Among my memorandums of singular incidents, I find one which even now affords me as much amusement as such a circumstance can possibly admit of: and as it is, at the same time, highly characteristic of the people among whom it occurred, in that view I relate it. A man decapitating himself by mistake is indeed a blunder of true Hibernian character.[[20]]
[20]. This anecdote has been termed “fabulous” by some of the sapient periodical critics, and a “bounce” by others. “’Tis quite impossible,” say the scribblers, “for any man to cut his own head off.” This no doubt singular decapitation, however, happens to be a well known and comparatively recent fact; and if either of the aforesaid sceptics will be so obliging as to try the same species of guillotine that Ned did at the Barrow water, he may, with the greatest facility, get rid of, probably, the thickest and heaviest article belonging to him.
The Emperor of Morocco, it is said, to convince his subjects what an easy matter decapitation was, and what an uncertain tenure a head has in his dominions, used to cut off the head of a jack-ass every morning with one back stroke of his sabre. Should his copper-coloured Majesty honour England with his august presence, to be feasted, fire-worked, and subsidised like Don Miguel the First, what noble practice at decapitation, in the absence of his jack-asses, he might have in London among the periodical scribblers—without doing much injury to the animals themselves, and none at all either to the “Société des lettres,” or what is called in England the “discerning public.”
I think it was in or about the year 1796, a labourer dwelling near the town of Athy, County Kildare (where my mother then resided), was walking with his comrade up the banks of the Barrow to the farm of a Mr. Richardson, on whose meadows they were employed to mow; each, in the usual Irish way, having his scythe loosely wagging over his shoulder. Lazily lounging close to the bank of the river, they espied a salmon partly hid under the bank. It is the nature of this fish that, when his head is concealed, he fancies no one can see his tail (there are many wise-acres in the world, besides the salmon, of the same way of thinking). On the present occasion the body of the fish was visible.
“Oh! Ned—Ned, dear!” said one of the mowers, “look at that big fellow there: it is a pity we ha’nt no spear, now, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” said Ned, “we could be after piking the lad with the scythe-handle.”
“True for you!” said Dennis: “the spike of yeer handle is longer nor mine; give the fellow a dig with it at any rate.”
“Ay, will I,” returned the other: “I’ll give the lad a prod he’ll never forget any how.”