It is to be found in all our histories well recorded. What are the lines of Dryden?—and Dryden was a man who knew how to make verses worth reading.
And the rebel rose stuck to the house of Ormond for many a day;—but it is useless to say more. Even I who would sing "Lilla bullalero bullen a la,"—if I could, only I can't sing,—and who give "The glorious, pious, and immortal memory," because I can toast,—even I do not think wrong of the house of Ormond for sticking as it did to the house of Stuart. Of that too I have a long story to tell some time or another.
Never mind. I was mentioning all this, because I have not a 'Peerage' by me; and I really do not know who was the Lord Ormond of the day which I take to be the epoch of my tale. If I had a 'Peerage,' I am sure I could settle it in a minute; but I have none. Those, therefore, who are most interested in the affair ought to examine a 'Peerage,' to find who was the man of the time;—I can only help them by a hint. My own particular and personal reason for recollecting the matter is this: I am forty, or more—never mind the quantity more; and I was told the story by my uncle at least five-and-twenty years ago. That brings us to the year 1812,—say 1811. My uncle—his name was Jack—told me that he had heard the story from Tom himself fifty years before that. If my uncle Jack, who was a very good fellow, considerably given to potation, was precise in his computation of time, the date of his story must have fallen in 1762—or 1763—no matter which. This brings me near the date I have already assigned; but the reader of my essay has before him the grounds of my chronological conjectures, and he can form his opinions on data as sufficiently as myself.
I recur fearlessly to the fact that Tom—whatever his surname may have been—emerged from the kitchen of his master in Clonmell, to make his way to foreign countries.
His master was a very honest fellow—a schoolmaster of the name of Chaytor, a Quaker, round of paunch and red of nose. I believe that some of his progeny are now men of office in Tipperary—and why should they not? Summer school-vacations in Ireland occur in July; and Chaytor—by the bye, I think he was Tom Chaytor, but if Quakers have Christian names I am not sure,—gave leave to his man Tom to go wandering about the country. He had four, or perhaps five, days to himself.
Tom, as he was described to me by my uncle over a jug of punch about a quarter of a century ago, was what in his memory must have been a smart-built fellow. Clean of limb, active of hand, light of leg, clear of eye, bright of hair, white of tooth, and two-and-twenty; in short, he was as handsome a lad as you would wish to look upon in a summer's day. I mention a summer's day merely for its length; for even on a winter's day there were few girls that could cast an eye upon him without forgetting the frost.
So he started for the land of Kilkenny, which is what we used to call in Ireland twenty-four miles from Clonmell. They have stretched it now to thirty; but I do not find it the longer or shorter in walking or chalking. However, why should we gamble at an act of "justice to Ireland?" Tom at all events cared little for the distance; and, going it at a slapping pace, he made Kilkenny in six hours. I pass the itinerary. He started at six in the morning, and arrived somewhat foot-worn, but full not only of bread, but of wine, (for wine was to be found on country road-sides in Ireland in those days,) in the ancient city of Saint Canice about noon.
Tom refreshed himself at the Feathers, kept in those days by a man named Jerry Mulvany, who was supposed to be more nearly connected with the family of Ormond than the rites of the church could allow; and having swallowed as much of the substantial food and the pestiferous fluid that mine host of the Feathers tendered him, the spirit of inquisitiveness, which, according to the phrenologists, is developed in all mankind, seized paramount hold of Tom. Tom—? ay, Tom it must be, for I really cannot recollect his other name.
If there be a guide-book to the curiosities of Kilkenny, the work has escaped my researches. Of the city it is recorded, however, that it can boast of fire without smoke, air without fog, and streets paved with marble. And there's the college, and the bridge, and the ruins of St. John's abbey, and St. Canice, and the Nore itself, and last, not least, the castle of the Ormonds, with its woods and its walks, and its stables and its gallery, and all the rest of it, predominating over the river. It is a very fine-looking thing indeed; and, if I mistake not, John Wilson Croker, in his youth, wrote a poem to its honour, beginning with
"High on the sounding banks of Nore,"