"Well," resumed Captain Night, "thou shalt stay with us, young Gentleman. But weigh it soberly, boy," he continued. "Thou art old enough to know black from white, and brass from gold. Be advised; know what we Blacks are. We are only Thieves that go about stealing the King's Deer in Charlwood Chase."
I told him that I would abide by him and his Company; and with a grim smile he clapped me on the shoulder, and told me that now indeed I was a Gentleman Black, and Forest Free.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM.
During the long nights I remained at the Stag o' Tyne ere I was thought Worthy to join the Blacks in their nocturnal adventures, or was, by my Hardihood and powers of Endurance—poor little mite that I was—adjudged to be Forest Free, I remained under the charge of Ciceley of the Cindery, and of the corpulent Tapstress whom the Blacks called Mother Drum. These two women were very fond of gossiping with me; and especially did Mother Drum love to converse with me upon her own Career, which had been of the most Chequered, not to say Amazing nature. I have already hinted that at one time this Remarkable Woman had professed the Military Profession, in which she had shone with almost a Manly Brilliance; and from her various confidences—all delivered to me as they were in shreds and patches, and imparted at the oddest times and seasons—I was enabled to shape her (to me) diverting history into something like the following shape.
"I was born, I think," quoth Mother Drum, "in the year 1660, being that of his happy Restoration to the throne of these Realms of his late Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. My father was a small farmer, who fed his pigs and tended his potato gardens at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains, about twelve miles from the famous city of Dublin. His name was O' something, which it concerns you not to know, youngster, and he had the misfortune to be a Papist. I say the misfortune; for in those days, O well-a-day, as in these too, and more's the shame, to be a Papist meant being a poor, unfortunate creature continually Hunted up and down, Harassed and Harried far worse than any leathern-skinned Beast of Venery that the Gentlemen Blacks pursue in Charlwood Chase. He had suffered much under the iron rule" (these were not exactly Mother Drum's words, for her language was anything, as a rule, but well chosen; but I have polished up her style a little,) "of the cruel Usurper, Oliver Cromwell; that is to say the Redcoated Ironsides of that Bad Man had on three several occasions burnt his Shelling to the ground, stolen his Pigs, and grubbed up his potato ground. Once had they ran away with his wife, (my dear Mother), twice had they half-hanged him to a tree-branch, and at divers intervals had they tortured him by tying lighted matches between his fingers. When, however, His Sacred Majesty was happily restored there were hopes that the poor Romanists would enjoy a little Comfort and Tranquillity; but these Fond aspirations were speedily and cruelly dashed to the ground; for the Anglican Bishops and Clergy being put into possession of the Sees and Benefices of which they had been so long deprived, occupied themselves much more with Hounding Down those who did not live by the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, than in preaching Peace and Goodwill among all men. So the Papists had a worse time of it than ever. My Father, honest man, tried to temporise between the two parties, but was ever in danger of being shot by his own friends as a Traitor, even if he escaped half-hanging at the hands of the Protestants as a Recusant. Well, after all, Jack high or Jack low, the days must come to an end, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter must follow upon one another, and boys and girls were born to my father, and the pigs littered, and were sold at market, and the potatoes grew and were eaten whether Oliver Cromwell, or his son Dickon, or Charles Stuart—I beg pardon, His Sacred Majesty—was uppermost. Thus it was I came into the world in the Restoration year.
"I was a bold, strapping, fearless kind of a girl, much fonder of Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour. But Betty—I was christened Elizabeth—was always gammocking and tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing plaintive ballads to herself to the music of the Irish Harp, which, in my time, almost every Farmer's Daughter could Play. Before I was seven years old I could feed the pigs and dig up the potato ground. Before I was ten, I could catch a colt and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs, ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of Swords. Those who knew me used to call me 'Brimstone Betty;' and in my own family I went by the name of the 'Bold Dragoon,' much to the miscontentment of my father, who tried hard to bring me to a more feminine habit of Body and frame of mind, both by affectionate expostulation, and by assiduous larruping with a stirrup leather. But 'twas all of no use. At sixteen I was the greatest Tearcoat of the Country side; and Father Macanasser, the village priest, gave it as his opinion that I must either be married, or sent to Dublin into decent service, or go to Ruination.
"It chanced that one fine summer day, I was gammocking in a hayfield with another lass, a friend of mine, whom I had made almost as bold as myself. We had a cudgel apiece, and were playing at single-stick, in our mad-cap fashion, laughing and screaming like Bedlamites, meanwhile. Only a hedge separated us from the high-road to Dublin, which ran up hill, and by and by came toiling up the hill, sticking every other minute in a rut, or jolting into a hole—for the roads were in infamous condition about here, as, indeed, all over the kingdom of Ireland—a grand coach, all over painting and gilding, drawn by six grey horses, with flowing manes and tails. The two leading pair had postilions in liveries of blue and silver, and great badges of coats-of-arms, and the equipage was further attended by a couple of outriders or yeomen-prickers in the same rich livery, but with cutlasses at their sides, petronels in their holsters, and blunderbusses on their hips, to guard against Tories and Rapparees, who then infested the land, and cared little whether it was Daylight or Moonlight—whether it was in the Green tree or the Dry that they went about their thievish business. The personage to whom this grand coach belonged was a stout, Majestic old Gentleman with a monstrous black periwig, a bright star on his breast, and a broad blue ribbon crossing his plum-coloured velvet doublet. He had dismounted from his heavy coach, while the horses were fagging up hill, and by the help of a great crutch-staff of ebony, ornamented with silver, was toiling after them. Hearing our prattling and laughing, he looked over the hedge and saw us in the very thick of our mimic Combat. This seemed to divert him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth, rather shamefaced than otherwise among the haycocks, he bade us with cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so sparring at one another, till his sides shook again. But all the fire was taken out of our combat, by the presence of so unwonted a Spectator, and after a brief lapse we dropped cudgels, and stood staring and blushing, quite dashed and confused. Then he beckoned us towards him in a most affable manner, and we came awkwardly and timorously, yet still with great curiosity to know what was to follow, through a gap in the hedge, and so stood before him in the road. And then cries out one of the Yeomen-Prickers—'Wenches! drop your best curtsey to his Grace the Duke of O——.' It was, indeed, that famous nobleman, lately Lord Lieutenant, and still one of the highest, mightiest, and most puissant Princes in the Kingdom of Ireland. To be brief, he put a variety of questions to us, respecting our belongings, and at my answers seemed most condescendingly pleased, and at those of my playmate (whose name was Molly O'Flaherty, and who had red hair, and a cast in her eye), but moderately pleased. On her, therefore, he bestowed a gold piece, and so dismissed her; telling her to take care of what her Tom Boy pranks might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was good enough to say that I was a spirited lass fit for better things, and that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my condition in life. Whereupon he was assisted to his seat by one of four running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump of gallant cavaliers in buff coats, bright corslets, and embroidered bandoliers over them, wearing green plumes in their hats, and flourishing their broadswords in the sunshine. These were the gentlemen of his bodyguard. They questioned me as to my converse with his Grace, and when I told them, laughed and said that I was in luck.