The spike and their sport was all they thought of: but the blade of the scythe, which hung over Ned’s shoulders, never came into the contemplation of either of them. Ned cautiously looked over the bank; the unconscious salmon lay snug, little imagining the conspiracy that had been formed against his tail.
“Now hit the lad smart!” said Dennis: “there, now—there! rise your fist: now you have the boy! now, Ned—success!—success!”
Ned struck at the salmon with all his might and main, and that was not trifling. But whether “the boy” was piked or not never appeared; for poor Ned, bending his neck as he struck at the salmon, placed the vertebræ in the most convenient position for unfurnishing his shoulders; and his head came tumbling splash into the Barrow, to the utter astonishment of his comrade, who could not conceive how it could drop off so suddenly. But the next minute he had the consolation of seeing the head attended by one of his own ears, which had been most dexterously sliced off by the same blow which beheaded his comrade.
The head and ear rolled down the river in company, and were picked up with extreme horror at a mill-dam, near Mr. Richardson’s, by one of the miller’s men.
“Who the devil does this head belong to?” exclaimed the miller.—“Oh Christ—!”
“Whoever owned it,” said the man, “had three ears, at any rate, though they don’t match.”
A search being now made, Ned’s headless body was discovered lying half over the bank, and Dennis in a swoon, through fright and loss of blood, was found recumbent by its side. The latter, when brought to himself, (which process was effected by whisky,) recited the whole adventure. The body was attended to the grave by a numerous assemblage of Ned’s countrymen; and the custom of carrying scythes carelessly very much declined. Many accidents had happened before from that cause, and the priest very judiciously told his flock, after the de profundis, that Ned’s misfortune was a “devil’s judgment” for his negligence, whereby he had hurt a child a day or two before.
From that time none of the country-people would on any occasion go after dark to the spot where the catastrophe happened, as they say the doctor stole the head to natomise it; which fact was confirmed by a man without any head being frequently seen by the women and children who were occasionally led to pass the moat of Ascole, not three miles from Athy, in the night-time; and they really believed the apparition to be no other than the ghost of poor Ned Maher looking every where for his head that the doctor had made away with.[[21]]
[21]. This is only mentioned as indicative of the singular flow of ideas of the Irish peasantry. The most serious and solemn events are frequently converted by them into sources of humour and of comic expression that altogether banish any thing under the head of gravity.