook is firm in his gills, and a strong hand and supple wrist are at the end of the yielding rod. " It's no very pleasant thing," he whined, " for a man to be putting the poor creatures out of the houses they've been in for generations, and taking the place over their heads and behind their backs, as it were. It's by no means an agreeable thing to do in the face of the country. You'll be consider ing that in the rent, won't you, Mr. James . ' Mr. James laughed out a jolly, good-humoured laugh. " You want an allowance for conscientious scruples or injury to your feelings?" he said. "I'm afraid I cannot allow you more than sixpence — that's about the market value.

But you see no one wants you to do any of these cruel things if it goes so much against your own tender heart." "If I could get the place at once," Lynam broke out in a new direction, " there might be something to be said. But I suppose it isn't till after April next you could be putting me in, anyways, and that wouldn't suit me at all, becase " — " Would November or December suit you better ? " broke in Mr. Jurden, cutting his lamentations sharply across in the middle. "Faith, it would so, sure. It's the winterage and the spring grass I am after mostly ; but where's the use of talking that ways when it can't be done? Sure there is the notice to quit to be served, and " — " Did you ever see a copy of my printed receipt forms ? " Mr. Jurden cut in again abruptly, without any relevance, as it seemed, to the matter in hand.

"No? I thought not. Well, I'll show you one. It's an ingenious little contrivance enough." He stood up, and walked to a stout, dark mahogany writing-table in the corner of the room, unlocked one of the drawers, took from it what looked like a stout cheque-book, and set it down in front of Mr. Lynam. It was his book of receipt forms, commonplace enough on the face of them — Received from the sum of , etc. But Mr. Jurden, with his finger and thumb, doubled back one of the forms, and showed a notice to quit neatly printed on the back. " It saves a lot of trouble," he explained, as he put the book away and came back to his punch, " and I can always have the land when I want it. You can walk quietly into possession before Christmas if you are willing to pay your footing properly." " I will go half-a-crown more an acre," said Mr. Lynam slowly.

Jemmy Jurden raised his eyes, and looked " No " at him. " And fifty pounds more towards preliminary expenses," Lynam went on falteringly. Jemmy Jurden's glance drooped complacently on his tumbler of whisky-punch, which he sipped deliberately before he spoke again. "I suppose I must take it," he said after a brief pause, during which Lynam fidgeted in his chair. " My duty is to get the best rent I can for the landlord, and there is no better offer going. Will a lease for twenty-one years suit ? " Lynam nodded. " And when can you let me have a cheque for these little preliminary expenses?" "Half to-morrow," said Lynam, "half the day after I am put into possession." "All right," laughed the other good-humouredly. "It will come in handy as a Christmas box. Fill your glass and push back the decanter, and we'll wet the bargain.

Here's God-speed to the old tenants, and good luck to the new. How does that suit you for a toast ? ' A couple of hours later, when Mr. Jurden helped Mr. Lynam into his rough greatcoat in the hall, he was as jolly and as self-complacent as ever, his limbs as steady, his head and heart as cool ; but the long legs of his guest trembled at the knees with liquor and excitement, and it may be in some secret corner of his callous, greedy heart there was a quivering too of something that in a less sordid man would have been remorse. Brightly and softly came the early autumn over the fair land of Clonarney, changing the fruit and corn from green to gold, flushing the woods with hectic beauty, and warming the broad, smooth waters of the bay with rosy sunsets. The liberal sunshine fell with indiscriminating splendour on the mansion-house of Clonarney — stately, silent, and deserted — and on the bustling little village of Cloonfad all alive with autumn labour.

Down the road by the village came Jemmy Jurden on a blue-skied, sunshiny morning in the beginning of August, mounted on a nut-brown cob, with a body like a barrel set on four stout pillars, a cob that could trot twelve miles an hour, and leap very nearly his own height of solid wall with fourteen stone on his back. Jemmy had bought him for a ten-pound note from a tenant in arrears. In the best of good humour was that pleasant gentleman that pleasant morning, as he bowled swiftly along the road on his bargain of horseflesh. A dry smile depressed the corners of his lips as he glanced up towards the village of Cloonfad. He drew up suddenly at a wide wooden gate which broke the line of hedgerow flushed scarlet with the rich crop of haws. In the field inside, Darby Donnellan, with brawny arms bare to the elbow, was mowing his "bit of red clover."

Jemmy Jurden turned half round in the saddle, with his hand on the broad buttocks of his horse, and watched him with a curious slave-owning feeling in his mind that here was an animal worth money. Darby swung the scythe with long, even sweeps, and at every masterful stroke the rich red blossoms fell in thick swathes. The air was redolent of the sweet, warm perfume, and the bees buzzed about the field, eager, as it seemed, for the last sip from the honey-bearing blossoms. But Mr. Jurden, as he looked over the gate, cared for none of these things. He calculated mentally how much an acre the land was worth, and determined in his own mind that cunning Mike Lynam had not made such a bad bargain after all. " I suppose I may as well give the fellow a hint," he muttered to himself; "it will save trouble afterwards."

Then his voice rang out in a lusty shout — " Hallo, Darby ! " The tall figure straightened itself as the sound reached it to six-feet-four of magnificent manhood, and the point of the scythe-blade dropped innocuous amongst the flowers. " Here ! " rang out Jurden's voice again. With an answering cry, "All right, yer honour," Darby came striding down on the green path between two swathes of cut grass, towards the gate. He wiped the honest sweat from his forehead with his rough sleeve as he came, and, grasping the top bar of the five-foot gate with his two great hands, leant over it, his face almost on a level with the agent's, as he sat on horseback in the road outside. " God bless the work, Darby," said Mr. Jurden. "You too, sir," responded Darby, looking at him with frank blue eyes— all the bluer from the flushed face they were set in.

"Fine crop of clover you have here, Darby," said Mr. Jurden. " The finest this many a year, praise be to God ! " responded Darby. Then there was a pause. For the first time in his life Jemmy Jurden had a little difficulty in saying what he wanted to say — not, indeed, that he was troubled by sorrow or pity for the man, or any foolish scruple of that kind ; but somehow the words would not come handy to tell this man that faced him so smilingly that before winter came he would have him driven out of his house and home with wife and child, like trespassing cattle out of a field. Yet this was precisely what he wanted to tell him. It may be, too, as he marked that great figure filling the passage and towering over the gate, there was lurking in the back of his head a slight touch of fear how the news might be taken.

While the pause lasted a lark sang the first three stanzas of his ode to the sun, and in the silence the liquid notes came dropping down out of the blue sky. " You won't care to leave this place, Darby ? " said Jemmy Jurden, abruptly breaking in on the lark's song with voice rich, lusty, and good-humoured. " Faith, I've no thought of laving it, yer honour," replied Darby, with a grin. "Didn't me and me father, and his father before him, live in the land and work it, and it's mesel' that's gettin' the return of their labour?" "That's all right, Darby," said the agent curtly; "but, after all, you must remember that the place is Mr. Lewin's, not yours, nor your father's, nor your grandfather's either, for that matter. Mr. Lewin wants the best return for his land, and I'm bound to get it for him, what's more.

You know you got a notice to quit on the back of your receipt." " Sure I paid no heed to that same," said Darby, still grinning. " That comes regular every gale day." " Long threatening comes at last, Darby. I've got a good offer for the whole place in one lot before Christmas, and I've taken it, and you'll have to go with the rest. So make your preparations in time." For one instant Darby looked straight at him with a sudden light, half-fear, half-anger, in his blue eyes. But the jolly, good-humoured face of the agent set his mind at rest in a moment. He laughed out loud with a big, full-voiced laugh that frightened the birds out of the hedge rows. " You were always fond of your joke, Mister James," he said. " But, faith, you tuck a start out of me heart for the moment." "Don't say again I didn't give you notice, anyway," said Jemmy Jurden, joining in the laugh, and perhaps not half sorry his warning was so received.

" Never doubt me, yer honour. Here, Polly," he cried to his wife coming down the boreen at the moment, with a chubby child following her as the calf follows the cow. "Here, Polly, come here, will you? Sure we are to be all put out next Christmas Day, the gossoon and all, and Mister James no less is the man that will do it." Molly looked at the smiling face of Mr. James, and entered at once into the spirit of the joke. " We're thankful to yer honour," she said, with a smile that was a flash of dark eyes and white teeth, dropping him a demure curtsey that brought the skirt of her red petticoat down over the trim bare ankles. But the instinct of the child was truer. It first glanced into the smiling face of Mr. Jurden, and then with a frightened whimper hid its own face in its mammy's gown. It was certainly a curious thing that, for all his jolly, good humoured face and voice, Mr. James Jurden was no favourite with children or dogs.

On the other hand, it must be confessed that children were in his view a meaningless nuisance. Dogs might sometimes have a money value, therefore there was more to be said in favour of dogs. " Good-bye, Darby — good-bye, Mrs. Donnellan. Don't say again I took you by surprise." " Good-bye, and God speed yer honour," they cried together in return. " Sure it was yourself that always had the funny ways wid you." But little Patsey, who was held aloft in his father's great arms to say "Day, day" to the nice gentleman, rebelled, and howled an inarticulate execration after him. "He's nawful wicked man," explained little Patsey, sobbing, while the tears irrigated his muddy cheeks in channels. " He'd wobble poor Patsey. He gave three nawful beats of his whip to the big horse when he gabbled away. "Come in to breck-brack, daddy," he cried, the April smile of infancy shining through his tears ; " it's all ready on table."

Then with an effort at conciliation he called out, "Day, day— clay, day," to the rapidly disappearing figure of the agent, nearly quarter of a mile away. Father and mother laughed out loud and joyously, more because the laughter was in their hearts than for any other reason, and the child laughed with them. The sound overtook Jemmy Jurden as he cantered away. " You will laugh the other side of your mouths about Christmas time," he murmured, and then he laughed pleasantly to himself at the joke of the thing. Meanwhile Darby swung his little boy with a wide sweep into the air and planted him in triumph on his shoulder while he walked back to his cottage. When he came where the mown clover lay in long scarlet sweeps like the ridges of a red sea, he lifted the little one lightly to the ground and rolled him in the new-mown hay, burying him in the soft blossoms of the clover, while the pretty treble of the child's laughter mingled in pleasant duet with the deep bass of the father.

Polly watched them for a few moments with delighted, lovelit eyes ; then suddenly broke in on their sport with affected impatience. " Bad scran to you, Darby," she cried ; " have done, now, will you ? Come on to your breakfast, and let Patsey be. Faith, you're a bigger baby yersel' than what he is." Darby picked up his little one where he lay like a rosy cheeked apple tumbled in the grass, tossed him again on his shoulder, and ran up the lane, like a great schoolboy, to his cottage, where a wholesome and abundant meal awaited him. The new potatoes, their clean jackets torn here and there, and the soft white flesh showing through, smoked in a white wicker " skib," on a white deal table, and on either side of the wooden platter stood a dish of butter fresh from the churn, and a wooden bowl of milk fresh from the cow.

Darby fed with an appetite bred by three hours' honest work in the fresh morning air. Then, as he sat back in his chair for one " shuck " of the pipe, while young Patsey climbed to his knee, ho laughed to himself again at the notion of Mr. James turning him out of the place without rhyme or reason, and wondered what put such a queer thought in his head as to make a joke of the like. But Mr. Jemmy Jurden was more explicit to the other inhabitants of the little village of Cloonfad, or they were less confiding. For soon the rumour of the impending clearance took definite and dreadful shape, and was buzzed about from cottage to cottage in terrified whispers. Strange how completely men's souls are imbued and sub dued by the spirit of the times in which they live. Amongst those unhappy men and women, about to be robbed by highhanded, callous injustice of their happy homes and all the fruits of their lives' labour, — about to be cast suddenly with their little ones adrift on the world,— there was much fear and sorrow — of anger scarcely a trace.

Chapter III Eviction

Still Darby Donnellan's simple faith in the good heart of the good-humoured agent was not to be shaken. Sometimes he laughed ; sometimes he was half angry at what he called " the foolishness of the neighbours " in selling off their crops and cattle at whatever they would fetch, striving without success to sell off even their few sticks of furniture, "making ready," as they said, " against the time they would be put out on the roadside." Never for one instant was Darby tempted to follow their example. He lived and laughed and worked untouched by the shadow of the coming evil. His cottage was never neater, nor his farmyard in tidier trim for the winter, than on that dismal November day, when the blow fell at last, and the crowbar brigade invaded the pleasant little village of Cloonfad. There were a dozen bailiffs carrying crowbars and pick axes, and with them half a dozen police from the nearest barrack at Curraroe, twelve Irish miles away.

There was a young sub-inspector with a long blonde moustache, who walked apart, smoking a cigar, and there was an elderly sergeant with a short grey beard, who was in charge of the police. Jemmy Jurden attended in his duplicate capacity of agent and sub-sheriff. The brigade fell to work like men used to their vile trade. No resistance was offered. The fires were quenched and the furniture flung roughly out on the open space before the doors. Then the crowbar and pickaxe and hatchet went to work at the walls, while some climbed on the roof and tore away the thatch, scattering it to the winds, and broke down the rafters, glorying, as it almost seemed, in the work of destruction. In sad groups, men, women, and children, huddled to gether like frightened cattle, looked on with pale-faced, apathetic despair that was a thousand times more terrible than anger.

It was true that they had not been buoyed up by the foolish confidence of poor Darby Donnellan. They knew the crowbar brigade was coining. But they never realised the horror of the thing until they stood by, helpless and hopeless, and saw the vile work done. With the best (or the worst) will in the world the bailiffs got on but slowly. The houses were well and firmly built, and yielded reluctantly and not without resistance to crowbar and pickaxe and hatchet. The quick business eye of Mr. Jemmy Jurden found the difficulty, and his ingenious mind, fertile in devices, found the remedy. "This will never do," he said, turning to young Sub inspector Barnard. " We will have to bring all our men here again to-morrow if we cannot get on quicker than this." " 1 say, boys," he cried cheerily, stepping up to a group of four or five men that were gazing blankly at the work of destruction — " I say, boys, there is no use crying over spilt milk, you know ; and yours is spilt, and no mistake.

Come, make the best of a bad bargain. I will give you five shillings apiece all round if you will lend a hand with the crowbar or pickaxe ; you won't earn a day's wages like that again in a hurry." There was a little stir of surprise amongst them for a moment. Then one cried out desperately, " I don't care if I do ; come on, boys, and the divil take the hindmost ; " and, seizing a crowbar, he struck furious blows at the found ations of his own house, working with a feverish eagerness. The others followed his example, though he was the only one that struck at his own home. The new recruits worked with such a will they completely eclipsed the regular brigade. Cottage after cottage tumbled down, a heap of unsightly ruins, and when all was done the men took their wages and their departure quickly.

The broad sun was flaming red in the west, and the heavy clouds all round it were in a blood-red blaze, when the homeless outcasts went straggling off in disconsolate groups, — babes in arms, and old people on the grave's brink, —bound for the nearest village, five miles, or the nearest poorhouse, seven miles away. One house alone had up to this been left unvisited and untouched. It was the neatest and the largest in the village of Cloonfad. Darby Donnellan had been with the crowd and seen the hearths quenched and roofs tumbled. He looked on silently, a lowering frown creeping over that open, honest face of his like a thunder-cloud in summer, until it was all dark. Not a word he said ; not even an exclama tion of wonder, or fear, or pity broke from him like the rest. He looked on silently for a while, then, still silently, he walked back to his own cottage and was seen no more.

" Leave him for the last," whispered Jemmy to his friend the sub-inspector ; " he'll give a little trouble, I'm thinking, and it's as well the others should be out of the way first." So his cottage was left till the last ; and now in the red glare of the frosty sunset the whole eviction brigade moved down upon it. The cottage was silent and shut close — no sign of life within or around it. Jemmy Jurden walked to the closed door and knocked loudly with his stick. "I demand possession as sub-sheriff," he cried, "in the name of the law." Then, dropping his formal voice, he added, " Come, Darby, don't be a fool. We've come for possession and mean to get it. Out you must go ! You had better go quietly for your own sake." The answer came back through the thick wood like the deep, muffled growl of a great dog — " God help the man that crosses my threshold this day ! and for you, Jemmy Jurden, you smooth-faced, black hearted villain, keep out of reach of me two hands if you have luck on your side."