Terence McGowan, the Irish Tenant

Front matter

TEEENCE Mc GOWAN, THE IRISH TENANT. By G. L. TOTTENHAM. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. " Aud here and there, as up the crags you spring, Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path ; Yet deem not theBe devotion's offering — These are memorials frail of murderous wrath, * * * * * And grove and glen with thousand such are rife Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life." LONDON: SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 1870. [THE RIGHT OF TRANSLATION 13 RESEF.ED.]

Preface

. Notwithstanding its suspicious title, I feel myself at liberty, I think, to assert that this book is not merely a pamphlet in disguise. I am rather presumptuous enough to hope that, if any one will read it, and if it is as truthful a representation as I believe it to be of existing social relations in Ireland, it may act in some measure as a corrective of a good deal of that literature for which Mr. Gladstone recently returned thanks, and dispel, perhaps, a few of those erroneous impressions regarding Ireland which have been sown broadcast through the kingdom of late by casual and special tourists in the country. I am aware, of course, how little claim to attention one has at the present moment as an Irishman, and one not specially prejudiced on the side of lawlessness, and

PREFACE.

. IV how little accuracy and impartiality can be expected from, much less allowed to, a ruffian of the sort. But I can only plead that my materials have all been drawn from an erratic and independent personal experience, of considerably more tban one month's duration, and if they fail to carry with them the impress of truth, it will be from my own deficiency in the power of reproduction and arrangement, and not from any lack of reality in themselves. Should the murderous element appear exaggerated, the reader may be assured that it is owing to no love of sensational writing on my part. We have no executive government in Ireland ; the whole country is, and has been for the last three years, in a ferment of anarchy, more or less apparent under successive administrations ; and what truth, then^f pertinence would there be in drawing from that period an Arcadian picture of contentment and repose ? -r Iheland, March 5th, 1870. TERENCE Mc GOWAN 5 THE IRISH TENANT.

Chapter I

If one of those gold-laced, velveted, attitudinized old gentlemen who look down so sternly from their dark canvas upon the degenerate Irish dinner-tables of the present tfc£, could come back to life again once more for an autumnal tour through his native country, what a very new country it would seem to his specially resuscitated view ; and what a fund of mild amusement might be derived from trotting him about and watching the bewilderment of the ancestral mind, or possibly from practically joking him with notes for the astonishment and instrucvol. I. TERENCE Me GOWAN, tion of his fellow-shades on his return. The Arthur Young of his day he would find a perfectly obsolete authority; his stately forests entirely disappeared, jagged roots only and shattered trunks protruding from the overgrowing bog to show of what account they once had been, steam-reptiles now tortuously snorting through the midst.

Rough places would have been made smooth ; desert wastes converted into populous and smiling districts ; the savage of the mountains brought under ostensible subjection, and the wilderness all but made to blossom as the rose. Take even one of those more sober-coated in dividuals who have posed themselves with one leg in this present century, and let him loose from his constraining frame upon the scenes of his exploits in the wild reckless days that he remembers, and he would probably find more than enough of novelty to engage his interest until his leave expired. His breezy hills would be as fresh and bright and blue, perhaps, as in the old days, when, through storm and sunshine, he climbed them after the game which then exercised a right of possession over all. But the valleys, how changed !

The snipe-bog, where he had killed his thirty or forty couple on a shaking quagh, now a green cattle-pasture; cultivation creeping up the mountain sides, and pushing back the heather out of sight ; and, as the shadows roll across the distant slopes, white cottage walls coming out into the sun, and tiny curling wreaths of faint blue smoke far up the valley and along the wild loch shores, betokening husbandry and occupa tion unknown in the barren consulship of Plancus. The peasants, too, whom he sees jogging along the roads on horseback, or in market-carts, no longer the ragged half-starved wretches of his day, but, along with a better-fed and better-clad appearance, having something like a business air now grafted on the brimming humour, and laughing, rollicking, devil-may-care thoughtlessness which characterized the people he remembers.

Casting his eye, then, nearer home, he sees, alas, that the pet woodcock covert is no more ; but the same old trees still group about the house and fling their protecting shade around the old decaying walls, clustering together as if for mutual support against the familiar approach of the younger planting which feathers up the moun tain, and straggles over every barren knoll and hanging rock along the winding of the glen. From these upstarts they hold aristocratically aloof, yet whispering to the river as of old, and lending their cool shadows to the sunny pools as they wind along its course into the plain, where the broken restless life settles down at length into one deep long-gliding calm. The memories those dark rocks and shadow swept ravines stir up ! the tearing otter hunts, the wild baying echoes, the keen zest of remembered sport, the But we are gliding too unconsciously from the general into the particular, and fancying ourselves already occupying that green knoll on Knock Eion's side, from which we had proposed that an ancestor of the house of Rochfort should introduce you to his old demesne of Geraldscourt.

Suppose him there, then. The first object tbat his eye will light upon is old Phelim Me Gowan's cottage immediately below, where Phelim, and Phelim's father, and Phelim's grandfather have lived under successive generations of Rochfort rule, with full eradicatorial rights over the surrounding heather. The area of cultivation had considerably widened since the revived one's day. The very knoll on which he stood had been converted from a grouse into a sheep pasture, and the hare which his appari tion frightened from the rocky fern about it, had every reason, I believe, to be satisfied with the change. The little copse of natural birch upon the heather verge had grown to shelter size ; and mountain cattle were lounging about in the vicinity, cropping with some gusto the bits of rich green grass along the gravelly margin of the stream, winch gurgled down a rocky hollow alongside.

For all the reclamation, however, which had been going on, the heather was still pretty close, bloom ing away above out of sight beyond a sky-line broken into gaps by water-courses, or swelling into distant undulations far away, until some rugged mountain-mass of rock opposed a sudden front and loomed against the further view. Below, were potato gardens, mixed with meadow7, corn, and rushy pasture ; and the stream went bustling on through cultivation of all kinds and degrees of de merit until lost in the leafy depths of the Geralds court woods, through which their former owner could fancy he saw it as heretofore tumbling in tiny mimic grandeur, until its prattling life was merged in the rushing river which foamed along the bottom of the glen. Upon the further side, where the mountains broke into descending uplands confused with w7ood and rock and green, the old house stood boldly out above the river, embosomed in far-stretch ing trees, and with its windows glittering in the level sunlight.

It was one of those clear yellow autumn after noons, w7hen every feature comes out with such a mellow soft distinctness, that the white specks of sheep upon the distant hills appear within an easy walk, and every hedge, and ditch, and rock, and boundary mark are brought out in detail as if by some gigantic magnifying glass. Even the statues and broken vases upon the terrace were clearly visible ; and so, too, was the flutter of a woman's dress moving about among the flowers ; so, also, the seams upon the mountain face beyond, the cattle browsing to the heather line, the white streak of the dust-like waterfall, the hanging woods along the neighbouring glen, the limestone -intermingled scrub, and, farther down, the figure of a fisherman upon a jutting rock in yon far pool, which flashed into the plain in many a broken curve, until it spread into a straggling lake beneath the dead grey walls and buildings of the far-off town.

The old round-tower with its broken top shot up distinctly from the little island in the centre ; and the tiny sail of a pleasure-boat about the shore glinted as brightly in the distance as the whitewashed walls which dotted all the nearer plain, nestling up the valleys and the hills in dips and nooks and groups of trees, or out upon the middle of the rock-grown moor. It was a mixture of harmonious contrasts as picturesque and varied as the national character itself; the laughing waters sparkling on through all with ever flowing gaiety — turbulent, impetuous, and dark at times — and then emerging on a sudden into some lovely spot full of exquisite romance and tenderness and poetry. For the best part of two centuries now these glens had been in the possession of the Rochforts, and for some twenty years or so their present pro prietor had been enjoying much more than that indefinite popularity which Irishmen accord to any descendant of the real old stock, even though person ally he may have very little claim upon their affection.

The Rochforts — these Rochforts — were descended, we are told, from Sir Gerald Rochfort, a distinguished soldier in Elizabeth's reign. An assignment of escheated lands induced one of his descendants to settle in Ireland and purchase more land, and upon this, at the termination of the rebellion at the close of the seventeenth century, the then representative of the family came to reside, and built the original house of Geraldscourt. For beauty and for sport the neighbourhood was everything that could be desired, but there was just a little too much excitement accompanying it. Cromwell's Celtic remnant had their strongholds in the mountains immediately around, and made him continually aware of their existence in many bold and ingenious ways. His cattle were houghed and carried off, his retainers were murdered, he was besieged himself in his own castle, and it was a very odd thing if he ever had a crop to his name.

They were extremely pleasant neighbours, these exasperated Celts,* who knew that no one would be foolhardy enough to follow them into their own domains, and therefore played off their little amenities upon country gentlemen — whom they considered intruders, with much the same impunity as they are humanely permitted to enjoy at the present day. Gradually, however, the kind treatment of those immediately around the invader's residence began to make itself felt in widening ripples ; and as the years passed on, and the indifference of long habit began to render the peasantry more acquiescent in the appropriation of their pro perty, a more conciliatory demeanour came to be adopted, an attachment sprang up between the lord of the soil and his unwilling dependants, and the oppressor by degrees became looked upon as a benefactor.

Successive generations fostered the growing feeling, and mutual goodwill and kindness slowly broadened down from precedent to precedent, * Even now, " The curse of Cromwell on yon I" is a common expression among the mountain peasantry. until it reached the enthusiastic devotion which the tenantry of the Geraldscourt estate felt now for Alan Rochfort, their present landlord. Fervent and demonstrative blessings followed him wherever he went. " There never was a friend to the poor like him ; the Lord preserve him and keep him, and send him his health. Not a widow on the estate, or a man at all would he ever turn out upon the road ; that God Almighty may reward him, for he's a good, kind gentleman this minute, and so were them before him. If it hadn't been for the way he stood to them in the famine times, where w7ould they be now?" &c, &c, with bouquets of blessings to follow ; and although the good people might not realize the full drift of their fluency, they had a latent belief in the efficacy of their intercession, and dealt it out in a profusion corresponding to their gratitude.

His popularity, however, was not entirely due to mere benevolence and the possession of other generous qualities, such as make their way to the Irish heart. He might have had all these, and yet lacked the one crowning virtue of a landlord iu the eyes of an Irish tenantry — negligence in the management of his property. He was as indolent about business, as thoughtless and as careless as any of themselves. They were allowed to do just what they pleased with their land : exhaust, subdivide, sublet, anything; and when they naturally fell into longarrears of rent, and came with piteous tales of distress and loss, and so forth, he would forgive them the whole, and let them have a fair start to go and do the same again. Then, of all times, he was, of course, the real gentleman entirely, long life to his honour ! and the extravagant attachment which such careless generosity won for him, may possibly have compensated, more or less, for the depressing contemplation of yearly increasing incumbrances, with the legacy of mortgages which the famine year had bequeathed to the property.

These continual additions were becoming a burden almost too great for it to bear, particularly with rents so irregularly paid ; and whenever Alan Rochfort did go into business, he came out of it in a melancholy fit, the more distress ing because such moods were with him so very rare. But, after all, he would persuade himself to think, what did it matter ? His daughter would have her mother's fortune— he was the last of his house — his boy, his handsome boy, who was to have inherited all the spirit and vigour of his name, for whom it would have been an object to keep the old place from the hammer, he was gone, and his interest in life seemed to have been lost since that day, when they laid him out of sight, and he was left standing by the vault, alone. The sunlight might play upon the deep, and his manner might seem invariably gay, but there were times when the longing, yearning love, which years had not dimmed, came rushing back in full tide upon his heart, and as he thought of the blue, laughing eyes, which used to look up at him so brightly and so freshly, and the curly hair through which he longed to run his hand once more, and pictured what a pride he should have been at that moment feeling in him had he lived ; at such moments no human heart could have felt a deeper melancholy than his.

Few of his numerous friends knew or suspected what a depth of love and tenderness his outside gaiety concealed. To them he w7as the gay and laughing boon companion, the best company in Ireland, whose stories were repeated with additional zest as coming from him, and whose spirits were the life of every company in which they found them selves. Indeed, to those who only saw the free, breezy joyousness which he had inhaled from his own mountain scenery, his never-failing gaiety and elasticity of spirit were an increasing marvel ; for it was no secret at the Kildare Street Club that Alan Rochfort was an embarrassed man, that his property would not bear another shilling of mortgage, and that before long he must inevitably sell. Pity, they said ; for Geraldscourt was a fine old place. But it was always the way with old places in Ireland, and with the good fellows too : the one went to the attorneys, and the other to the dogs.

" And a better fellow than poor Alan never walked God's earth," another would chime in. " Ah ! he has never been the same altogether since he lost that boy of his. He might have pulled up a bit for him perhaps ; what a fine little chap he was to be sure." " His father all over, as well as I remember. But, bless you, Alan could never save for anybody ; he couldn't do it. He was the same at Eton, a generous extravagant young beggar, always ready to give away his money or anything to anybody who asked for it." So they talked and speculated, and discussed his affairs with a pitying sympathy which would have been far more galling to his Irish pride, if he could have heard it, than even the prospect of seeing the old woods cut down, and the place in the hands, perhaps, of one of those mushroom capitalists whose money and whose manners his soul abhorred.

Chapter II

The sun meanwhile has lowered to the mountain tops ; bright orange clouds are floating overhead, reflected in the light-blue calm of the river pools ; the rocky fringe along the woods is glowing with a deeper yellow as the glory gathers in the western sky, shedding a rosy blush upon the further hills ; the grey church spire gleams out among the light dappled foliage of the surrounding trees, and distant laughing voices are mingling clearly in the air with the nearer music of the chapel bell. All these, however, and other features of picturesque and pastoral interest peculiar to the hour, are of secondary importance, when you have caught sight of the wrinkled, wizened figure of Mrs. McGow7an, ne'e Sally Me Dermot, emerging from her door with a milk-can on either arm- TERENCE MC GOWAN, Her neck was bare in front ; her weather-beaten arms were bare ; her feet were bare ; her petticoat was short, and so were her legs ; a white frilled cap was on her head, a cur dog at her heels, and in her hand a basket of green food to reconcile her cows to parting with their milk.

Nimbly topping the loose stone wall which separated the cabbage-plot from the land, she pro ceeded towards the heather, unconcernedly enough for some distance, calling the cattle home with that wild peculiar cry which, echoing along the mountain side through the clear evening air, conveys such a charmingly suggestive notion of pastoral simplicity and repose. A hare suddenly starts from a rushy hollow in front, and crossing her path directly, awakens the slumbering ardour of the chase in her companion, who is very soon yelping aw7ay in pursuit, regard less of precipitous turf-banks, y7awning bog-holes, headlong somersaults, and the many other traps and pitfalls which await all those who forsake the paths of virtue for the unlawful indulgence of unbecoming desires. His mistress was too much occupied for the moment to make any futile remonstrance.

Her path being crossed in that way could portend no good, and she crossed herself, therefore, in pious fear before proceeding further; advancing then in the direction of the green knoll before mentioned with a less confident step and a tremble in her voice. A moment after she comes to a sudden stop, to all appearance "in a great taking entirely;" for a second she stands transfixed with terror, and then with a shriek throws down her cans, basket, greens, everything, and flies away down the slope as if a whole army of fiends were in pursuit ; never stopping until she had half-frightened her old man into a fit by throwing herself down in the furthest corner of the house, and declaring, on the testimony of all the coort of heaven, that she had seen the devil himself — no less ! " Blessed Mother of God, protect us !

What's that ye're sayin' ? " cried her husband in conster nation, the potato which he was cleaning dropping from his hand, and the knife remaining with sus pended action in the other. " Saints about us ! what is it you mane at all ? " vol. i. "Just that that I'm tellin' ye, man," she answered, wringing her hands up and down in an agony of superstitious terror; "an' this day Friday, too! Oh, what'll I do at all! Holy Mary, be about us this night, for we're lost without yiz ! Why did I quit wearin' the charm at all, at all ? I got rightly sarved with punishment now, anyway. Oh, Phaylim, what'll become of us, an' this day Friday ? " With that she set up a howl of miserable fear, which in nowise mitigated the lively apprehensive sen sations which she had communicated to that worthy man, her husband ; but which seemed, if duration was to be regarded as any test, to be the particular mode of expression which for the time afforded to her feelings the greatest measure of relief.

" God betwixt us and harm, Sally darlin', how did it happen at all ? " asked Phelim at length, when there seemed a prospect of a temporary lull. Her nerves, however, were not by any means sufficiently recovered yet to enable her to communicate with due effect a more circumstantial account. " It's a w7ondher I'm not a corpse this minute," she said. " Blessed saints ! did ever I get such a shcarrin' in the whole coorse o' my life before ? It's all through other I am with it, and not a colour I know whether it's not overlooked, maybe, I am, and the sinses takin' leave of me al-together. Are the boys below ? Maybe some harm 'ud be come to them." She rose trembling from her corner and looked out upon the meadow below, where two of her sons were making ksiy, and somewhat reassured by finding that they were still employed as before, she returned with her hands on her heart, and gasped out at length, in explanation, that the way of it was just this : — " I'd think that I wouldn't be more than, maybe, a couple of perches beyant the stone ditch, callin' to the crathurs of cows on the mountain, and the wee dog at my side, when, what would I see but an ould hare, that'll be in it different times back and for'ard, take a shtart across the very path before me, and crass out the ditch to the moor. ' There's no good,' says I to myself, ' to come out o' that,' so I just crossed myself wanst, and said a prayer or two sot luck, and was goin' on as it might be straight for the bit of a rise forenent the birch trees there above, when — och !

Phaylim, but it was the terrible sight all out, — I seen him sittin' on the very top o' the stone foregain the hip o' the hill " " Do ye tell me that ? " exclaimed Phelim, agape. " It's the very truth I'm tellin' ye," she con tinued, " and it's myself that knows that same, and rightly. On the very stone he was, lookin' at me ; and, Phaylim, the wicked look that he giv' me, just the wink of his eye, and then away back with him out o' sight altogether ; and I just dropped the cans out o' my hand and fled away down till I'd get under shelter of the house, and have the cross about me when he'd come afther." "Well, well! wasn't that a wonderful thing now ! " " That's just the history of it for ye, and there's no two ways of it. Musha ! may the Lord be merciful to us after that!" " And what sort of appearance had he, Sally avourneen ?

" " Is it what sort of appearance had he ? and what sort of appearance would he have, man alive ? 'Deed, an' ban-in' the flash he went off in, I'd not be sayin' what kind of shape he had on him, for that I may never sin, but it was the fearfullest sight ever I saw! " " Well, it was then, surely," rejoined Phelim, whose imagination required no further particularity of detail to enable him to form a full and vivid conception of every element of terror which the apparition must have possessed. "You'll be tellin' Father Hugh of this, Sally?" he resumed suggestively, after an interval of reflective silence. " Never fear but I will," returned his spouse emphatically ; " and get the holy wather from him this mortial evening. Och ! Phaylim, it was a big eshcape now, praise be to God that didn't allow him for to turn me into a stone, maybe, where I stood.

What'll I do for the cans ? Not a foot I'll stir after them this night. Oh ! blessed Virgin, look upon the poor crathurs and preserve us from harm ! " The solution of the difficulty which this deter mination on the part of his wife naturally pointed to in Phelim's mind, was that he should go forth in quest of them himself. But the same disinclination ■2-2 TERENCE Me GOWAN, to stir outside the house under present circumstances found expression in the form of a question as to how the cows would be milked. Oh ! not a hate she knew ; they'd be apt to keep their milk for that night, for all the milking she was fit for ; and as Phelim had no counter-proposition to make, and carefully avoided hazarding any remark which might be construed into a desire to make a voluntary offer of his services, it appeared as though the faithful animals would be allowed for one night to make what use they pleased of their accumulated property.

After a gesticulatory-ejaculatory lull of some moments, Phelim put down the potato-knife, and moved towards the door, saying that he would give Terence a call. " Don't be doin' that at all," exclaimed his wife, in whom the suggestion appeared to have produced a sudden revival of energy. " It's only laughin' he'll be, God forgive him ! Don't ye mind the time I was nearly kilt, comin' home from Ballyduff fair, with the fright I got from the blackguard at the cross-roads there below, and not a word of it ever he'd believe, but swore by the Book that it was the sign-post I seen? Don't be callin' him at all, Phaylim. I wouldn't say but what if yourself was to go with me I might vinture it again." Phelim had no particular fancy for the expedition even in the responsible and presumptively courageous capacity of escort ; but the old woman appearing to have made up her mind to brave the ascent in preference to incurring Terence's ridicule, after one or two slight attempts at evasion he was obliged to acquiesce.

"It'd be as good for you go first, Phaylim, darlin'," said his loving wife, as, clinging to one another closely, they thrust their heads cautiously from the door and reconnoitred the locality. This imputation of courage and superior resisting powers was not at all so gratifying to her lord, as it ought to have been. He would have been perfectly content to forswear his manhood for the occasion, and give the precedence to his better half, who, at ordinary times, was only too ready to assert her claims. But she pushed him on step by step, keeping him well in front, and throwing an ægis of muttered prayers and invocations round him ; and so they got as far as the field where the hare had started from. Phelim was then twitched by the tail, and his reluctant steps arrested that the very spot might be pointed out to him where the first evil omen had occurred.

" Husht, man, husht ! " whispered Sally, grasping his arm, with a face so pale and terrified that her husband at once supposed that she had seen him again, and his ordinarily shaky knees began to tremble violently under him. "Husht!" she continued, in the same terrified whisper ; " the saints protect us ! that's the very spot now " " Where you seen him ? " faltered Phelim. " Ay, the hare ; and by the same token there's the dog comin' back to us again." This was a relief; they were not yet in the actual presence, and the light indifferent manner in which the dog was approaching was in itself reassuring. The cans and basket were lying in confusion in their sight, just where they had been dropped, and by slow degrees and sudden jerky advances they were reached at last, and found to have suffered no further damage than could be accounted for by natural causes, and the stone with which one of them had come in contact in its sudden fall.

" It's a wondher he left them afther him," observed the old woman, as she proceeded with growing courage to narrate circumstantially once more, and with many imaginative additions, the particulars of her late inter view with the Evil One. The identical stone w7as pointed out, and upon examination it was found to have a black mark upon the top of it. " Ah ! noiv ! " she exclaimed, in making the discovery ; " did ever a person see the like before ? By the powers, if he hasn't left the mark of him on the very stone, and the scratch of his hoof in the ground ! Well, well ! but it's an awful thing to get a sight of the crathur himself." So, indeed, all her friends thought too, for it soon got about in the neighbourhood that Sally Me Dermot, old Phelim Me Gowan's wife (married ladies always retain their maiden name) had had a glimpshe of the black man himself, and had like to be gone crazed, as well she might indeed; and accordingly for some days she was the most popular character in the neighbourhood, and such large demands did the credulity of the old crones make upon her imagination, that fancy (Irishwoman though she was) threatened at last to refuse any further supply.