Personal sketches of his own times, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by Sir Jonah Barrington

There can be little doubt that the greatest men of the present day, for a British shilling, before much more of the present century is finished, will be exhibited in like manner.

The thing has become too public and common. In early days, great men, dying, required to be buried in the holiest sanctuary going. Sometimes the great bust was transferred to Westminster Abbey; but, of late, the monuments are becoming so numerous, the company so mixed, and the exhibition so like a show-box, that the modern multiplication of Orders has made many Knights very shy of wearing them. Thus the Abbey has lost a great proportion of its rank and celebrity; and I have been told of a gentleman of distinction, who, having died of a consumption, and being asked where he wished to be buried, replied, “any where but Westminster Abbey.”

To resume, however, the course of my narrative—the celebrity of the “olive branch” every day increased, and the number of his visitors so rapidly augmented, that the priest and showman considered that the day when he should be committed to the Tower would be to them no trifling misfortune. Even the ladies conceived there was something musical in his grunt, and some tried to touch it off upon their pianos. So gentle, so sleek and silvery were his well-scrubbed bristles, that every body patted his fat sides. Standing on his bare feet, his beautifully arched back, rising like a rainbow, overtopped half his visitors; and he became so great and general a favourite, that, though he came from Ireland, nobody even thought of inquiring whether he was a papist or protestant grunter!

One day, however, the most unforeseen and grievous misfortune that ever happened to so fine an animal, at once put an end to all his glories, and to the abundant pickings of his chaplain.

It happened, unfortunately, that a Wexford yeoman, who had been at the taking and retaking of Enniscorthy, (a theme he never failed to expatiate on,) and had been acquainted with the pig from his infancy, as well as the lady sow who bore him, having himself sold her to the last proprietors, came at the time of a very crowded assembly into the room; and, as Irishmen never omit any opportunity of talking, (especially in a crowd, and, if at all convenient, more especially about themselves,) the yeoman began to brag of his acquaintance with the hog, the storming of the town, the fight, and slaughter; and, unfortunately, in order to amuse the company, by suggesting the cause of his enormous bulk and stature, mentioned, as a national curiosity, that the people in Ireland were so headstrong as to attribute his growth to his having eaten the Rev. Mr. Haydn, a Protestant clergyman of Enniscorthy, after the battle; but he declared to the gentlemen and ladies that could not be the fact, as he was assured by an eye-witness, a sergeant of pike-men amongst the rebels, that there were several dogs helping him, and some ducks out of the Castle court. Besides, the parson having been a slight old gentleman, there was scarcely as much flesh on his reverend bones as would have given one meal to a hungry bull-dog. This information, and the manner of telling it, caused an instantaneous silence, and set every English man and woman staring and shuddering around him, not one of whom did the pig attempt to put his snout on. The idea of a Papist pig eating a Protestant parson was of a nature quite insupportable; both church and state were affected: their praises were now turned to execration; the women put their handkerchiefs to their noses to keep off the odour; every body stood aloof both from the pig and the showman, as if they were afraid of being devoured. The men cursed the Papist brute, and the rebellious nation that sent him there; every one of them who had a stick or an umbrella gave a punch or a crack of it to the “olive branch;” and in a few minutes the room was cleared of visitors, to the astonishment of the yeoman, who lost no time in making his own exit. The keepers, now perceiving that their game was gone, determined to deliver him up, as Master Haydn, to the lieutenant of the Tower, to be placed at the will and pleasure of his Majesty.

The chaplain, showman, and two amateur rebels, now prepared to return to Wexford. Though somewhat disappointed at the short cut of their exhibition, they had no reason to find fault with the lining their pockets had got. The officers of the Tower, however, had heard the catastrophe and character of the “olive branch,” and communicated to the lieutenant their doubts if he were a fit subject to mix with the noble wild beasts in a royal menagerie. Several consultations took place upon the subject; the lord chamberlain was requested to take his Majesty’s commands upon the subject in council: the king, who had been signing some death-warrants and pardons for the Recorder of London, was thunderstruck and shocked at the audacity of an Irish pig eating a Protestant clergyman; and though no better Christian ever existed than George the Third, his hatred to pork from that moment was invincible, and became almost a Jewish aversion.

“The Tower! the Tower!” said his Majesty, with horror and indignation. “The Tower for an Irish hog that ate a pious Christian!—No, no—no, no, my lords.—Mr. Recorder, Mr. Recorder—here, see, see—I command you on your allegiance—shoot the pig, shoot him—shoot, Mr. Recorder—you can’t hang.—Eh! you would if you could, Mr. Recorder, no doubt. But, no, no—let me never hear more of the monster. A sergeant’s guard—shoot him—tell Sir Richard Ford to send his keepers to Ireland to-night—to-night if he can find them—go, go—let me never hear more of him—go—go—go—go—shoot him, shoot him!”

The Recorder withdrew with the usual obeisances, and notice was given that at six next morning a sergeant’s guard should attend to shoot the “olive branch,” and bury his corpse in the Tower ditch, with a bulky barrel of hot lime to annihilate it. This was actually executed, notwithstanding the following droll circumstance that Sir Richard Ford himself informed us of.

Sir Richard was far better acquainted with the humour and management of the Irish in London, than any London magistrate that ever succeeded him: he knew nearly all of the principal ones by name, and individually, and represented them to us as the most tractable of beings, if duly come round and managed, and the most intractable and obstinate, if directly contradicted.

The Irish had been quite delighted with the honour intended for their compatriot, the Enniscorthy boar, and were equally affected and irritated at the sentence which was so unexpectedly and so unjustly passed on him; and, after an immediate consultation, they determined that the pig should be rescued at all risks, and without the least consideration how they were to save his life afterwards. Their procedure was all settled, and the rescue determined on, when one of Sir Richard’s spies brought him information of an intended rising at St. Giles’s to rescue the pig, which the frightened spy said must be followed by the Irish firing London, plundering the Bank, and massacring all the Protestant population—thirty thousand choice Irish being ready for any thing.