“Neever mind, Corporal, your voice is na so bad as the Highland pipes, nor yet so loud. But before ya begin, here tak' a——.”
It is impossible to say what the Sergeant offered the Corporal; but it has been since seriously hinted at by Pat Mulligan, and some others. Whatever it was, I have no business to blab—even if I thought it nothing less than pure Inishowen: however, when compliments had passed, and all the men were comfortably seated round the fire, the Corporal and Jack Andrews sung the following verses to a beautiful Biscayan air:—
THE FRIAR OF ST. SEBASTIAN.
Deep the matin-bell toll'd from Benedict's tower,
Long the Friar alone had sighed for the hour,
When all were at rest—
All but the gentlest lady of Spain
Who loved him the best.
In secret he gave her his passion again,
Unholy, unblest:
His lamp of religion was clouded by love,
Too thick and too dark to be seen from above!
Soon the Friar's boat came her bower beneath,
While Sebastian's rock was silent as death,
And gloomy, and steep.
Soft she descended, while, close to her breast,
Her baby lay asleep;
Gentlest innocent, long is thy rest,
Long, long in the deep!
O Friar! the depth of Sebastian's wave
Cannot cover the crime or the little one's grave.
Light the little boat skimmed the moon-covered sea,
Guilt fell dark on the dawn that pointed their way.
Woe followed their flight:
Soon they were brought to St. Benedict's tower—
The deed came to light.
Down to the dungeon the lovers they bore
On St. Benedict's night.
The lamp of religion had scarcely a ray
To chase the deep gloom of their prison away.
None can tell of the fate that either befell;
Yet on holy record 'tis noted full well
In Benedict's tower.
Often the sentinel, trembling, fears
The matin-bell hour:
Often the sentinel fancies he hears
Heaven's punishing pow'r;
And the moans of dying grow loud in his mind,
As the Friar and Lady flit by on the wind.
At the conclusion of this ballad, the door of the guard-house flew open, and the noise which it made, together with the sudden flapping of the window-shutters, astonished the whole guard, and terrified one or two. The wind roared, the night was as dark as chaos, and the song had wound the soldiers' minds up to a climax. They, for an instant forgot themselves, when the door was thrown open. Perhaps they expected a visit from the Friar himself, accompanied by the Lady, to remonstrate with them on the impropriety of thus disturbing their departed spirits. There was no very great demonstration of fear; but even soldiers—and soldiers used to behold the dying and the dead, cannot be always prepared against the effects of romance and music allied against them. None fell from their seats, nor was any stool overturned; but there was a certain shuffling and huddling up together, which sufficiently demonstrated to the sentry at the door, that his trick (for he was the ghost that opened the door,) had the effect he intended. He laughed without, and the guard laughed within; but none had the right of laugh except the sentry himself; which, to do him justice, he rightly enjoyed.
“Shut the door, then, God dom ye! for a blatherinskate, and mind yar duty,” roared out Sergeant M'Fadgen to the sentry, who obeyed the peremptory words as soon as he had expended his laugh in the dark; and order thus being restored, Jack Andrews was unanimously requested to tell the story of the “Friar and the Lady,” as he heard it at St. Sebastian: to this he assented, and gave it in something like the following words:—
“You all know, lads, that when the storming of the town was over, we took the duty there. Well, in the house where I was quartered, there lived nobody but an old couple: the man had been a smuggler, and had once been a prisoner of war in England, so that he managed by his intercourse with British and Americans, to speak English pretty tolerably. The old woman was a regular Basquentian mountaineer, with scarcely a bit of flesh on her bones, and not less than eighty years of age. This old couple had returned to St. Sebastian to occupy the house of a leather-seller, who retired from the town before the siege. And the house was certainly in a complete state of dilapidation, with the exception of the ground-floor; it had been on fire during the siege, and although the flames had not made much havoc in it, yet the shot and shell had done enough to reduce it to a complete wreck. Here I used to sit with the old pair of a night, talking of various subjects, and it was from the old man I heard the particulars of the ‘Friar and the Lady.’ He told me that his wife lived in the capacity of waiting-maid with the heroine of the tale, and that the convent of St. Benedict, to which the friar belonged, was in the same street where we then resided. The convent in which the young lady lived was at the extremity of the town, near the sea, which the back windows looked out upon, from an elevated rock. You have all seen the rock, yourselves.
“The young lady was about seventeen years of age; she had been admitted as a novice in the convent of Santa Clara, and was to be made a nun in about ten or twelve months after the period of her becoming acquainted with the friar. He was on very familiar terms with the mother abbess, as well as the whole of the establishment; for he was universally celebrated for piety and wisdom: his age was about thirty-five. This holy gentleman managed matters so that he got the better of the novice's virtue, and the consequences were that she became pregnant: they contrived to conceal all appearances of her frailty; and the holy father, in order to preserve his reputation, prevailed upon the novice to elope with him, under a promise of removing her to Italy, whither he proposed to follow her, and to settle in that country. The night was fixed for carrying this plan into effect,—this was about a week before the day on which she was to take the veil—the friar procured a boat, and with it came to the back of the convent at midnight; the novice was prepared, and bade adieu to the walls of her sisterhood for ever. She entered the boat, and the friar easily rowed it along the coast towards the port of Passages, for it was a fine moonlight night, and the sea was as bright as a looking-glass. Before they had proceeded many yards from the beach the young lady became ill, and in half an hour was delivered of a fine boy in the boat: there were no clothes for the little stranger, and the friar was determined it should not long require them, for he sunk it remorselessly into the deep water close to the rocks, and ended all its wants in a moment.
“The baby was washed on shore next morning stiff and dead. There was a black silk band, with a clasp, twisted round its little leg, by accident, or more likely by the providence of God, for it was recognized as belonging to the unfortunate novice of St. Clara's convent. Enquiries soon took place; the guilty friar and his victim were discovered at an obscure house in the town of Passages, and taken back to St. Sebastian. The influence of the clergy prevented a public trial for the murder, lest the holy church should be scandalized; but neither Friar nor Lady were ever afterwards seen, and it is believed to this day, that they were either privately put to death, or imprisoned in the Convent for life. The old woman declares they were chained in separate dungeons, and starved to death; but this only rests upon her own assertion; however, most of the people of St. Sebastian implicitly believe that the ghosts of both visit the sea-shore every full moon; and so much did their stories about ‘The Friar and the Lady’ affect one of our lads, that it nearly killed him.”