THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
| Number 50. | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1841. | Volume I. |
THE IRISH PROPHECY MAN.
BY WILLIAM CARLETON.
The individual to whom the heading of this article is uniformly applied, stands, among the lower classes of his countrymen in a different light and position from any of those previous characters that we have already described to our readers. The intercourse which they maintain with the people is one that simply involves the means of procuring subsistence for themselves by the exercise of their professional skill, and their powers of contributing to the lighter enjoyments and more harmless amusements of their fellow-countrymen. All the collateral influences they possess, as arising from the hold which the peculiar nature of this intercourse gives them, generally affect individuals only on those minor points of feeling that act upon the lighter phases of domestic life. They bring little to society beyond the mere accessories that are appended to the general modes of life and manners, and consequently receive themselves as strong an impress from those with whom they mingle, as they communicate to them in return.
Now, the Prophecy Man presents a character far different from all this. With the ordinary habits of life he has little sympathy. The amusements of the people are to him little else than vanity, if not something worse. He despises that class of men who live and think only for the present, without ever once performing their duties to posterity, by looking into those great events that lie in the womb of futurity. Domestic joys or distresses do not in the least affect him, because the man has not to do with feelings or emotions, but with principles. The speculations in which he indulges, and by which his whole life and conduct are regulated, place him far above the usual impulses of humanity. He cares not much who has been married or who has died, for his mind is, in point of time, communing with unborn generations upon affairs of high and solemn import. The past, indeed, is to him something, the future every thing; but the present, unless when marked by the prophetic symbols, little or nothing. The topics of his conversation are vast and mighty, being nothing less than the fate of kingdoms, the revolution of empires, the ruin or establishment of creeds, the fall of monarchs, or the rise and prostration of principalities and powers. How can a mind thus engaged descend to those petty subjects of ordinary life which engage the common attention? How could a man hard at work in evolving out of prophecy the subjugation of some hostile state, care a farthing whether Loghlin Roe’s daughter was married to Gusty Given’s son, or not? The thing is impossible. Like fame, the head of the Prophecy Man is always in the clouds, but so much higher up as to be utterly above the reach of any intelligence that does not affect the fate of nations. There is an old anecdote told of a very high and a very low man meeting. “What news down there?” said the tall fellow. “Very little,” replied the other: “what kind of weather have you above?” Well indeed might the Prophecy Man ask what news there is below for his mind seldom leaves those aërial heights from which it watches the fate of Europe and the shadowing forth of future changes.
The Prophecy Man—that is, he who solely devotes himself to an anxious observation of those political occurrences which mark the signs of the times, as they bear upon the future, the principal business of whose life it is to associate them with his own prophetic theories—is now a rare character in Ireland. He was, however, a very marked one. The Shanahus and other itinerant characters had, when compared with him, a very limited beat indeed. Instead of being confined to a parish or a barony, the bounds of the Prophecy Man’s travels were those of the kingdom itself; and indeed some of them have been known to make excursions to the Highlands of Scotland, in order if possible to pick up old prophecies, and to make themselves, by cultivating an intimacy with the Scottish seers, capable of getting a clearer insight into futurity, and surer rules for developing the latent secrets of time.
One of the heaviest blows to the speculations of this class was the downfall and death of Bonaparte, especially the latter. There are still living, however, those who can get over this difficulty, and who will not hesitate to assure you, with a look of much mystery, that the real “Bonyparty” is alive and well, and will make his due appearance when the time comes; he who surrendered himself to the English being but an accomplice of the true one.
The next fact, and which I have alluded to in treating of the Shanahus, is the failure of the old prophecy that a George the Fourth would never sit on the throne of England. His coronation and reign, however, puzzled our prophets sadly, and indeed sent adrift for ever the pretensions of this prophecy to truth.
But that which has nearly overturned the system, and routed the whole prophetic host, is the failure of the speculations so confidently put forward by Dr Walmsey in his General History of the Christian Church, vulgarly called Pastorini’s Prophecy, he having assumed the name Pastorini as an incognito or nom de guerre. The theory of Pastorini was, that Protestantism and all descriptions of heresy would disappear about the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five, an inference which he drew with considerable ingenuity and learning from Scriptural prophecy, taken in connexion with past events, and which he argued with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a theorist naturally anxious to see the truth of his own prognostications verified. The failure of this, which was their great modern standard, has nearly demolished the political seers as a class, or compelled them to fall back upon the more antiquated revelations ascribed to St Columkill, St Bridget, and others.
Having thus, as is our usual custom, given what we conceive to be such preliminary observations as are necessary to make both the subject and the person more easily understood, we shall proceed to give a short sketch of the only Prophecy Man we ever saw who deserved properly to be called so, in the full and unrestricted sense of the term. This individual’s name was Barney M’Haighery, but in what part of Ireland he was born I am not able to inform the reader. All I know is, that he was spoken of on every occasion as The Prophecy Man; and that, although he could not himself read, he carried about with him, in a variety of pockets, several old books and manuscripts that treated upon his favourite subject.
Barney was a tall man, by no means meanly dressed; and it is necessary to say that he came not within the character or condition of a mendicant. On the contrary, he was considered as a person who must be received with respect, for the people knew perfectly well that it was not with every farmer in the neighbourhood he would condescend to sojourn. He had nothing of the ascetic and abstracted meagreness of the Prophet in his appearance. So far from that, he was inclined to corpulency; but, like a certain class of fat men, his natural disposition was calm, but at the same time not unmixed with something of the pensive. His habits of thinking, as might be expected, were quiet and meditative; his personal motions slow and regular; and his transitions from one resting-place to another never of such length during a single day as to exceed ten miles. At this easy rate, however, he traversed the whole kingdom several times; nor was there probably a local prophecy of any importance in the country with which he was not acquainted. He took much delight in the greater and lesser prophets of the Old Testament: but his heart and soul lay, as he expressed it, “in the Revelations of St John the Divine.”
His usual practice was, when the family came home at night from their labour, to stretch himself upon two chairs, his head resting upon the hob, with a boss for a pillow, his eyes closed, as a proof that his mind was deeply engaged with the matter in hand. In this attitude he got some one to read the particular prophecy upon which he wished to descant; and a most curious and amusing entertainment it generally was to hear the text, and his own singular and original commentaries upon it. That he must have been often hoaxed by wags and wits, was quite evident from the startling travesties of the text which had been put into his mouth, and which, having been once put there, his tenacious memory never forgot.
The fact of Barney’s arrival in the neighbourhood soon went abroad, and the natural consequence was, that the house in which he thought proper to reside for the time became crowded every night as soon as the hours of labour had passed, and the people got leisure to hear him. Having thus procured him an audience, it is full time that we should allow the fat old Prophet to speak for himself, and give us all an insight into futurity.
“Barney, ahagur,” the good man his host would say, “here’s a lot o’ the neighbours come to hear a whirrangue from you on the Prophecies; and, sure, if you can’t give it to them, who is there to be found that can?”
“Throth, Paddy Traynor, although I say it that should not say it, there’s truth in that, at all evints. The same knowledge has cost me many a weary blisthur an’ sore heel in huntin’ it up an’ down, through mountain an’ glen, in Ulsther, Munsther, Leinsther, an’ Connaught—not forgettin’ the Highlands of Scotland, where there’s what they call the ‘short prophecy,’ or second sight, but wherein there’s afther all but little of the Irish or long prophecy, that regards what’s to befall the winged woman that flown into the wilderness. No, no—their second sight isn’t thrue prophecy at all. If a man goes out to fish, or steal a cow, an’ that he happens to be drowned or shot, another man that has the second sight will see this in his mind about or afther the time it happens. Why, that’s little. Many a time our own Irish drames are aiqual to it; an’ indeed I have it from a knowledgeable man, that the gift they boast of has four parents—an empty stomach, thin air, a weak head, an’ strong whisky, an’ that a man must have all these, espishilly the last, before he can have the second sight properly; an’ it’s my own opinion. Now, I have a little book (indeed I left my books with a friend down at Errigle) that contains a prophecy of the milk-white hind an’ the bloody panther, an’ a forebodin’ of the slaughter there’s to be in the Valley of the Black Pig, as foretould by Beal Derg, or the prophet wid the red mouth, who never was known to speak but when he prophesied, or to prophesy but when he spoke.”
“The Lord bless an’ keep us!—an’ why was he called the Man wid the Red Mouth, Barney?”
“I’ll tell you that: first, bekase he always prophesied about the slaughter an’ fightin’ that was to take place in the time to come; an’, secondly, bekase, while he spoke, the red blood always trickled out of his mouth, as a proof that what he foretould was true.”
“Glory be to God! but that’s wondherful all out. Well, well!”
“Ay, an’ Beal Derg, or the Red Mouth, is still livin’.”
“Livin’! why, is he a man of our own time?”
“Our own time! The Lord help you! It’s more than a thousand years since he made the prophecy. The case you see is this: he an’ the ten thousand witnesses are lyin’ in an enchanted sleep in one of the Montherlony mountains.”
“An’ how is that known, Barney?”
“It’s known. Every night at a certain hour one of the witnesses—an’ they’re all sogers, by the way—must come out to look for the sign that’s to come.”
“An’ what is that, Barney?”
“It’s the fiery cross; an’ when he sees one on aich of the four mountains of the north, he’s to know that the same sign’s abroad in all the other parts of the kingdom. Beal Derg an’ his men are then to waken up, an’ by their aid the Valley of the Black Pig is to be set free for ever.”
“An’ what is the Black Pig, Barney?”
“The Prospitarian church, that stretch from Enniskillen to Darry, an’ back again from Darry to Enniskillen.”
“Well, well, Barney, but prophecy is a strange thing to be sure! Only think of men livin’ a thousand years!”
“Every night one of Beal Derg’s men must go to the mouth of the cave, which opens of itself, an’ then look out for the sign that’s expected. He walks up to the top of the mountain, an’ turns to the four corners of the heavens, to thry if he can see it; an’ when he finds that he can not, he goes back to Beal Derg, who, afther the other touches him, starts up, an’ axis him, ‘Is the time come?’ He replies, ‘No; the man is, but the hour is not!’ an’ that instant they’re both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is on the mountain top, the mouth of the cave is open, an’ any one may go in that might happen to see it. One man it appears did, an’ wishin’ to know from curiosity whether the sogers were dead or livin’, he touched one of them wid his hand, who started up an’ axed him the same question, ‘Is the time come?’ Very fortunately he said ‘No;’ that minute the soger was as sound in his trance as before.”
“An’, Barney, what did the soger mane when he said, ‘The man is, but the hour is not?’”
“What did he mane? I’ll tell you that. The man is Bonyparty; which manes, when put into proper explanation, the right side; that is, the true cause. Larned men have found that out.”
“Barney, wasn’t Columkill a great prophet?”
“He was a great man entirely at prophecy, and so was St Bridget. He prophesied ‘that the cock wid the purple comb is to have both his wings clipped by one of his own breed before the struggle comes.’ Before that time, too, we’re to have the Black Militia, an’ afther that it is time for every man to be prepared.”
“An’, Barney, who is the cock wid the purple comb?”
“Why, the Orangemen to be sure. Isn’t purple their colour, the dirty thieves?”
“An’ the Black Militia, Barney, who are they?”
“I have gone far an’ near, through north an’ through south, up an’ down, by hill an’ hollow, till my toes were corned an’ my heels in griskins, but could find no one able to resolve that, or bring it clear out o’ the prophecy. They’re to be sogers in black, an’ all their arms an’ ’coutrements is to be the same colour; an’ farther than that is not known as yet.”
“It’s a wondher you don’t know it, Barney, for there’s little about prophecy that you haven’t at your finger ends.”
“Three birds is to meet (Barney proceeded in a kind of recitative enthusiasm) upon the saes—two ravens an’ a dove—the two ravens is to attack the dove until she’s at the point of death; but before they take her life, an eagle comes and tears the two ravens to pieces, an’ the dove recovers.
There’s to be two cries in the kingdom; one of them is to rache from the Giants’ Causeway to the centre house of the town of Sligo; the other is to rache from the Falls of Beleek to the Mill of Louth, which is to be turned three times with human blood; but this is not to happen until a man with two thumbs an’ six fingers upon his right hand happens to be the miller.”
“Who’s to give the sign of freedom to Ireland?”
“The little boy wid the red coat that’s born a dwarf, lives a giant, and dies a dwarf again! He’s lightest of foot, but leaves the heaviest foot-mark behind him. An’ it’s he that is to give the sign of freedom to Ireland!”
“There’s a period to come when Antichrist is to be upon the earth, attended by his two body servants Gog and Magog. Who are they, Barney?”
“They are the sons of Hegog an’ Shegog, or in other words, of Death an’ Damnation, and cousin-jarmins to the Devil himself, which of coorse is the raison why he promotes them.”
“Lord save us! But I hope that won’t he in our time, Barney!”
“Antichrist is to come from the land of Crame o’ Tarthar (Crim Tartary, according to Pastorini), which will account for himself an’ his army breathin’ fire an’ brimstone out of their mouths, according’ to the glorious Revelation of St John the Divine, an’ the great prophecy of Pastorini, both of which beautifully compromise upon the subject.
The prophet of the Black Stone is to come, who was born never to prognosticate a lie. He is to be a mighty hunter, an’ instead of riding to his fetlocks in blood, he is to ride upon it, to the admiration of his times. It’s of him it is said ‘that he is to be the only prophet that ever went on horseback!’
Then there’s Bardolphus, who, as there was a prophet wid the red mouth, is called ‘the prophet wid the red nose.’ Ireland was, it appears from ancient books, undher wather for many hundred years before her discovery; but bein’ allowed to become visible one day in every year, the enchantment was broken by a sword that was thrown upon the earth, an’ from that out she remained dry, an’ became inhabited. ‘Woe, woe, woe,’ says Bardolphus, ‘the time is to come when we’ll have a second deluge, an’ Ireland is to be undher wather once more. A well is to open at Cork that will cover the whole island from the Giants’ Causeway to Cape Clear. In them days St Patrick will be despised, an’ will stand over the pleasant houses wid his pasthoral crook in his hand, crying out Cead mille failtha in vain! Woe, woe, woe,’ says Bardolphus, ‘for in them days there will be a great confusion of colours among the people; there will be neither red noses nor pale cheeks, an’ the divine face of man, alas! will put forth blossoms no more. The heart of the times will become changed; an’ when they rise up in the morning, it will come to pass that there will be no longer light heads or shaking hands among Irishmen! Woe, woe, woe, men, women, and children will then die, an’ their only complaint, like all those who perished in the flood of ould, will be wather on the brain—wather on the brain! Woe, woe, woe,’ says Bardolphus, ‘for the changes that is to come, an’ the misfortunes that’s to befall the many for the noddification of the few! an’ yet such things must be, for I, in virtue of the red spirit that dwells in me, must prophesy them. In those times men will be shod in liquid fire an’ not be burned; their breeches shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them; their bread shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them; their meat shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them; an’ why?—Oh, woe, woe, wather shall so prevail that the coolness of their bodies will keep them safe; yea, they shall even get fat, fair, an’ be full of health an’ strength, by wearing garments wrought out of liquid fire, by eating liquid fire, an’ all because they do not drink liquid fire—an’ this calamity shall come to pass,’ says Bardolphus, the prophet of the red nose.
Two widows shall be grinding at the Mill of Louth (so saith the prophecy); one shall be taken and the other left.”
Thus would Barney proceed, repeating such ludicrous and heterogeneous mixtures of old traditionary prophecies and spurious quotations from Scripture as were concocted for him by those who took delight in amusing themselves and others at the expense of his inordinate love for prophecy.
“But, Barney, touching the Mill o’ Louth, of the two widows grindin’ there, whether will the one that is taken or the one that is left be the best off?”
“The prophecy doesn’t say,” replied Barney, “an’ that’s a matther that larned men are very much divided about. My own opinion is, that the one that is taken will be the best off; for St Bridget says ‘that betune wars an’ pestilences an’ famine, the men are to be so scarce that several of them are to be torn to pieces by the women in their struggles to see who will get them for husbands.’[1] That time they say is to come.”
“But, Barney, isn’t there many ould prophecies about particular families in Ireland?”
“Ay, several: an’ I’ll tell you one of them, about a family that’s not far from us this minute. You all know the hangin’ wall of the ould Church of Ballynasaggart, in Errigle Keeran parish?”
“We do, to be sure; an’ we know the prophecy too.”
“Of coorse you do, bein’ in the neighbourhood. Well, what is it in the mean time?”
“Why, that it’s never to fall till it comes down upon an’ takes the life of a M’Mahon.”
“Right enough; but do you know the raison of it?”
“We can’t say that, Barney; but, however, we’re at home when you’re here.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. St Keeran was, may be, next to St Patrick himself, one of the greatest saints in Ireland, but any rate we may put him next to St Columkill. Now, you see, when he was building the church of Ballynasaggart, it came to pass that there arose a great famine in the land, an’ the saint found it hard to feed the workmen where there was no vittles. What to do, he knew not, an’ by coorse he was at a sad amplush, no doubt of it. At length says he, ‘Boys, we’re all hard set at present, an’ widout food bedad we can’t work; but if you observe my directions, we’ll contrive to have a bit o’ mate in the mean time, an’, among ourselves, it was seldom more wanted, for, to tell you the thruth, I never thought my back an’ belly would become so well acquainted. For the last three days they haven’t been asunder, an’ I find they are perfectly willing to part as soon as possible, an’ would be glad of any thing that ’ud put betune them.’
Now, the fact was, that, for drawin’ timber an’ stones, an’ all the necessary matayrials for the church, they had but one bullock, an’ him St Keeran resolved to kill in the evening, an’ to give them a fog meal of him. He accordingly slaughtered him with his own hands, ‘but,’ said he to the workmen, ‘mind what I say, boys: if any one of you breaks a single bone, even the smallest, or injures the hide in the laste, you’ll destroy all; an’ my sowl to glory but it’ll be worse for you besides.’
He then took all the flesh off the bones, but not till he had boiled them, of coorse; afther which he sewed them up again in the skin, an’ put them in the shed, wid a good wisp o’ straw before them; an’ glory be to God, what do you think, but the next mornin’ the bullock was alive, an’ in as good condition as ever he was in during his life! Betther fed workmen you couldn’t see, an’, bedad, the saint himself got so fat an’ rosy that you’d scarcely know him to be the same man afther it. Now, this went on for some time: whenever they wanted mate, the bullock was killed, an’ the bones an’ skin kept safe as before. At last it happened that a long-sided fellow among them named M’Mahon, not satisfied wid his allowance of the mate, took a fancy to have a lick at the marrow, an’ accordingly, in spite of all the saint said, he broke one of the legs an’ sucked the marrow out of it. But behold you!—the next day when they went to yoke the bullock, they found that he was useless, for the leg was broken an’ he couldn’t work. This, to be sure, was a sad misfortune to them all, but it couldn’t be helped, an’ they had to wait till betther times came; for the truth is, that afther the marrow is broken, no power of man could make the leg as it was before until the cure is brought about by time. However, the saint was very much vexed, an’ good right he had. ‘Now, M’Mahon,’ says he to the guilty man, ‘I ordher it, an’ prophesy that the church we’re building will never fall till it falls upon the head of some one of your name, if it was to stand a thousand years. Mark my words, for they must come to pass.’
An’ sure enough you know as well as I do that it’s all down long ago wid the exception of a piece of the wall, that’s not standin’ but hangin’, widout any visible support in life, an’ only propped up by the prophecy. It can’t fall till a M’Mahon comes undher it; but although there’s plenty of the name in the neighbourhood, ten o’ the strongest horses in the kingdom wouldn’t drag one of them widin half a mile of it. There, now, is the prophecy that belongs to the hangin’ wall of Ballynasaggart church.”
“But, Barney, didn’t you say something about the winged woman that flewn to the wildherness?”
“I did; that’s a deep point, an’ it’s few that undherstands it. The baste wid seven heads an’ ten horns is to come; an’ when he was to make his appearance, it was said to be time for them that might be alive then to go to their padareens.”
“What does the seven heads and ten horns mane, Barney?”
“Why, you see, as I am informed from good authority, the baste has come, an’ it’s clear from the ten horns that he could be no other than Harry the Eighth, who was married to five wives, an’ by all accounts they strengthened an’ ornamented him sore against his will. Now, set in case that each o’ them—five times two is ten—hut! the thing’s as clear as crystal. But I’ll prove it betther. You see the woman wid the two wings is the church, an’ she flew into the wildherness at the very time Harry the Eighth wid his ten horns on him was in his greatest power.”
“Bedad that’s puttin’ the explanations to it in great style.”
“But the woman wid the wings is only to be in the wildherness for a time, times, an’ half a time, that’s exactly three hundred an’ fifty years, an’ afther that there’s to be no more Prodestans.”
“Faith that’s great!”
“Sure Columkill prophesied that until H E M E I A M should come, the church would be in no danger, but that afther that she must be undher a cloud for a time, times, an’ half a time, jist in the same way.”
“Well, but how do you explain that, Barney?”
“An’ St Bridget prophesied that when D O C is uppermost, the church will be hard set in Ireland. But, indeed, there’s no end to the prophecies that there is concerning Ireland an’ the church. However, neighbours, do you know that I feel the heat o’ the fire has made me rather drowsy, an’ if you have no objection, I’ll take a bit of a nap. There’s great things near us, any how. An’ talkin’ about DOC brings to my mind another ould prophecy made up, they say, betune Columkill and St Bridget; an’ it is this, that the triumph of the counthry will never be at hand till the DOC flourishes in Ireland.”
Such were the speculations upon which the harmless mind of Barney M’Haighery ever dwelt. From house to house, from parish to parish, and from province to province, did he thus trudge, never in a hurry, but always steady and constant in his motions. He might be not inaptly termed the Old Mortality of traditionary prophecy, which he often chiselled anew, added to, and improved, in a manner that generally gratified himself and his bearers. He was a harmless kind man, and never known to stand in need of either clothes or money. He paid little attention to the silent business of ongoing life, and was consequently very nearly an abstraction. He was always on the alert, however, for the result of a battle; and after having heard it, he would give no opinion whatsoever until he had first silently compared it with his own private theory in prophecy. If it agreed with this, he immediately published it in connection with his established text; but if it did not, he never opened his lips on the subject.
His class has nearly disappeared, and indeed it is so much the better, for the minds of the people were thus filled with antiquated nonsense that did them no good. Poor Barney, to his great mortification, lived to see with his own eyes the failure of his most favourite prophecies, but he was not to be disheartened even by this; though some might fail, all could not; and his stock was too varied and extensive not to furnish him with a sufficient number of others over which to cherish his imagination and expatiate during the remainder of his inoffensive life.
[1] There certainly is such a prophecy.