[18] It is generally believed among the common people of this part of Ireland, that when the soul leaves its earthly tenement, the first thing it does is to travel over every spot of ground that the body did while living; during which time the tie between it and its mortal remains is not entirely severed; and for that reason they will not touch the body for a certain time after life is extinct.
CHAPTER IX.
CHANGE OF QUARTERS.
We had been about nine months here when we got the route to march to Kilkenny, a distance of about forty miles, where we were destined to relieve the forty-second regiment, ordered on service. We parted with the people of Wexford with regret, and on their part with every demonstration of sorrow. Many of our men had married while in the town, and every thing during our stay conspired in a degree to identify us with the inhabitants.
We were escorted some miles by half the people of the town. A meeting was called of the magistrates and principal inhabitants, and an address drawn up, flattering alike to our feelings and pride, which was published in the principal newspapers. Thus we entered Kilkenny in the best possible disposition to be on friendly terms with its inhabitants, but we soon found that we had got a different kind of people to deal with. The sneers and oblique hints, the evident wish to quarrel, which they evinced when any of our men came in contact with them in the public-house, convinced us that we could never expect to be on the same terms with them as we had been with the inhabitants of Wexford.
The county being almost continually in a disturbed state, it was found necessary to have a large force distributed throughout its extent, to counteract their lawless schemes, and caused the duty to be particularly unpleasant. On our part it was not a little enhanced by the envious egotism and gasconading of the corps whom we relieved,—a corps that has been flattered by the country into a belief that they are the flower of the British army. To hear themselves speak, they were the saviours of the nation,—their exertions, wherever they had been engaged, had turned the tide of battle in our favour,—and, without the gallant forty-second, the army would be like a watch without a mainspring.
How the country could have been so long the dupe of high-sounding pretensions, I do not understand. It could never be from the general appearance of the corps, for of all the Highland regiments in the service, they are the most despicable, or, to use an expressive term, shauchlin, in point of appearance. Is it for their superior discipline? all who have seen them in quarters or in the field, know that the reverse is the fact. Was it for their superior courage? this I deny: they have often got into scrapes by their want of steadiness, and when they did so, they fought desperately, no doubt, to recover themselves; but if a man, through his own imprudence, were to set his house on fire about his ears, his hazarding a jump of two stories to escape the flames, could scarcely be cried up as a very heroic action. Trace them from their origin as a police corps in the Highlands, through Egypt, the Peninsula, in fact wherever they have been, and what have they done to merit the particular distinction above every other corps in the service, which they pretend to? Nothing—absolutely nothing: they are a complete verification of the proverb, ‘If you get a name of rising early, you may lie in bed all day.’ No doubt much of the popular feeling relating to them has been revived and cherished by certain writers, who have thrown the charm of romance round an age distinguished by tyranny and unrelenting barbarity on the one hand, and brutal ignorance and superstition on the other,—whose taste might be questioned as much as that of a painter, who would throw gorgeous drapery around a hideous skeleton.
It must have confounded every person of any judgment to see the nation carried away with this mania, until they were dancing in masquerade, from the peer to the half-starved mechanic, doffing their warm comfortable breeches to sport a pair of extenuated spindle-shanks in a kilt, and those who could not afford to buy one, throwing a piece of tartan over their shoulders, or wearing a bonnet filled with ostrich feathers, and dubbing themselves Highland societies, under the name of Celtic, &c. &c., although perhaps they never saw the Highlands, unless at the distance of forty or fifty miles. These things are now dying away, and, if we except the casual appearance of some frail dandy, who has failed to attract attention by any other means, and who does so to put himself into the mouth of the public, philabegs are banished to their native hills. You may now find buckles and ostrich feathers in every broker’s shop, articles which, by the by, the real clansmen never heard of until they came down to the Lowlands to see their dress and manners caricatured; if they ever wore feathers, they must have been crow feathers, and their shoe-buckles, I believe, were as scarce as those for the knee.
I have no animosity to Highlanders, as a body; there are many brave and intelligent men amongst them, who would disdain to seek any adventitious aid from the mania of the day, and I willingly allow them credit for what they deserve in common with the rest of the army; but the behaviour of a regiment is so much influenced by the officers, or officer, commanding, and the men who compose it are so often changed during war or foreign service, that a judgment formed of them at one time would be erroneous at another. I have never seen any difference worth observing between the courage of English, Irish, or Scotch; and in a profession like ours, where the natives of the three kingdoms are so intimately mixed, any comparison of the bravery of either country must be artificial in the extreme. The following is a specimen of the mode in which the gallant Highland Watch acted towards us:—
They wore long frills to their shirts, that reached to the first or second button of their jackets, which were on all occasions ostentatiously drawn out; but these, in compliance with the regulation, our regiment did not wear. This having been remarked by the inhabitants, they asked the reason, and the one currently alleged by the forty-second was, ‘O! she’ll lose her frill for rinnin’ awa’,’ and this lie was propagated by them at the time they were pretending the greatest friendship for us, and expressing their hope that (should we go abroad) we might be in the same division with them.