‘Judy is too many for ye,’ said our host; ‘she’s no friend to the sodgers any how: she lost two brave boys in the rebellion, and was a right rebel herself. I have seen the day when she would have thought no more of knocking down a man than of eating her breakfast. It’s not many years since, when we had a fair here, the boys were seemingly going to disperse without a bit of a row, and bad luck to me if she didn’t take off her jock, and holding it by the one sleeve, trailed it through the fair, crying out to her own party, that the blood of the O’Briens had turned into buttermilk, or they would never let the faction of the Murphies home, without a blow being struck. ‘Come, you chicken-hearted rogues?’ said she, while she brandished a stick in her hand, ‘let me see the thief’s breed of a Murphy that will dare to put his foot on my jock.’ The boys only laughed at first, but some one in the crowd, out of contempt, threw a dead rat which struck her on the face; this enraged her so, that she knocked down the man nearest her, and in a twinkling there was a fight that beat anything ever was seen, and she was there to the last. But the devil himself’s but a fool to ould Judy.’
CHAPTER II.
PARTY SPIRIT.
We arrived at Wexford, the station allotted for our regiment. It had been for some time the head quarters of the rebel army during the disturbances of 1798, and the scenes said to have been acted in and near it during that unfortunate period, being impressed on our minds, we entered the place with strong prejudices against the inhabitants. From a people implicated in what was termed a foul, unnatural rebellion, against a mild and equitable government, what could soldiers expect but treachery and fixed enmity? How were we deceived when we found them the most urbane, good-humoured people we had ever been amongst. This is remarkable, thought I: surely it must have been some strange infatuation, or some galling wrong that goaded these people into rebellion; and when we had been a short time there, I sought a solution of the enigma from a person with whom I had become acquainted, from being billeted in his house, when we first came into the town.
‘In the first place,’ said he, ‘I need not tell you what every body knows, that it was only the Catholics that rebelled. You wonder at them not showing their rebellious spirit: now,’ said he, ‘do you know the reason? they durstn’t. When they had the power, they showed us poor Protestants what they could do. Did you never read or hear of the burning of Scullabogue, the piking on the wooden bridge there beyond, and all the bloody cruelties they committed in every part of Ireland?’
‘I have,’ replied I, ‘and that is the very reason I am surprised at the peaceable temper they now display.’
‘It was driven into them by the lash and the gibbet,’ said he; but if they durst put out their horns, you would soon see them at their old tricks; devil a Protestant but they would pike and throw into the Slaney. Do you think that we could live in safety here an hour, if it was not for the military? God help ye! you think because they put on a smooth face to ye, now when they can’t better themselves, that they are every thing that’s good; but you may take my word for it that every mother’s son of them are perfect Judas’s, and when they look smiling in your face they are wishing for an opportunity to cut your throat. Och, man! does not their priests tell them that they are to keep no faith with heretics?—They talk about emancipating them—by my soul! I would as soon emancipate a roaring lion; if ever that takes place, the reign of bloody Mary would be nothing to what would follow: you would soon see the Pope over here with his inquisition, and not one Protestant they would leave in the country in six months. I hope I will never live to see the day when the Papists will be put on a footing with us: nothing will ever save the poor Protestants but to keep the hold while they have it, and resist the Pope, the Papists, and the devil, up to the knees in blood, as every true orangeman is in duty bound. You should join our orange club, man—sure, two of your officers have joined us.’
I was carried away with this declamation, which he accompanied with violent and emphatic gesture, and really began to think the Catholics the guilty beings that he represented them; still I could not but consider them miserably situated, when they were alike distrusted and reviled—in arms against the government, or living as peaceable subjects. On more mature deliberation, I did not feel satisfied with the round assertions he had made, and I sought opportunities of mixing with people of the Catholic persuasion. I am sorry to say that those whom my rank in life enabled me to mix with, did not give me very favourable opportunities of judging; they seemed to feel the same rancour against the Protestants, which my friend had evinced against them, without being able to give a very satisfactory reason for it. They had an idea that the Protestants were insolent tyrants, that the Catholics were oppressed and injured by them, and therefore had a right to hate their oppressors.
Some time after this, I became acquainted with a very intelligent Catholic, and anxious to hear what he could say in answer to the assertions of my protestant friend, I several times attempted to lead our conversation to that point, but he seemed to feel averse from the subject.
‘Remember,’ said he to me one day, ‘that it is rather a dangerous thing to express our political opinions in this country. I might,’ said he, in a half joking manner, ‘get heated on the subject, and spout treason; and who knows but you might lodge informations against me, that would get me exhibited in front of the gaol, as an example to my deluded countrymen, or sent to cool my heels in New South Wales. You laugh, but the time is scarcely yet gone by, when your report of my disaffection to the government would have got me elevated to the first lamp post, without either judge or jury. But to show you I place some confidence in you, I will put my neck in your power by repeating my opinion on the subject. Believe me, whatever your friend may have said to the contrary, that the rancour and hatred of Protestants and Catholics, so apparent in this country, does not lie so much in the difference of their creed, as in prejudices artfully engendered and kept alive by political and religious intrigue, aided no doubt by the ignorance of the people themselves. You are a young man, a native of a happier kingdom, and of a different persuasion, and cannot, therefore enter into the feelings of this oppressed and insulted nation; nor can those who have not felt the legalized tyranny which is practised on us form any idea of what this miserable country has suffered. Victims to political corruption on the one hand, and religious rapacity and bigotry on the other; by the one we are deprived of our rights as men and subjects, and by the other robbed of our means of subsistence, to support in luxury and idleness a church establishment of which we are not members, the clergymen of which in their own persons exercise the office of priest and judge, to whom, if we consider ourselves aggrieved by their extortions, we are obliged to appeal for redress; but this is nothing to the continual dropping torment which we are doomed to endure from our subordinate oppressors, who are to a man what are termed Protestants,—tithe proctors, excisemen, constables, pound keepers, all are Protestants, and contrive at every step to put us in mind of our political bondage; and when we are goaded on by our merciless drivers until we grow frantic, they term the writhings of tortured and insulted nature, rebellion.