While walking in the town, a woman meets the rector with a number of curtseys and compliments, and vows that ‘tis your reverence is the friend of the poor, and may the Lord preserve you to us, and lady; and having poured out blessings innumerable, concludes by producing a paper for her son that’s in trouble in England. The paper ran to the effect, that ‘We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the parish of Louth, have known Daniel Horgan ever since his youth, and can speak confidently as to his integrity, piety, and good conduct.’ In fact, the paper stated that Daniel Horgan was an honour to his country, and consequently quite incapable of the crime of sack-stealing, I think, with which at present he was charged and lay in prison in Durham Castle. The paper had, I should think, come down to the poor mother from Durham, with a direction ready written to despatch it back again when signed, and was evidently the work of one of those benevolent individuals in assize-towns, who, following the profession of the law, delight to extricate unhappy young men of whose innocence (from various six-and-eightpenny motives) they feel convinced. There stood the poor mother, as the rector examined the document, with a huge wafer in her hand, ready to forward it so soon as it was signed; for the truth is, that ‘We, the undersigned,’ were as yet merely imaginary.
‘You don’t come to church,’ says the rector. ‘I know nothing of you or your son: why don’t you go to the priest?’
‘Oh, your reverence, my son’s to be tried next Tuesday,’ whimpered the woman; and then said the priest was not in the way, but as we had seen him a few minutes before, recalled the assertion, and she confessed that she had been to the priest, and that he would not sign; and fell to prayers, tears, and unbounded supplications to induce the rector to give his signature. But that hard-hearted divine, stating that he had not known Daniel Horgan from his youth upwards, that he could not certify as to his honesty or dishonesty, enjoined the woman to make an attempt upon the R.C. curate, to whose handwriting he would certify if need were.
The upshot of the matter was that the woman returned with a certificate from the R.C. curate as to her son’s good behaviour while in the village, and the rector certified that the handwriting was that of the R.C. clergyman in question, and the woman popped her big red wafer into the letter and went her way. Tuesday is passed long ere this: Mr. Horgan’s guilt or innocence is long since clearly proved, and he celebrates the latter in freedom, or expiates the former at the mill. Indeed, I don’t know that there was any call to introduce his adventures to the public, except, perhaps, it may be good to see how in this little distant Irish village the blood of life is running. Here goes a happy party to a marriage, and the parson prays a ‘God bless you!’ upon them, and the world begins for them. Yonder lies a stall-fed rector in his tomb, flaunting over his nothingness his pompous heraldic motto; and yonder lie the fresh fragments of a nameless deal coffin, which any foot may kick over. Presently you hear the clear voices of little children praising God; and here comes a mother wringing her hands and asking for succour for her lad, who was a child but the other day. Such motus animorum atque hoec certamina tanta are going on in an hour of an October day in a little pinch of clay in the county Louth.
Perhaps—being in the moralising strain—the honest surgeon at the dispensary might come in as an illustration. He inhabits a neat humble house, a story higher than his neighbours’, but with a thatched roof. He relieves a thousand patients yearly at the dispensary, he visits seven hundred in the parish, he supplies the medicines gratis; and receiving for these services the sum of about one hundred pounds yearly, some county economists and calculators are loud against the extravagance of his salary, and threaten his removal. All these individuals and their histories we presently turn our backs upon, for, after all, dinner is at five o’clock, and we have to see the new road to Dundalk, which the county has lately been making.
Of this undertaking, which shows some skilful engineering—some gallant cutting of rocks and hills, and filling of valleys, with a tall and handsome stone bridge thrown across the river, and connecting the high embankments on which the new road at that place is formed—I can say little, except that it is a vast convenience to the county, and a great credit to the surveyor and contractor too; for the latter, though a poor man, and losing heavily by his bargain, has yet refused to mulct his labourers of their wages; and, as cheerfully as he can, still pays them their shilling a day.
CHAPTER XXVII
NEWRY, ARMAGH, BELFAST—FROM DUNDALK TO NEWRY
MY kind host gave orders to the small ragged boy that drove the car to take ‘particular care of the little gentleman’; and the car-boy, grinning in appreciation of the joke, drove off at his best pace, and landed his cargo at Newry, after a pleasant two hours’ drive. The country for the most part is wild, but not gloomy—the mountains round about are adorned with woods and gentlemen’s seats; and the car-boy pointed out one hill—that of Slievegullion, which kept us company all the way—as the highest hill in Ireland. Ignorant or deceiving car-boy! I have seen a dozen hills, each the highest in Ireland, in my way through the country, of which the inexorable Guide-book gives the measurement and destroys the claim. Well, it was the tallest hill, in the estimation of the car-boy; and in this respect the world is full of car-boys. Has not every mother of a family a Slievegullion of a son, who, according to her measurement, towers above all other sons? Is not the patriot, who believes himself equal to three Frenchmen, a car-boy in heart? There was a kind young creature, with a child in her lap, that evidently held this notion. She paid the child a series of compliments, which would have led one to fancy he was an angel from heaven at the least; and her husband sate gravely by, very silent, with his arms round a barometer.
Beyond these there were no incidents or characters of note, except an old hostler that they said was ninety years old, and watered the horse at a lone inn on the road. ‘Stop!’ cries this wonder of years and rags, as the car, after considerable parley, got under weigh. The car-boy pulled up, thinking a fresh passenger was coming out of the inn.
‘Stop, till one of the gentlemen gives me something,’ says the old man, coming slowly up with us; which speech created a laugh, and got him a penny: he received it without the least thankfulness, and went away grumbling to his pail.