Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 2 (of 3)

SELF-DECAPITATION.

An Irish peasant cutting his own head off by mistake—His reputed ghost—Humours of an Irish Wake—Natural deaths of the Irish peasantry—Reflections on the Excise laws.

Among my memorandums of singular incidents, I find one which even now affords me as much amusement as such a circumstance can possibly admit of: and as it is, at the same time, highly characteristic of the people among whom it occurred, in that view I relate it. A man decapitating himself by mistake is indeed a blunder of true Hibernian character.^[20]

20.This anecdote has been termed “fabulous” by some of the sapient periodical critics, and a “bounce” by others. “’Tis quite impossible,” say the scribblers, “for any man to cut his own head off.” This no doubt singular decapitation, however, happens to be a well known and comparatively recent fact; and if either of the aforesaid sceptics will be so obliging as to try the same species of guillotine that Ned did at the Barrow water, he may, with the greatest facility, get rid of, probably, the thickest and heaviest article belonging to him.

The Emperor of Morocco, it is said, to convince his subjects what an easy matter decapitation was, and what an uncertain tenure a head has in his dominions, used to cut off the head of a jack-ass every morning with one back stroke of his sabre. Should his copper-coloured Majesty honour England with his august presence, to be feasted, fire-worked, and subsidised like Don Miguel the First, what noble practice at decapitation, in the absence of his jack-asses, he might have in London among the periodical scribblers—without doing much injury to the animals themselves, and none at all either to the “SociÉtÉ des lettres,” or what is called in England the “discerning public.”

I think it was in or about the year 1796, a labourer dwelling near the town of Athy, County Kildare (where my mother then resided), was walking with his comrade up the banks of the Barrow to the farm of a Mr. Richardson, on whose meadows they were employed to mow; each, in the usual Irish way, having his scythe loosely wagging over his shoulder. Lazily lounging close to the bank of the river, they espied a salmon partly hid under the bank. It is the nature of this fish that, when his head is concealed, he fancies no one can see his tail (there are many wise-acres in the world, besides the salmon, of the same way of thinking). On the present occasion the body of the fish was visible.

“Oh! Ned—Ned, dear!” said one of the mowers, “look at that big fellow there: it is a pity we ha’nt no spear, now, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Ned, “we could be after piking the lad with the scythe-handle.”

“True for you!” said Dennis: “the spike of yeer handle is longer nor mine; give the fellow a dig with it at any rate.”

“Ay, will I,” returned the other: “I’ll give the lad a prod he’ll never forget any how.”

The spike and their sport was all they thought of: but the blade of the scythe, which hung over Ned’s shoulders, never came into the contemplation of either of them. Ned cautiously looked over the bank; the unconscious salmon lay snug, little imagining the conspiracy that had been formed against his tail.

“Now hit the lad smart!” said Dennis: “there, now—there! rise your fist: now you have the boy! now, Ned—success!—success!”

Ned struck at the salmon with all his might and main, and that was not trifling. But whether “the boy” was piked or not never appeared; for poor Ned, bending his neck as he struck at the salmon, placed the vertebrÆ in the most convenient position for unfurnishing his shoulders; and his head came tumbling splash into the Barrow, to the utter astonishment of his comrade, who could not conceive how it could drop off so suddenly. But the next minute he had the consolation of seeing the head attended by one of his own ears, which had been most dexterously sliced off by the same blow which beheaded his comrade.

The head and ear rolled down the river in company, and were picked up with extreme horror at a mill-dam, near Mr. Richardson’s, by one of the miller’s men.

“Who the devil does this head belong to?” exclaimed the miller.—“Oh Christ—!”

“Whoever owned it,” said the man, “had three ears, at any rate, though they don’t match.”

A search being now made, Ned’s headless body was discovered lying half over the bank, and Dennis in a swoon, through fright and loss of blood, was found recumbent by its side. The latter, when brought to himself, (which process was effected by whisky,) recited the whole adventure. The body was attended to the grave by a numerous assemblage of Ned’s countrymen; and the custom of carrying scythes carelessly very much declined. Many accidents had happened before from that cause, and the priest very judiciously told his flock, after the de profundis, that Ned’s misfortune was a “devil’s judgment” for his negligence, whereby he had hurt a child a day or two before.

From that time none of the country-people would on any occasion go after dark to the spot where the catastrophe happened, as they say the doctor stole the head to natomise it; which fact was confirmed by a man without any head being frequently seen by the women and children who were occasionally led to pass the moat of Ascole, not three miles from Athy, in the night-time; and they really believed the apparition to be no other than the ghost of poor Ned Maher looking every where for his head that the doctor had made away with.^[21]

21.This is only mentioned as indicative of the singular flow of ideas of the Irish peasantry. The most serious and solemn events are frequently converted by them into sources of humour and of comic expression that altogether banish any thing under the head of gravity.

The lower orders are never half so happy as at a wake—when they can procure candles, punch, a piper, and tobacco, to enable them to sit and smoke round a human corpse! No matter what death it suffered, or disorder it died of (except indeed the bite of a mad dog). Their hilarity knows no limits; their humorous phrases and remarks flow in a constant stream of quaint wit and pointed repartee, but not in the style or tone of any other people existing. The wake is also their usual place of match-making; and the marriages or misfortunes of the ladies are generally decided on “going home from the wake.”

The cheerfulness of the wake, however, is intermitting:—every hour or two the most melancholy howling that human voices could raise is set up by the keeners, and continued long enough to give the recurrence to mirth and fun increased excitement. These keeners, or mourners, are a set of old women, who practise for general use the most lachrymose notes, high and low, it is possible to conceive—which they turn into a sort of song (without words), at one time sinking into the deepest and most plaintive strains, then, on a sudden, raised into a howl, loud, frightful, and continued nearly to a shriek; and then in long notes descending in a tone of almost supernatural cadence.

They say that this is mimicking wicked souls “undergoing their punishment in purgatory,” and is used as a defiance to the devil, and to show him that the corpse they are waking does not care a “mass for him.” But then, they never trust the corpse to be left alone, because it could make no resistance to Belzebub if he came for it; and a priest always remains in the room to guard the body, if the keeners should happen to go away.

If you ask a country fellow how he can be so merry over a “dead man”—

“Ough! plase your honour,” he will probably reply, “why shouldn’t we be merry when there’s a good corpse to the fore?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mane is it?—fy, sure enough, your honour, Father Corcoran says (and the devil so good a guess in the town-land) that after the month’s mind is over, Tom Dempsey, the corpse, will be happier nor any of us.—Ough! your honour! hell to the rap of tythe-cess or hearth-money, he’ll have to pay proctor nor parson!—There’s many a boy in the parish, plase your honour, would not object to be Tom Dempsey, the corpse, fresh and fasting, this blessed morning!”

If you begin to reason with him, he will perhaps say—“Why, plase your honour, sure it’s only his corpse that’s corpsed;—after the masses he’ll be out of pain, and better off nor any gentleman in this same county, except our own landlord, God bless him up or down!”

If you seem to think the defunct’s family will be unhappy in consequence of his death—

“Oh, plase your honour! Tom was a good frind, sure enough, and whilst there’s a shovel and sack in the neighbourhood his family won’t be let to want nothing any how.”

“But his poor wife?”

“Ough! then it’s she that’s sorry for poor Tom, your honour! Whilst the keeners were washing and stretching the corpse, and she crying her eyes out of her head—oh, the cratur!—Father Corcoran whispered all as one as a mass, and plenty of comfort into Mrs. Dempsey’s own ear, cheek by jowl, and by my sowl the devil a drop of a tear came out of her afterward, plase your honour!”

What is termed the Irish cry, is keening on an extensive scale, and is perhaps the most terrific yell ever yet practised in any country.

It is used in processions on the roads, as the people are carrying a dead body to its place of interment—and occasionally, on any great misfortune where the lamentation should be general.

If there are twenty thousand persons in a procession, they all set up the same cry as the keeners, but a hundred times more horrid and appalling. It may be heard many miles from the spot.

One mode formerly of raising the people in the least possible time, was the carrying a coffin under pretence of a burial. The procession, which sets out probably with only a dozen persons, amounts in the course of an hour to some twenty thousand. When once the yell is set up, every person within hearing is expected immediately to join the corpse by the shortest road—scampering across fields, ditches, &c.; so that, as the numbers increase, the roar becomes more tremendous, and answers better than a hundred bells in bringing a population together.

It is usual for every man, woman, and child to pick up a stone or two, as they go along, and throw them into a heap, which tradition sometimes marks out as the site of some remarkable battle, murder, &c.

The above plan was occasionally resorted to by the insurgents in the year 1798; and there can be no doubt, if they all set out with processions at one hour of any given day, that it would be a tremendous species of muster for such a people as the Irish, who are as little known or understood by the generality of the English, as the Cossacks.

This cry certainly is not calculated to excite so great a variety of passions as Mr. Dryden attributes to the music at Alexander’s Feast. But I will venture to assert, that if his Macedonian Majesty had been ever so tipsy, and thoroughly bent upon ever so much mischief, one sudden, thundering burst of the Irish cry in his banqueting-room would have quickly brought Alexander and all his revellers to their senses—rendered their heels as light as their heads—and Miss Thais would have been left by her lover to the protection of Captain Rock and his merry men.

I believe the very best of our composers would find it rather difficult to set the Irish cry to music—though by the new light, every noise whatsoever must be a note or half a note; and it is reported that Mr. Moore and Sir John Stephenson used their joint and several efforts to turn this national cry into melody, but without success. I cannot see why such able persons should fail on so interesting a composition. There are plenty of notes in it whole and half, sharp, flat, and natural;—sufficient to compose any piece of music. It is only therefore to select the best among them scientifically; put an “andante affettuoso” in front; then send it to a barrel organ-builder;—and no doubt it would grind out to the entire satisfaction of the whole Irish population.

This leads me to a digression more important. The superstition of the lower orders of Irish, when death occurs in any peculiar manner, is superlative. In truth, the only three kinds of death they consider as natural are, dying quietly in their own cabins;—being hanged, about the assize-time;—or starving when the potato crop is deficient. All these they regard as matters of course; but any other species of dissolution is contemplated with much horror; though, to be sure, they make no very strong objection to being shot at by a regular army. They say their “fathers and forefathers before them were always used to that same;” and all they expect in such case is, that there should be some sort of reason for it, which they themselves frequently furnish. But those manslaughters which occur through the activity of the revenue-officers in prevention of distillation, they never can reconcile themselves to, and never forgive. They cannot understand the reason for this at all, and treasure up a spirit of savage revenge to the last day of their lives against excisemen.^[22]

An ignorant poor cottager says to his landlord, naturally enough, “Ough! then isn’t it mighty odd, plase your honour, that we are not hindered from eating oats, whenever we can get any? but if we attempt to drink them, by J——s, we are kilt and battered and shot and burned out like a parcel of dogs by the excisemen, that’s twice greater rogues nor we are, plase your honour.”

In truth it is to be lamented that this distinction between solids and fluids should not be better reconciled to the common sense of the peasantry, or be somehow regulated so as to prevent perpetual resort to that erroneous system of mountain warfare and revenue bloodshed, which ever has kept, and ever will keep, whole districts of Ireland in a state of excitement and distraction. I know that I speak the sentiments of some of his Majesty’s enlightened Ministers on this subject.

22.To the imperfection of the excise laws, and the totally erroneous system of licensing public houses, (as to numbers, qualifications, and police regulations respecting them,) is greatly to be attributed the increase of crime of late years.

An unconnected and independent board, for the exclusive purpose of granting licenses and registering complaints; convenient and responsible country branches, and monthly reports, would tend much to produce sobriety, and check those drunken conspiracies, the common sources of robbery and murder. Punishment rather than prevention is the greatest error a police can fall into.

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