Tales and Novels Volume II Part 23

CHAPTER I.

There are two sorts of content: one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence; the first is a virtue, the second a vice. Examples of both may be found in abundance in Ireland. There you may sometimes see a man in sound health submitting day after day to evils which a few hours' labour would remedy; and you are provoked to hear him say, "It will do well enough for me. Didn't it do for my father before me? I can make a shift with things for my time: any how, I'm content."

This kind of content is indeed the bane of industry. But instances of a different sort may be found, in various of the Irish peasantry. Amongst them we may behold men struggling with adversity with all the strongest powers of mind and body; and supporting irremediable evils with a degree of cheerful fort.i.tude which must excite at once our pity and admiration.

In a pleasant village in the province of Leinster there lives a family of the name of Gray. Whether or not they are any way related to Old Robin Gray, history does not determine; but it is very possible that they are, because they came, it is said, originally from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however, in the obscurity which involves the early history of the most ancient and ill.u.s.trious families, we proceed to less disputable and perhaps more useful facts. It is well known, that is, by all his neighbours, that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging prospects: he was the youngest of a large family, and the portion of his father's property that fell to his share was but just sufficient to maintain his wife and three children. At his father's death, he had but 100_l_. in ready money, and he was obliged to go into a poor mud-walled cabin, facing the door of which there was a green pool of stagnant water; and before the window, of one pane, a dunghill that, reaching to the thatch of the roof, shut out the light, and filled the house with the most noisome smell. The ground sloped towards the house door; so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor was so damp and soft, that the print of the nails of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set down his foot. To be sure these nail-marks could scarcely be seen, except just near the door or where the light of the fire immediately shone; because, elsewhere, the smoke was so thick, that the pig might have been within a foot of you without your seeing him. The former inhabitants of this mansion had, it seems, been content without a chimney: and, indeed, almost without a roof; the couples and purlins of the roof having once given way, had never been repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch, so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary.

The prospect without doors was scarcely more encouraging to our hero than the scene within: the farm consisted of about forty acres; and the fences of the grazing-land were so bad, that the neighbours' cattle took possession of it frequently by day, and always by night. The tillage-ground had been so ill managed by his predecessor, that the land was what is called quite out of heart.

If farmer Gray had also been out of heart, he and his family might at this hour have been beggars. His situation was thought desperate by many of his neighbours; and a few days after his father's decease, many came to condole with him. Amongst the rest was "easy Simon;" or, as some called him, "soft Simon," on account of his unresisting disposition, and contented, or, as we should rather name it, reckless temper. He was a sort of a half or a half quarter gentleman, had a small patrimony of a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, a place in the excise worth fifty more, and a mill, which might have been worth another hundred annually, had it not been suffered to stand still for many a year.

"Wheugh! Wheugh! What a bustle we are in! and what a world of trouble is here!" cried Simon, when he came to Gray's house, and found him on the ladder taking off the decayed thatch; whilst one of his sons, a lad of about fourteen, was hard at work filling a cart from the dunghill, which blockaded the window. His youngest son, a boy of twelve, with a face and neck red with heat, was making a drain to carry off the water from the green pond; and Rose, the sister, a girl of ten years old, was collecting the ducks, which her mother was going to carry to her landlord's to sell.

"Wheugh! Wheugh! Wheugh! Why what a world of bustle and trouble is here!

Troth, Jemmy Gray, you're in a bad way, sure enough! Poor cratur! Poor cratur!"

"No man," replied Gray, "deserves to be called poor, that has his health, and the use of his limbs. Besides," continued he, "have not I a good wife and good children: and, with those blessings, has not a man sufficient reason to be content?"

"Ay, to be sure: that's the only way to get through this world," said Simon; "whatever comes, just to take it easy, and be content. Content and a warm chimney corner is all in all, according to my notion."

"Yes, Simon," said Gray, laughing; "but your kind of content would never do for me. Content, that sits down in the chimney corner, and does nothing but smoke his pipe, will soon have the house about his ears; and then what will become of Content?"

"Time enough to think of that when it comes," said Simon: "fretting never propped a house yet; and if it did, I would rather see it fall than fret."

"But could not you prop the house," said Gray, "without fretting?"

"Is it by putting my shoulders to it?" said Simon. "My shoulders have never been used to hard work, and don't like it any way. As long as I can eat, drink, and sleep, and have a coat to my back, what matter for the rest? Let the world go as it will, I'm content. Shoo! Shoo! The b.u.t.ton is off the neck of this great coat of mine, and how _will_ I keep it on? A pin sure will do as well as a b.u.t.ton, and better. Mrs. Gray, or Miss Rose, I'll thank you kindly for a pin."

He stuck the pin in the place of the b.u.t.ton, to fasten the great coat round his throat, and walked off: it p.r.i.c.ked his chin about a dozen times before the day was over; but he forgot the next day, and the next, and the next, to have the b.u.t.ton sewed on. He was content to make shift, as he called it, with the pin. This is precisely the species of content which leads to beggary.

Not such the temper of our friend Gray. Not an inconvenience that he could remedy, by industry or ingenuity, was he content to endure; but necessary evils he bore with unshaken patience and fort.i.tude. His house was soon new roofed and new thatched; the dunghill was removed, and spread over that part of his land which most wanted manure; the putrescent water of the standing pool was drained off, and fertilized a meadow; and the kitchen was never again overflowed in rainy weather, because the labour of half a day made a narrow trench which carried off the water. The prints of the shoe-nails were no longer visible in the floor; for the two boys trod dry mill seeds into the clay, and beat the floor well, till they rendered it quite hard and even. The rooms also were cleared of smoke, for Gray built a chimney; and the kitchen window, which had formerly been stuffed up, when the wind blew too hard, with an old or new hat, was glazed. There was now light in the house. Light! the great friend of cleanliness and order. The pig could now no longer walk in and out, unseen and unreproved; he ceased to be an inmate of the kitchen.

The kitchen was indeed so altered from what it had been during the reign of the last master, that he did not know it again. It was not in the least like a pig-sty. The walls were whitewashed; and shelves were put up, on which clean wooden and pewter utensils were ranged. There were no heaps of forlorn rubbish in the corners of the room; nor even an old basket, or a blanket, or a cloak, or a great coat thrown down, just for a minute, out of the girl's way. No: Rose was a girl who always put every thing in its place; and she found it almost as easy to hang a coat, or a cloak, upon a peg, as to throw it down on the floor. She thought it as convenient to put the basket and turf-kish out of her way, when her brothers had brought in the potatoes and fuel, as to let them lie in the middle of the kitchen, to be stumbled over by herself and her mother, or to be gnawed and clawed by a cat and dog. These may seem trifles unworthy the notice of the historian; but trifles such as these contribute much to the comfort of a poor family, and therefore deserve a place in their simple annals.

It was a matter of surprise and censure to some of farmer Gray's neighbours, that he began by laying out it could not be less than ten pounds (a great sum for him!) on his house and garden at the first setting out; when, to be sure, the land would have paid him better if the money had been laid out there. And why could not he make a shift to live on in the old cabin, for a while, as others had done before his time well enough? A poor man should be _contented_ with a poor house.

Where was the use, said they, of laying out the good ready penny in a way that would bring nothing in?

Farmer Gray calculated that he could not have laid out his money to better advantage; for by these ten pounds he had probably saved his wife, his children, and himself, from a putrid fever, or from the rheumatism. The former inhabitants of this house, who had been content to live with the dunghill close to the window, and the green pool overflowing the kitchen, and the sharp wind blowing in through the broken panes, had in the course of a few years lost their health. The father of the family had been crippled by the rheumatism, two children died of the fever, and the mother had such an inflammation in her eyes that she could not see to work, spin, or do anything. Now the whole that was lost by the family sickness, the doctor's bill, and the burying of the two children, all together, came in three years to nearly three times ten pounds. Therefore Mr. Gray was, if we only consider money, a very prudent man. What could he or any body do without health? Money is not the first thing to be thought of in this world; for there are many things that money cannot buy, and health is one of them. "Health can make money, but money cannot make health," said our wise farmer. "And then, for the value of a few shillings, say pounds, we have light to see what we are doing, and shelves, and a press to hold our clothes in. Why now, this will be all so much saved to us, by and by; for the clothes will last the longer, and the things about us will not go to wreck; and when I and the boys can come home after our day's work to a house like this, we may be content."

Having thus ensured, as far as it was in his power, health, cleanliness, and comfort in his house, our hero and his sons turned their attention to the farm. They set about to repair all the fences; for the boys, though they were young, were able to help their father in the farm: they were willing to work, and happy to work with him. John, the eldest lad, could set potatoes, and Robin was able to hold the plough: so that Gray did not hire any servant-boy to help him; nor did Mrs. Gray hire a maid.

"Rose and I," said she, "can manage very well to look after the two cows, and milk them, and make the b.u.t.ter, and get something too by our spinning. We must do without servants, and may be happy and content to serve ourselves."

"Times will grow better; that is, we shall make them better every year: we must have the roughest first," said Gray.

The first year, to be sure, it was rough enough; and, do what they could, they could not do more than make the rent of the farm, which rent amounted to forty pounds. The landlord was a Mr. Hopkins, agent to a gentleman who resided in England. Mr. Hopkins insisted upon having the rent paid up to the day, and so it was. Gray contented himself by thinking that this was perhaps for the best. "When the rent is once paid," said he, "it cannot be called for again, and I am in no man's power; that's a great comfort. To be sure, if the half year's rent was left in my hands for a few months, it might have been of service: but it is better not to be under an obligation to such a man as Mr. Hopkins, who would make us pay for it in some shape or other, when we least expected it."

Mr. Hopkins was what is called in Ireland a middle-man; one that takes land from great proprietors, to set it again at an advanced, and often an exorbitant, price, to the poor. Gray had his land at a fair rent, because it was not from Mr. Hopkins his father had taken the lease, but from the gentleman to whom this man was agent. Mr. Hopkins designed to buy the land which Gray farmed, and he therefore wished to make it appear as unprofitable as possible to his landlord, who, living in England, knew but little of his own estate. "If these Grays don't pay the rent," said he to his _driver_, "pound their cattle, and sell at the end of eight days. If they break and run away, I shall have the land clear, and may make a compliment of it to tenants and friends of my own, after it comes into my hands." He was rather disappointed, when the rent was paid to the day. "But," said he, "it won't be so next year; the man is laying out his money on the ground, on draining and fencing, and that won't pay suddenly. We'll leave the rent in his hands for a year or so, and bring down an ejectment upon him, if he once gets into our power, as he surely will. Then, all that he has done to the house will be so much in my way. What a fool he was to lay out his money so!"

It happened, however, that the money which Gray had laid out in making his house comfortable and neat was of the greatest advantage to him, and at a time and in a way which he least expected. His cottage was within sight of the high road, that led to a town from which it was about a mile distant. A regiment of English arrived, to be quartered in the town; and the wives of some of the soldiers came a few hours after their husbands. One of these women, a sergeant's wife, was taken suddenly in labour, before they reached the town; and the soldier who conducted the baggage-cart in which she was, drew up to the first amongst a row of miserable cabins that were by the road-side, to ask the people if they would give her lodging: but the sick woman was shocked at the sight of the smoke and dirt of this cabin, and begged to be carried on to the neat whitewashed cottage that she saw at a little distance. This was Gray's house.

His wife received the stranger with the greatest kindness and hospitality; she was able to offer her a neat bed, and a room that was perfectly dry and clean. The sergeant's wife was brought to bed soon after her arrival, and remained with Mrs. Gray till she recovered her strength. She was grateful for the kindness that was shown to her by Mrs. Gray; and so was her husband, the sergeant. He came one evening to the cottage, and in his blunt English fashion said, "Mr. Gray, you know I, or my wife, which is the same thing, have cause to be obliged to you, or your wife, which comes also to the same thing: now one good turn deserves another. Our colonel has ordered me, I being quarter-master, to sell off by auction some of the cast horses belonging to the regiment: now I have bought in the best for a trifle, and have brought him here, with me, to beg you'll accept of him, by way some sort of a return for the civilities you and your wife, that being, as I said, the same thing, showed me and mine."

Gray replied he was obliged to him for this offer of the horse, but that he could not think of accepting it; that he was very glad his wife had been able to show any kindness or hospitality to a stranger; but that, as they did not keep a public-house, they could not take any thing in the way of payment.

The sergeant was more and more pleased by farmer Gray's generosity.

"Well," said he, "I heard, before I came to Ireland, that the Irish were the most hospitable people on the face of the earth; and so I find it come true, and I shall always say so, wherever I'm quartered hereafter.

And now do pray answer me, is there any the least thing I can ever do to oblige you? for, if the truth must be told of me, I don't like to lie.

under an obligation, any more than another, where I can help it."

"To show you that I do not want to lay you under one," said Gray, "I'll tell you how you can do as much for me, and ten times as much, as I have done for you; and this without hurting yourself or any of your employers a penny."

"Say how, and it shall be done."

"By letting me have the dung of the barracks, which will make my land and me rich, without making you poorer; for I'll give you the fair price, whatever it is. I don't ask you to wrong your employers of a farthing."

The sergeant promised this should be done, and rejoiced that he had found some means of serving his friend. Gray covered ten acres with the manure brought from the barracks; and the next year these acres were in excellent heart. This was sufficient for the grazing of ten cows: he had three, and he bought seven more; and with what remained of his hundred pounds, after paying for the cows, he built a shed and a cow-house.

His wife, and daughter Rose, who was now about fourteen, were excellent managers of the dairy. They made, by b.u.t.ter and b.u.t.ter-milk, about four pounds each cow within the year. The b.u.t.ter they salted and took to market, at the neighbouring town; the b.u.t.ter-milk they sold to the country people, who, according to the custom of the neighbourhood, came to the house for it. Besides this, they reared five calves, which, at a year old, they sold for fifteen guineas and a half. The dairy did not, however, employ all the time of this industrious mother and daughter; they had time for spinning, and by this cleared six guineas. They also made some little matter by poultry; but that was only during the first year: afterwards Mr. Hopkins sent notice that they must pay all the _duty-fowl_, and _duty-geese_, and _turkeys_, {Footnote: See a very curious anecdote in the Statistical Survey of the Queen's County.} charged in the lease, or compound with him by paying two guineas a year.

This gentleman had many methods of squeezing money out of poor tenants; and he was not inclined to spare the Grays, whose farm he now more than ever wished to possess, because its value had been considerably increased, by the judicious industry of the farmer and his sons.

Young as they were, both farmer Gray's sons had a share in these improvements. The eldest had drained a small field, which used to be called the rushy field, from its having been quite covered with rushes.

Now there was not a rush to be found upon it, and his father gave him the profits of the field, and said that it should be called by his name.

Robin, the youngest son, had, by his father's advice, tried a little experiment, which many of his neighbours ridiculed at first, and admired at last. The spring, which used to supply the duck-pond, that often flooded the house, was at the head of a meadow, that sloped with a fall sufficient to let the water run off. Robin flooded the meadow at the proper season of the year, and it produced afterwards a crop such as never had been seen there before. His father called this meadow Robin's meadow, and gave him the value of the hay that was made upon it.

"Now, my dear boys," said this good father, "you have made a few guineas for yourselves; and here are a few more for you, all that I can spare: let us see what you can do with this money. I shall take a pride in seeing you get forward by your own industry and cleverness; I don't want you to slave for me all your best days; but shall always be ready, as a father should be, to give you a helping hand."

The sons had scarcely a word in answer to this, for their hearts were full; but that night, when they were by themselves, one said to the other, "Brother, did you see Jack Reel's letter to his father? They say he has sent home ten guineas to him. Is there any truth in it, think you?"

"Yes; I saw the letter, and a kinder never was written from son to father. {Footnote: This is fact.} The ten guineas I saw paid into the old man's hand; and, at that same minute, I wished it was I that was doing the same by my own father."

"That was just what I was thinking of, when I asked you if you saw the letter. Why, Jack Reel had nothing, when he went abroad with the army to Egypt, last year. Well, I never had a liking myself to follow the drum: but it's almost enough to tempt one to it. If I thought I could send home ten guineas to my father, I would 'list to-morrow."

"That would not be well done of you, Robin," said John; "for my father would rather have _you_, a great deal, than the ten guineas, I am sure: to say nothing of my poor mother, and Rose, and myself, who would be sorry enough to hear of your being knocked on the head, as is the fate, sooner or later, of them that follow the army. I would rather be any of the trades that hurt n.o.body, and do good to a many along with myself, as father said t'other day. Then, what a man makes so, he makes with a safe conscience, and he can enjoy it."

"You are right, John, and I was wrong to talk of _'listing_," said Robin; "but it was only Jack Reel's letter, and the ten guineas sent to his father, that put it into my head. I may make as much for my father by staying at home, and minding my business. So now, good night to you; I'll go to sleep, and we can talk more about it all to-morrow."

The next morning, as these two youths were setting potatoes for the family, and considering to what they should turn their hands when the potatoes were all set, they were interrupted by a little _gossoon_, who came running up as hard as he could, crying, "Murder! murder! Simon O'Dougherty wants you. For the love of G.o.d, cross the bog in all haste, to help pull out his: horse, that has tumbled into the old tan-pit, there beyond, in the night!"

The two brothers immediately followed the boy, carrying with them a rope and a halter, as they guessed that _soft Simon_ would not have either.

They found him wringing his hands beside the tan-pit, in which his horse lay smothering. A little ragged boy was tugging at the horse's head, with a short bit of hay-rope. "Oh, murder! murder! What _will_ I do for a halter? Sure the horse will be lost, for want of a halter; and where in the wide world _will_ I look for one?" cried Simon, without stirring one inch from the spot. "Oh, the blessing of Heaven be with you, lads,"

continued he, turning at the sight of the Grays; "you've brought us a halter. But see! it's just over with the poor beast. All the world put together will not get him alive out of that. I must put up with the loss, and be content. He cost me fifteen good guineas, and he could leap better than any horse in the county. Oh, what a pity on him! what a pity! But, take it easy; that's all we have for it! _Poor cratur! Poor cratur!_"

Without listening to Simon's lamentations, the active lads, by the help of Simon and the two boys, pulled the horse out of the pit. The poor animal was nearly exhausted by struggling: but, after some time, he stretched himself, and, by degrees, recovered sufficiently to stand. One of his legs, however, was so much hurt that he could scarcely walk; and Simon said he would surely go lame for life.

"Who now would ever have thought of his straying into such an ugly place of all others?" continued he. "I know, for my share, the spot is so overgrown with gra.s.s and rubbish, of one kind or other, and it's so long since any of the tanning business was going on here, in my uncle O'Haggarty's time, that I quite forgot there were such things as tan-pits, or any manner of pits, in my possession; and I wish these had been far enough off before my own little famous Sir Hyacinth O'Brien had strayed into them, laming himself for life, like a blockhead. For the case was this: I came home late last night, not as sober as a judge, and, finding no one up but the girl, I gave her the horse to put into the stable, and she forgot the door after her, which wants a lock; and there being but a scanty feed of oats, owing to the boy's negligence, and no halter to secure the beast, my poor Sir Hyacinth strayed out here, as ill luck would have it, into the tan-pit. Bad luck to my uncle O'Haggarty, that had the tan-yard here at all! He might have lived as became him, without dirtying his hands with the tanning of dirty hides."

"I was just going," said John Gray, "to comfort you, Simon, for the laming of your horse, by observing that, if you had your tan-yard in order again, you could soon make up the price of another horse."