That a place should instantly begin to deteriorate because a certain individual was removed from it—that cottagers should become thriftless, and houses dirty, and house-windows cracked,—all these are points which public economists may ruminate over, and can’t fail to give the carelessest traveller much matter for painful reflection. How is it that the presence of one man more or less should affect a set of people come to years of manhood, and knowing that they have their duty to do? Why should a man at Ahascragh let his home go to ruin, and stuff his windows with ragged breeches instead of glass, because Mr. Smith is agent in place of Mr. Jones? Is he a child, that won’t work unless the schoolmaster be at hand? or are we to suppose, with the Repealers, that the cause of all this degradation and misery is the intolerable tyranny of the sister country, and the pain which poor Ireland has been made to endure? This is very well at the Corn Exchange, and among patriots after dinner; but, after all, granting the grievance of the franchise (though it may not be unfair to presume that a man who has not strength of mind enough to mend his own breeches or his own windows will always be the tool of one party or another), there is no Inquisition set up in the country; the law tries to defend the people as much as they will allow; the odious tithe has even been whisked off from their shoulders to the landlord’s; they may live pretty much as they like. Is it not too monstrous to howl about English tyranny and suffering Ireland, and call for a Stephen’s Green Parliament to make the country quiet and the people industrious? The people are not politically worse treated than their neighbours in England. The priests and the landlords, if they chose to co-operate, might do more for the country now than any kings or laws could. What you want here is not a Catholic or Protestant party, but an Irish party.
In the midst of these reflections, and by what the reader will doubtless think a blessed interruption, we came in sight of the town of Ballinasloe and its ‘gash-lamps,’ which a fellow-passenger did not fail to point out with admiration. The road-menders, however, did not appear to think that light was by any means necessary: for, having been occupied, in the morning, in digging a fine hole upon the highway, previous to some alterations to be effected there, they had left their work at sundown, without any lamp to warn coming travellers of the hole—which we only escaped by a wonder. The papers have much such another story. In the Galway and Ballinasloe coach a horse on the road suddenly fell down and died; the coachman drove his coach unicorn-fashion into town; and, as for the dead horse, of course he left it on the road at the place where it fell, and where another coach coming up was upset over it, bones broken, passengers maimed, coach smashed. By Heavens! the tyranny of England is unendurable; and I have no doubt it had a hand in upsetting that coach.
CHAPTER XXIII
BALLINASLOE TO DUBLIN
DURING the cattle-fair the celebrated town of Ballinasloe is thronged with farmers from all parts of the kingdom—the cattle being picturesquely exhibited in the park of the noble proprietor of the town, Lord Clancarty. As it was not fair-time the town did not seem particularly busy, nor was there much to remark in it, except a church, and a magnificent lunatic asylum, that lies outside the town on the Dublin road, and is as handsome and stately as a palace. I think the beggars were more plenteous and more loathsome here than almost anywhere; to one hideous wretch I was obliged to give money to go away, which he did for a moment, only to obtrude his horrible face directly afterwards, half eaten away with disease. ‘A penny for the sake of poor little Mery,’ said another woman, who had a baby sleeping on her withered breast; and how can any one who has a little Mery at home resist such an appeal? ‘Pity the poor blind man!’ roared a respectably dressed grenadier of a fellow. I told him to go to the gentleman with a red neckcloth and fur cap (a young buck from Trinity College)—to whom the blind man with much simplicity immediately stepped over, and as for the rest of the beggars, what pen or pencil could describe their hideous leering flattery, their cringing swindling humour!
The inn, like the town, being made to accommodate the periodical crowds of visitors who attended the fair, presented in their absence rather a faded and desolate look; and, in spite of the live-stock for which the place is famous, the only portion of their produce which I could get to my share, after twelve hours’ fasting and an hour’s bell-ringing and scolding, was one very lean mutton-chop and one very small damp kidney, brought in by an old tottering waiter to a table spread in a huge black coffee-room, dimly lighted by one little jet of gas.
As this only served very faintly to light up the above banquet, the waiter, upon remonstrance, proceeded to light the other bec; but the lamp was sulky, and upon this attempt to force it, as it were, refused to act altogether, and went out. The big room was then accommodated with a couple of yellow mutton-candles. There was a neat, handsome, correct young English officer warming his slippers at the fire, and opposite him sate a worthy gentleman, with a glass of mingled ‘materials,’ discoursing to him in a very friendly and confidential way.
As I don’t know the gentleman’s name, and as it is not at all improbable, from the situation in which he was, that he has quite forgotten the night’s conversation, I hope there will be no breach of confidence in recalling some part of it. The speaker was dressed in deep black, worn, however, with that dégagé air peculiar to the votaries of Bacchus, or that nameless god, offspring of Bacchus and Ceres, who may have invented the noble liquor called whisky. It was fine to see the easy folds in which his neckcloth confined a shirt-collar moist with the generous drops that trickled from the chin above,—its little percentage upon the punch. There was a fine dashing black satin waistcoat that called for its share, and generously disdained to be buttoned. I think this is the only specimen I have seen yet of the personage still so frequently described in the Irish novels—the careless drinking ‘squire—the Irish Will Whimble.
‘Sir,’ says he, ‘as I was telling you before this gentleman came in (from Westport, I preshume, sir, by the mail; and ‘my service to you!’), the butchers in Chume (Tuam)—where I live, and shall be happy to see you and give you a shakedown, a cut of mutton, and the use of as good a brace of pointers as ever you shot over—the butchers say to me, whenever I look in at their shops and ask for a joint of meat—they say: “Take down that quarther o’ mutton, boy; IT’S NO USE WEIGHING IT for Mr. Bodkin. He can tell with an eye what’s the weight of it to an ounce!” And so, sir, I can; and I’d make a bet to go into any market in Dublin, Tchume, Ballinasloe, where you please, and just by looking at the meat decide its weight.’
At the pause, during which the gentleman here designated Bodkin drank off his materials, the young officer said gravely, that this was a very rare and valuable accomplishment, and thanked him for the invitation to Tchume.
The honest gentleman proceeded with his personal memoirs; and (with a charming modesty that authenticated his tale, while it interested his hearers for the teller) he called for a fresh tumbler, and began discoursing about horses. ‘Them, I don’t know,’ says he, confessing the fact at once; ‘or, if I do, I’ve been always so unlucky with them that it’s as good as if I didn’t.