Then again on Sunday, or holyday nights, she would tell me how, when a child, she had wished to be a nun, and that she would go out in the dark, pitch night, and kneel on the ground in the middle of their garden, and ask the good Virgin and the Saints to pray for her—for Bridget has always been a religious girl.
Then she had actually heard the Benshee cry. It came wailing around the house when her father died; and she had heard it a week before his death, when he was hale and hearty. She had heard it at night-fall one evening when she was crossing the glen below their cottage, as she was coming from Coleraine, where she had been spending the day with her grandmother. It commenced “low and mournful like” in the bushes beside her, and then ranged around the hills, swelling out louder and louder, until it ceased behind the cottage. As she would dwell on this, my fancy would picture to me the enthusiastic, imaginative Irish girl, standing with lips apart, listening to this mournful wailing night-wind, which her after troubles shaped into the sad poetical Benshee; and if I had had the skill of an artist, I would have made a lovely sketch, I am sure; for so plainly did her descriptions bring before me her figure and the surrounding landscape, lightened with the warm hue of the lingering twilight so peculiar to Ireland.
Bridget sat down on the rug beside me, and when we went to bed that night, good reader, it was later than unsuspecting Aunt Mary imagined; but I had heard all Bridget’s troubles, had soothed and comforted her, had read her lover’s last letter to her—for she had a lover—what girl has not?—and sent her to bed with a heart considerably lighter than when, with aching head but patient fingers, she had prepared my nice night meal.
Bridget’s father, Dermot Kerevan, was a Scotchman by birth, but of Irish parentage. His father had settled in Glasgow, and there did Dermot spend his early years, and obtain thriftiness and steadiness, qualities not often found in an Irishman. Dermot was early apprenticed to a gardener, and when he was out of his term of service, his master recommended him to an Irish gentleman, who wanted a gardener for his place, “The Forest,” at Coleraine. There Dermot came, and it was not long before he brought home to his pretty gardener’s-cottage, the beauty of Coleraine, Grace Mullen, who he had persuaded to be his “bonnie wife,” as he called her. They must have been very happy—for sweeter domestic pictures I have never heard described, either in tale or poem, than my good Bridget would sketch in her little stories of their home, during her father’s life. But this blessed happiness could not last for ever. One fine spring day poor Dermot was brought home from the garden, up at “the great house,” on a litter, nearly dead. He had fallen from a high tree while lopping off a branch. He lingered only a few hours, leaving the lonely widow with her “four childer,” to battle with life alone.
Bridget was the eldest, and she was only twelve. Then there was Grace, and Elsie, and little Jinny, the baby, all to be cared for. Bridget was sent to her uncle’s at Glasgow town, and the grandmother of Grace Kerevan gave the shelter of her poor roof to the rest of them. Widow Kerevan opened a little shop in her grandmother’s front room, and did “bits of work for the people all around Coleraine,” as Bridget expressed it.
A year after the kind, loving father’s death, home came Bridget from Glasgow town. Her uncle, the rich distiller, was enraged at her, for she had told his wife she had rather starve in Ireland than go to the meeting-house all day Sunday, and sit straight up at her sewing and knitting the rest of the week. Poor girl! the strict, rigid habits of her uncle’s thrifty Scotch wife had driven her almost frantic. She, who had roamed at will, over hill and glen, and had never been bound down to any duty. The domestic affairs of her own home had always been soon dispensed with, and she had spent most of her time in rambling through the forest, or by the stream-side, or playing with Gracey, Elsie, and the baby, chasing their shadows on the grassy hill-side; then how could she bear the strait-laced notions and rules of her notable Scotch aunt? Not at all, and she told her so; and they sent her home to the starvation her aunt had often taunted her with, holding it in perspective, when she would be rebellious.
The mother, grandmother, and children crowded around her. Grace Kerevan held her child, from whom she had been so long parted, close to her bosom, and sobbed with joy.
“And so,” said the old grandmother, “the ‘Scotch quean,’ as poor Dermot used to say, told ye we starved here? Never mind, darlint, ye shall always have a p’raty, even if we all do without.”
Poor Bridget worked early and late, for the farmers’ wives, but she only made a “small thrifle,” as she said, and sometimes they were so poor that they had scarcely a potato apiece in the house.
“And did you ever wish yourself back in Glasgow town, Bridget?” I inquired.