“Divil a word of lie in it,” insisted Brian; “Peggy found it all out last night; an’ troth it’s troubling her as much as if you were her own flesh and blood. More betoken, haven’t you a mole there under your ear?”
“Well, and what if I have?” rejoined he peevishly, but alarmed all the while by the undisguised pity which his future lot seemed to call forth. “What if I have?—hadn’t many a man the same afore me?”
“No doubt, Mickey, agra, and the same bad luck came to them too,” replied Brian. “Och, you unfortunate ignorant crathur, sure you wouldn’t have me marry my poor little girl to a man that’s sooner or later to end his days on the gallows!”
“The gallows!” he slowly exclaimed. “Holy Virgin! is that what’s to become of me after all?” He tried to utter a laugh of derision and defiance, but it would not do; such a vaticination from such a quarter was no laughing matter. So yielding at last to the terror which he had so vainly affected to combat, he buried his face in his hands, and threw himself violently on the ground; while Brian, scarcely less moved by the revelation he had made on the faith of his wife’s far-famed sagacity, seated himself compassionately beside him to administer what consolation he could.
Mickey Brennan, in the parlance of our country, was a snug gossoon, well to do in the world, had a nice bit of land, a comfortable house, good crops, a pig or two, a cow or two, a sheep or two, a handsome good-humoured face, a good character; and, what made him more marriageable than all the rest, he had the aforementioned goods all to himself, for his father and mother were dead, and his last sister had got married at Shrove-tide. With all these combined advantages he might have selected any girl in the parish; but his choice was made long years before: it was Meny Moran or nobody—a choice in which Meny Moran herself perfectly concurred, and which her father, good, easy, soft-hearted Brian, never thought of disputing, although he was able to give her a fortune probably amounting to double what her suitor was worth. But was the fair one’s mother ever satisfied when such a disparity existed? Careful creatures! pound for pound is the maternal maxim in all ages and countries, and to give Peggy Moran her due, she was as much influenced by it as her betters, and murmured loud and long at the acquiescence of her husband in such a sacrifice. She murmured in vain, however: much as Brian deferred to her judgment and advice in all other matters, his love for his fond and pretty Meny armed him with resolution in this. When she wept at her mother’s insinuations, he always found a word of comfort for her; and if words wouldn’t do, he managed to bring Mickey and her together, and left them to settle the matter after their own way—a method which seldom failed of success. But Peggy was not to be baulked of her will. What! she whose mere word could make or break any match for five miles round, to be forbidden all interference in her own daughter’s: it was not to be borne. So at last she applied herself in downright earnest to the task. She dreamed at the match, tossed cups at it, saw signs at it: in fine, called her whole armoury of necromancy into requisition, and was rewarded at last by the discovery that the too highly-favoured swain was inevitably destined to end his days on the gallows—a discovery which, as has been already seen, fulfilled her most sanguine wishes.
Whatever may be the opinion of other and wiser people on the subject, in the parish of Ballycoursey or its vicinity it was rather an ugly joke to be thus devoted to the infernal gods by a prophetess of such unerring sagacity as Peggy Moran, or, as she was sometimes styled with reference to her skill in all supernatural matters, Peggy the Pishogue—that cognomen implying an acquaintance with more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in philosophy; and most unquestionably it was no misnomer: the priest himself was not more deeply read in his breviary than was she in all the signs and omens whereby the affairs of this moving world are shadowed and foretokened—nothing was too great or too small for her all-piercing ken—in every form of augury she was omniscient, from cup-tossing up to necromancy—in vain the mystic dregs of the tea-cup assumed shapes that would have puzzled Doctor Wall himself: with her first glance she detected at once the true meaning of the hieroglyphic symbol, and therefrom dealt out deaths, births, and marriages, with the infallibility of a newspaper—in vain Destiny, unwilling to be unrolled, shrouded itself in some dream that would have bothered King Solomon. Peggy no sooner heard it than it was unravelled—there was not a ghost in the country with whose haunts and habits she was not as well acquainted as if she was one of the fraternity—not a fairy could put his nose out without being detected by her—the value of property was increased tenfold all round the country by the skill with which she wielded her charms and spells for the discovery of all manner of theft. But I must stop; for were I to recount but half her powers, the eulogium would require a Penny Journal for itself, and still leave matter for a supplement. It would be a melancholy instance indeed of Irish ingratitude if for all these superhuman exertions she was not rewarded by universal confidence. To the credit of the parish be it said that no such stigma was attached to it: nothing could equal the estimation in which all her words and actions were held by her neighbours—nothing but the estimation in which they were held in her own household by her husband and daughter.
Such being the gifted personage who had foretold the coming disasters of Mickey Brennan, it is not to be wondered at that the matter created a sensation, particularly as sundry old hags to whom she had imparted her discovery were requested to hush it up for the poor gossoon’s sake. His friends sorrowed over him as a gone man, for not the most sceptical among them ventured to hazard even a doubt of Peggy’s veracity—in fact, they viewed the whole as a matter requiring consolation and sympathy rather than as a scrutiny into the sources of her information, which by common consent were viewed as indubitable, while some, more compassionate than the rest, went so far as to declare “that since the thing could not be avoided, and Mickey, poor fellow, must be hanged, they hoped it might be for something dacint, not robbing, or coining, or the like.”
The hardest task of all is to describe the feelings of poor Brennan himself on the occasion; for much as he had affected to disparage the sybilline revelations of the wierd woman of Ballycoursey, there was not one in the neighbourhood who was more disposed to yield them unlimited credence in any case but his own; and even in his own case he was not long enabled to struggle against conviction. Let people prate as they may about education and its effects, it will require a period of more generations than one to root the love of the marvellous out of the hearts of our countrymen; and until that be effected, every village in the land will have its wise woman, and with nine-tenths of her neighbours what she says will be regarded as gospel. Some people of course will laugh to scorn such an assertion, and more will very respectfully beg leave to doubt it, but still it is true; and in the more retired inland villages circumstances are every day occurring far more extravagant than anything detailed in this story, as is very well known to all who are much conversant with such places. But to return to the doomed man:—How could he be expected to bear up against this terrible denunciation, when all the consolation he could receive from his nearest and dearest was that “it was a good man’s death?” Death! poor fellow, he had suffered the pains of a thousand deaths already, in living without the hope of ever being the husband of his Meny. Death, instant and immediate, would have been a relief to him; and it was not long until, by his anxiety to obtain that relief, he afforded an opportunity to Peggy of displaying her own reliance on the correctness of her prognostications. Goaded into madness by his present sufferings and his fears for the future, he made an attempt upon his life by plunging into an adjacent lake when no one, as he thought, was near to interrupt his intentions. It was not so, however—a shepherd had observed him, but at such a distance that before help could be obtained to rescue him he was to all appearance lifeless. The news flew like wildfire: he was dead, stone dead, they said—had lain in the water ten minutes, half an hour, half the day, since last night; but in one point they all concurred—dead he was; dead as St Dominick.
“Troth he’s not,” was Peggy’s cool rejoinder. “Be quiet, and I’ll engage he’ll come to. Nabocklish, he that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned. Wait a while an’ hould your tongues. Nabocklish, I tell you he’ll live to spoil a market yet, an’ more’s the pity.”
People shook their heads, and almost began to think their wise woman had made a mistake, and read hemp instead of water. It was no such thing, however: slowly and beyond all hopes, Brennan recovered the effects of his rash attempt, thereby fulfilling so much of his declared destiny, and raising the reputation of Mrs Moran to a point that she never had attained before. That very week she discovered no less than six cases of stolen goods, twice detected the good people taking unauthorised liberties with their neighbours’ churns, and spaed a score of fortunes, at the very least; and he, poor fellow, satisfied at last that Fortune was not to be bilked so easily, resigned himself to his fate like a man, and began to look about him in earnest for some opportunity of gracing the gallows without disgracing his people.