Shakspeare.
The breeze of the declining March day blew keenly, as I strode across the extensive fields towards the old burial-ground of Kildinan, in the county of Cork. On reaching the ancient church, I rested on the broken bank that enclosed the cemetery, to contemplate the scene before me, and pause upon the generations of men that have been impelled along the stream of time towards the voiceless ocean of eternity, since the day on which an altar was first erected on this desolate spot, in worship of the Deity. The most accurate observer would scarcely suppose that this enclosure had ever been a place of interment, save that certain little hillocks of two or three spans long, and defined by a rude stone, were scattered along its surface. To a fanciful imagination these would seem to have been the graves of some pigmy nation, concerning which tradition had lost all remembrance. But the little sepulchres were the resting-places of unfortunate babes that die in the birth, or but wake to a consciousness of life—utter the brief cry of pain, and sleep in death for ever. These unbaptized ones are never permitted to mingle with Christian clay, and are always consigned to these disused cemeteries. With this exception, the old churchyard had long ceased to receive a human tenant, and its foundation could scarcely be traced beneath the rank grass. The father of the present proprietor of the land had planted the whole space with fir-trees, and these flourishing in the rich soil formed by decomposed human bodies for many a foot beneath, have shot up to an unusual size, and furnish a proof that even in death man is not wholly useless, and that, when his labour is ended, his carcase may fertilize the sod impoverished by his greedy toil. In these tall firs a colony of rooks had established their airy city, and while these young settlers were building new habitations, the old citizens of the grove were engaged in repairing the damage their homes had received from the storms of winter; and the shrill discordant voices of the sable multitude seemed to mock the repose of them that occupied the low and silent mansions beneath.
While indulging these grave reflections, I saw a man approach by the path I lately trod. He was far advanced in the decline of life; his tall figure, which he supported with a long staff, was wrapped in a blue-grey coat that folded close under a hair cincture, and the woollen hat, susceptible of every impression, was drawn over his face, as if to screen it from the sharp blast that rushed athwart his way. He suddenly stopped, then fixed his glance upon a certain spot of the burial ground where stood a blasted and branchless whitethorn, that seemed to have partaken of the ruin of the ancient fabric, over whose gross-grown foundation it yet lingered. Then raising his eyes to heaven, he sank upon his knees, while his lips moved as if in the utterance of some fervid ejaculation. Surely, thought I, this old man’s elevated devotion, at such a place and time, proceeds not solely from the ordinary motives that induce the penitent to pray—some circumstance, some tradition connected with this ancient place, has wrought his piety to this pitch of enthusiasm. Thus did my fancy conjecture at the moment, nor was I mistaken.
As the old man rose from his attitude of supplication, I approached and said, “My friend, I hope you will pardon this intrusion, for your sudden and impassioned devotion has greatly awakened my curiosity.”
He immediately answered in the Irish tongue, “I was only begging mercy and pardon for the souls who in the close darkness of the prison-house cannot relieve themselves, and beseeching that heaven would cease to visit upon the children the guilt of their fathers. This spot brought to my memory an act of sacrilege which my forefathers perpetrated, and for which their descendants yet suffer; and I did not conceive at the moment that a living being beheld me but God.
“Perhaps,” he continued, “as you seem to be a stranger in these parts, you have never heard of the Bald Barrys, and the blessed Whitethorn of Kildinan. It is an old tradition, and you may be inclined to name it a legend of superstition; but yonder is the whitethorn, blasted and decayed from the contact of my ancestors’ unholy hands; and here stands the last of their name, a homeless wanderer, with no other inheritance than this mark of the curse and crime of his race.” So saying, he pulled off the old woollen hat, and exhibited his head perfectly smooth and guiltless of a single hair.
“That old heads should become bald, is no uncommon occurrence,” I observed, “and I have seen younger heads as hairless as yours.”
“My head,” he returned, “from my birth to this moment, never knew a single hair; my father and grandfather endured the same privation, while my great-grandfather was deprived of his long and copious locks in one tearful moment. I shall tell you the story as we go along, if your course lies in the direction of this pathway.”
As we proceeded, he delivered the following legend. The old man’s phraseology was copious and energetic, qualities which I have vainly striven to infuse into the translation; for an abler pen would fail in our colder English of doing justice to the very poetical language of the narrator.
“Many a biting March has passed over the heads of men since Colonel Barry lived at Lisnegar. He was of the true blood of the old Strongbow chiefs, who became sovereign princes in the land; and forming alliances with the ancient owners of the soil, renounced the Saxon connection and name. This noble family gloried in the title of M’Adam;[3] and the colonel did not shame his descent. He kept open house for all comers, and every day an ox was killed and consumed at Lisnegar. All the gentlemen of the province thronged thither, hunting and hawking, and feasting and coshering; while the hall was crowded with harpers and pipers, caroughs and buckaughs, and shanachies and story-tellers, who came and went as they pleased, in constant succession. I myself,” said the old man, sighing, “have seen a remnant of these good old times, but now they are vanished for ever; the genius of hospitality has retired from the chieftain’s hall to the hovel on the moor; and the wanderer turns with a sigh from lofty groves and stately towers, to the shelter of the peasant’s shed!