[54]. I recollect (at an interval of more than fifty years) Father Doran, of Culmaghbeg, an excellent man, full of humour, and well-informed, putting the soul in the most comprehensible state of personification possible: he said, the women could not understand what the soul was by the old explanations.
“I tell you all, my flock,” said Father Doran, “there’s not a man, woman, or child among you that has not his soul this present minute shut up in his body, waiting for the last judgment, according to his faith and actions. I tell you fairly, that if flesh could be seen through, like a glass window, you might see every one’s soul at the inside of his body peeping out through the ribs, like the prisoners at the jail of Maryborough through their iron bars: and the moment the breath is out of a man or woman, the soul escapes and makes off to be dealt with as it deserves, and that’s the truth;—so say your beads and remember your clergy!”
This Stephen Fitzgerald,—who had killed the Cahills, sure enough, as became the true son and heir of the aforesaid Stephen, who was hanged,—lived, as report went, plentifully and regularly at Moret. No better gentleman existed, the old people said, in the quiet way, after once he had put the four Cahills into the coal-pit, as he promised his worthy mother Elizabeth, “the likes of whom Moret never saw before nor since, nor ever will while time is time, and longer too!”
Stephen had one son only, who is the principal subject of my present observations; and as he and his family (two lovely boys and two splendid girls) were not exactly the same sort of people commonly seen now-a-days, it may not be uninteresting to give my readers a picture of them.
Stephen, the son of Elizabeth, had been persuaded by Mr. John Lodge, an attorney of Bull Alley, in the city of Dublin, (who married a maid-servant of my grandfather’s at Cullenagh,) that the two-mile race-course of the Great Heath in Queen’s County, which King George pretended was his property because it had been formerly taken from a papist Geraldine, now reverted to my great-uncle’s family, in consequence of their being Protestants; and Mr. Lodge added, that if Squire Stephen would make his son a counsellor, no doubt he would more aptly trace pedigrees, rights, titles, and attainders, and, in fine, get possession of several miles of the Great Heath, or of the race-course at any rate.
The advice was adopted, and Stephen the son was sent to the Temple in London, to study law; and while there, was poisoned at a cook’s shop by the cook’s daughter because he would not marry her. This poisoning (though it was not fatal) he always said, stopped his growth like witchcraft.
The father died in his bed; and my uncle, Stephen the counsellor, became a double relative from marrying Catherine Byrne, daughter of Sir John Byrne, Bart., of Timahoe Castle, and sister to my grandmother, heretofore mentioned. After he had studied Bracton, Fleta, Littleton, the Year Books, the three Cokes, and in short the marrow of the English law, he used to say that he got on very well with the first book, not so well with the second, worse with the third; and at length found that the more he read, the more he was puzzled, knowing less when he left off than when he began—as all the law books contradicted each other like the lawyers themselves: thus, after two years’ hard work, he gave up all further attempts to expound, what he swore fore God was utterly inexplicable. He also relinquished his father’s squabble with King George as to the race-course on the Great Heath; and, concentrating his search after knowledge upon one learned book, the “Justice of Quorum’s pocket companion,” commenced magistrate. He was likewise a horse-racer, country gourmand, tippler, and farmer. His wife, my aunt, was as ordinary a gentlewoman “as may be seen of a summer’s day;” but then, she was worthy in proportion.
As to my uncle’s figure, nothing resembling it having ever been seen, at least by me, I cannot pretend to give any idea of it, save by an especial description. He was short, (which he said was the effect of the poison,) and as broad as long—appearing to grow the wrong way. He observed, touching this subject, that where there are materials for growth, if any thing does not advance in height, it spreads out like a fir-tree,[[55]] when the top shoot is broken off and it fills wide at the bottom. He was not actually fat, nor particularly bony: I think his bulk consisted of solid, substantial flesh. His face was neither extravagantly ugly, nor disproportioned to his body; but a double, or rather treble chin descended in layers very nearly to the pit of his stomach, whence his paunch abruptly stretched out, as if placed by Nature as a shelf for the chin to rest upon. His limbs each gained in thickness what it wanted in length; so that it would seem impossible for him to be thrown down, or if he were, he would roll about like a ball. His hands (as if Nature exhibited the contrast for amusement’s sake) were thin, white, and lady-like; so much so, indeed, that did he fall, they could not help him up again. “Each particular hair” was almost of the thickness of a goose-quill; his locks were queued behind, and combed about once or twice a month. His nostrils were always crammed with snuff, (now and then discharged, as from a mortar, by sneezing,) and his chins were so well dusted and caked with that material, that the whole visage at times appeared as if it were a magazine thereof.