The Romany Rye

by George Borrow

  CHAPTER XLVI

  MURTAGH'S STORY CONTINUED--THE PRIEST, EXORCIST, AND THIMBLE-ENGRO--HOWTO CHECK A REBELLION

  'I was telling ye, Shorsha, when ye interrupted me, that I found thePope, the rector, the sub-rector and the almoner seated at the table, therector with my pack of cards in his hand, about to deal out to the Popeand the rest, not forgetting himself, for whom he intended all thetrump-cards, no doubt. No sooner did they perceive me than they seemedtaken all aback; but the rector, suddenly starting up with the cards inhis hand, asked me what I did there, threatening to have me welldisciplined if I did not go about my business. "I am come for my pack,"said I, "ye ould thaif, and to tell his Holiness how I have been treatedby ye." Then, going down on my knees before his Holiness, I said,"Arrah, now, your Holiness! will ye not see justice done to a poor boywho has been sadly misused? The pack of cards which that old ruffian hasin his hand are my cards, which he has taken from me in order to chatewith. Arrah! don't play with him, your Holiness, for he'll only chateye--there are dirty marks upon the cards which bear the trumps, put therein order to know them by; and the ould thaif in daling out will givehimself all the good cards, and chate ye of the last farthing in yourpocket; so let them be taken from him, your Holiness, and given back tome; and order him to lave the room, and then if your Holiness be for anhonest game, don't think I'm the boy to baulk ye. I'll take the ouldruffian's place, and play with ye till evening, and all night besides,and divil an advantage will I take of the dirty marks, though I know themall, having placed them on the cards myself." I was going on in this waywhen the ould thaif of a rector, flinging down the cards, made at me asif to kick me out of the room, whereupon I started up and said, "If yeare for kicking, sure two can play at that," and then I kicked at hisreverence, and his reverence at me, and there was a regular scrimmagebetween us, which frightened the Pope, who, getting up, said some wordswhich I did not understand, but which the cook afterwards told me were,"English extravagance, and this is the second edition"; for it seems thata little time before his Holiness had been frightened in St. Peter'sChurch by the servant of an English family, which those thaives of theEnglish religious house had been endeavouring to bring over to theCatholic faith, and who didn't approve of their being converted. Och!his Holiness did us all sore injustice to call us English, and toconfound our house with the other; for however dirty our house might be,our house was a clane house compared with the English house, and wehonest people compared with those English thaives. Well, his Holinesswas frighted, and the almoner ran out, and brought in his Holiness'sattendants, and they laid hold of me, but I struggled hard, and said, "Iwill not go without my pack; arrah, your Holiness! make them give me backmy pack, which Shorsha gave me in Dungarvon times of old," but mystruggles were of no use. I was pulled away and put in the ould dungeon,and his Holiness went away sore frighted, crossing himself much, andnever returned again.

  'In the old dungeon I was fastened to the wall by a chain, and there Iwas disciplined once every other day for the first three weeks, and thenI was left to myself, and my chain, and hunger; and there I sat in thedungeon, sometimes screeching, sometimes holloing, for I soon becamefrighted, having nothing in the cell to divert me. At last the cookfound his way to me by stealth, and comforted me a little, bringing metidbits out of the kitchen; and he visited me again and again--not often,however, for he dare only come when he could steal away the key from thecustody of the thief of a porter. I was three years in the dungeon, andshould have gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and histidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library, whichwere the "Calendars of Newgate," and the "Lives of Irish Rogues andRaparees," the only English Books in the library. However, at the end ofthree years, the ould thaif of a rector, wishing to look at them books,missed them from the library, and made a perquisition about them, and thethaif of a porter said that he shouldn't wonder if I had them, sayingthat he had once seen me reading; and then the rector came with others tomy cell, and took my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me howI came by them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again tillthe blood ran down my back; and making some perquisition, they at lastaccused the cook of having carried the books to me, and the cook notdenying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that night,and took me away with him; for he stole the key, and came to me and cutmy chain through, and then he and I escaped from the religious housethrough a window--the cook with a bundle, containing what things he had.No sooner had we got out than the honest cook gave me a little bit ofmoney and a loaf, and told me to follow a way which he pointed out, whichhe said would lead to the sea; and then, having embraced me after theItalian way, he left me, and I never saw him again. So I followed theway which the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport calledChiviter Vik, {303a} terribly foot-foundered, and there I met a sailorwho spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail forFrance; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was hisbrother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France calledMarseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got a littlemoney for me and a passport, and I travelled across the country towards aplace they directed me to called Bayonne, from which, they said I might,perhaps, get to Ireland. Coming, however, to a place called Pau, all mymoney being gone, I enlisted into a regiment called the Army of theFaith, which was going into Spain, for the King of Spain had beendethroned and imprisoned by his own subjects, as perhaps you may haveheard; and the King of France, who was his cousin, was sending an army tohelp him, under the command of his own son, whom the English calledPrince Hilt, {303b} because when he was told that he was appointed to thecommand, he clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword. So I enlistedinto the regiment of the Faith, which was made up of Spaniards, many ofthem priests who had run out of Spain, and broken Germans, andfoot-foundered Irish, like myself. It was said to be a blackguardregiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but, 'faith, I saw nothingblackguardly going on in it, for ye would hardly reckon card-playing anddominoes, and pitch and toss blackguardly, and I saw nothing else goingon in it. There was one thing in it which I disliked--the priestsdrawing their Spanish knives occasionally, when they lost their money.After we had been some time at Pau, the Army of the Faith was sent acrossthe mountains into Spain, as the vanguard of the French; and no soonerdid the Spaniards see the Faith than they made a dash at it, and theFaith ran away, myself along with it, and got behind the French army,which told it to keep there, and the Faith did so, and followed theFrench army, which soon scattered the Spaniards, and in the end placedthe king on his throne again. When the war was over the Faith wasdisbanded; some of the foreigners, however, amongst whom I was one, wereput into a Guard regiment, and there I continued for more than a year.

  'One day, being at a place called the Escurial, I took stock, as thetradesmen say, and found I possessed the sum of eighty dollars won byplaying at cards; for though I could not play so well with the foreigncards as with the pack ye gave me, Shorsha, I had yet contrived to winmoney from the priests and soldiers of the Faith. Finding myselfpossessed of such a capital, I determined to leave the service and tomake the best of my way to Ireland; so I deserted, but coming in an evilhour to a place they calls Torre Lodones, I found the priest playing atcards with his parishioners. The sight of the cards made me stop, andthen, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wishto play, so not being able to speak their language I made signs to themto let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so Isat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in alittle time had won plenty of their money, but I had better never havedone any such a thing, for suddenly the priest and all his parishionersset upon me and bate me, and took from me all I had, and cast me out ofthe village more dead than alive. Och! it's a bad village that, and if Ihad known what it was I would have avoided it, or run straight throughit, though I saw all the card-playing in the world going on in it. Thereis a proverb about it
, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of theMoors, which holds good to the present day--it is, that in Torre Lodonesthere are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning thatall the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is notreckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the greatestthaif of the lot. After being cast out of that village I travelled fornearly a month, subsisting by begging tolerably well, for though most ofthe Spaniards are thaives, they are rather charitable; but thoughcharitable thaives they do not like their own being taken from themwithout leave being asked, as I found to my cost; for on my entering agarden near Seville, without leave, to take an orange, the labourer camerunning up and struck me to the ground with a hatchet, giving me a bigwound in the arm. I fainted with loss of blood, and on my reviving Ifound myself in a hospital at Seville, to which the labourer and thepeople of the village had taken me. I should have died of starvation inthat hospital had not some English people heard of me and come to see me;they tended me with food till I was cured, and then paid my passage onboard a ship to London, to which place the ship carried me.

  'And now I was in London with five shillings in my pocket--all I had inthe world--and that did not last for long; and when it was gone I beggedin the streets, but I did not get much by that, except a month's hardlabour in the correction-house; and when I came out I knew not what todo, but thought I would take a walk in the country, for it wasspring-time, and the weather was fine, so I took a walk about seven milesfrom London, and came to a place where a great fair was being held; andthere I begged, but got nothing but a halfpenny, and was thinking ofgoing farther, when I saw a man with a table, like that of mine, playingwith thimbles, as you saw me. I looked at the play, and saw him winmoney and run away, and hunted by constables more than once. I keptfollowing the man, and at last entered into conversation with him, andlearning from him that he was in want of a companion to help him, Ioffered to help him if he would pay me; he looked at me from top to toe,and did not wish at first to have anything to do with me, as he said myappearance was against me. 'Faith, Shorsha, he had better have looked athome, for his appearance was not much in his favour: he looked very muchlike a Jew, Shorsha. However, he at last agreed to take me to be hiscompanion, or bonnet, as he called it; and I was to keep a look out andlet him know when constables were coming, and to spake a good word forhim occasionally, whilst he was chating folks with his thimbles and hispea. So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in manyother fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or, rather, mymaster, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and an unkind one,for do all I could I could never give him pleasure; and he wascontinually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting me because Icould not learn his thaives' Latin, and discourse with him in it, andcomparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a pal of his, whom hesaid he had parted with in the fair, and of whom he was fond of sayingall kinds of wonderful things, amongst others, that he knew the grammarof all tongues. At last, wearied with being twitted by him with notbeing able to learn his thaives' Greek, I proposed that I should teachhim Irish, that we should spake it together when we had anything to sayin sacret. To that he consented willingly; but, och! a purty hand hemade with Irish, 'faith, not much better than did I with his thaives'Hebrew. Then my turn came, and I twitted him nicely with dulness, andcompared him with a pal that I had in ould Ireland, in Dungarvon times ofyore, to whom I teached Irish, telling him that he was the broth of aboy, and not only knew the grammar of all human tongues, but the dialectsof the snakes besides; in fact, I tould him all about your own sweetself, Shorsha, and many a dispute and quarrel had we together about ourpals, which was the cleverest fellow, his or mine.

  'Well, after having been wid him about two months, I quitted him withoutnoise, taking away one of his tables, and some peas and thimbles: andthat I did with a safe conscience, for he paid me nothing, and was notover free with the meat and the drink, though I must say of him that hewas a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made apower of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and acertain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of whichhe was very proud, so much so that he once told me that when he had saveda certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, andenter Parliament, into which he said he could get at any time, throughthe interest of a friend of his, a Tory Peer, my Lord Whitefeather, withwhom he said he had occasionally done business. With the table and otherthings which I had taken I commenced trade on my own account, havingcontrived to learn a few of his tricks. My only capital was the changefor half-a-guinea, which he had once let fall, and which I picked up,which was all I could ever get from him, for it was impossible to staleany money from him, he was so awake, being up to all the tricks ofthaives, having followed the diving trade, as he called it, for aconsiderable time. My wish was to make enough by my table to enable meto return with credit to ould Ireland, where I had no doubt of being ableto get myself ordained as priest; and, in troth, notwithstanding I was abeginner, and without any companion to help me, I did tolerably well,getting my meat and drink, and increasing my small capital, till I cameto this unlucky place of Horncastle, where I was utterly ruined by thethaif in the rider's dress. And now, Shorsha, I am after telling you myhistory; perhaps you will now be telling me something about yourself?'

  I told Murtagh all about myself that I deemed necessary to relate, andthen asked him what he intended to do; he repeated that he was utterlyruined, and that he had no prospect before him but starving, or makingaway with himself. I inquired, 'How much would take him to Ireland, andestablish him there with credit?' 'Five pounds,' he answered, adding,'but who in the world would be fool enough to lend me five pounds, unlessit be yourself, Shorsha, who, may be, have not got it; for when you toldme about yourself, you made no boast of the state of your affairs.' 'Iam not very rich,' I replied, 'but I think I can accommodate you withwhat you want. I consider myself under great obligations to you,Murtagh; it was you who instructed me in the language of Oilein nanNaomha, which has been the foundation of all my acquisitions inphilology; without you I should not be what I am--Lavengro! whichsignifies a philologist. Here is the money, Murtagh,' said I, putting myhand into my pocket and taking out five pounds; 'much good may it doyou.' He took the money, stared at it, and then at me. 'And you mane togive me this, Shorsha?' 'It is not mine to give,' said I; 'it is yours.''And you give it me for the gratitude you bear me?' 'Yes,' said I; 'andfor Dungarvon times of old.' 'Well, Shorsha,' said he, 'you are a brothof a boy, and I'll take your benefaction--five pounds! Och, Jasus!' Hethen put the money in his pocket, and springing up, waved his hat threetimes, uttering some old Irish cry; then, sitting down, he took my handand said, 'Sure, Shorsha, I'll be going thither; and when I get there, itis turning over another leaf I will be; I have learnt a thing or twoabroad; I will become a priest; that's the trade, Shorsha! and I will cryout for repale; that's the cry, Shorsha! and I'll be a fool no longer.''And what will you do with your table?' said I. ''Faith, I'll be takingit with me, Shorsha; and when I gets to Ireland I'll get it mended, and Iwill keep it in the house which I shall have; and when I looks upon it, Iwill be thinking of all I have undergone.' 'You had better leave itbehind you,' said I; 'if you take it with you you will, perhaps, take upthe thimble trade again before you get to Ireland, and lose the money Iam after giving you.' 'No fear of that, Shorsha; never will I play onthat table again, Shorsha, till I get it mended, which shall not be tillI am a priest, and have a house in which to place it.'

  Murtagh and I then went into the town, where we had some refreshmenttogether, and then parted on our several ways. I heard nothing of himfor nearly a quarter of a century, when a person who knew him well,coming from Ireland, and staying at my humble house, told me a great dealabout him. He reached Ireland in safety, soon reconciled himself withhis Church and was ordained a priest; in the priestly office he acquittedhimself in a way very satisfactory, upon the whole, to his superiors,havin
g, as he frequently said, learned wisdom abroad. The Popish Churchnever fails to turn to account any particular gift which its servants maypossess; and discovering soon that Murtagh was endowed with considerablemanual dexterity--proof of which he frequently gave at cards, and at asingular game which he occasionally played with thimbles--it selected himas a very fit person to play the part of exorcist; and accordingly hetravelled through a great part of Ireland, casting out devils from peoplepossessed, which he afterwards exhibited, sometimes in the shape ofrabbits, and occasionally birds and fish. There is a holy island in alake in Ireland, to which the people resort at a particular season of theyear. Here Murtagh frequently attended, and it was here that heperformed a cure which will cause his name long to be remembered inIreland, delivering a possessed woman of two demons, which he brandishedaloft in his hands, in the shape of two large eels, and subsequentlyhurled into the lake, amidst the shouts of an enthusiastic multitude.Besides playing the part of an exorcist, he acted that of a politicianwith considerable success; he attached himself to the party of the sireof agitation--'the man of paunch,' and preached and halloed for repealwith the loudest and best, as long as repeal was the cry; as soon,however, as the Whigs attained the helm of Government, and the greaterpart of the loaves and fishes--more politely termed the patronage ofIreland--was placed in the disposition of the priesthood, the tone ofMurtagh, like that of the rest of his brother saggarts, was considerablysoftened; he even went so far as to declare that politics were notaltogether consistent with sacerdotal duty; and resuming his exorcisms,which he had for some time abandoned, he went to the Isle of Holiness,and delivered a possessed woman of six demons in the shape of white mice.He, however, again resumed the political mantle in the year 1848, duringthe short period of the rebellion of the so-called Young Irelanders. Thepriests, though they apparently sided with this party, did not approve ofit, as it was chiefly formed of ardent young men, fond of what theytermed liberty, and by no means admirers of priestly domination, beingmostly Protestants. Just before the outbreak of this rebellion, it wasdetermined between the priests and the ---, that this party should berendered comparatively innocuous by being deprived of the sinews ofwar--in other words, certain sums of money which they had raised fortheir enterprise. Murtagh was deemed the best qualified person inIreland to be entrusted with the delicate office of getting their moneyfrom them. Having received his instructions, he invited the leaders tohis parsonage amongst the mountains, under pretence of deliberating withthem about what was to be done. They arrived there just beforenightfall, dressed in red, yellow, and green, the colours so dear toenthusiastic Irishmen; Murtagh received them with great apparentcordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising themthe assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusionof thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, thatconsulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders,though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack ofcards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibitedevery mark of having seen some very long service. On one of his guestsmaking some remarks on the 'ancientness' of its appearance, Murtaghobserved that there was a very wonderful history attached to that pack;it had been presented to him, he said, by a young gentleman, a discipleof his, to whom, in Dungarvon times of yore, he had taught the Irishlanguage, and of whom he related some very extraordinary things; he addedthat he, Murtagh, had taken it to ---, where it had once the happiness ofbeing in the hands of the Holy Father; by a great misfortune, he did notsay what, he had lost possession of it, and had returned without it, buthad some time since recovered it; a nephew of his, who was being educatedat --- for a priest, having found it in a nook of the college, and sentit to him.

  Murtagh and the leaders then played various games with this pack, moreespecially one called by the initiated 'blind hookey,' the result beingthat at the end of about two hours the leaders found they had lostone-half of their funds; they now looked serious, and talked of leavingthe house, but Murtagh begging them to stay supper, they consented.After supper, at which the guests drank rather freely, Murtagh said that,as he had not the least wish to win their money, he intended to give themtheir revenge; he would not play at cards with them, he added, but at afunny game of thimbles, at which they would be sure of winning back theirown; then, going out, he brought in a table, tall and narrow, on whichplacing certain thimbles and a pea, he proposed that they should stakewhatever they pleased on the almost certainty of finding the pea underthe thimbles. The leaders, after some hesitation, consented, and were atfirst eminently successful winning back the greater part of what they hadlost; after some time, however, Fortune, or, rather, Murtagh, turnedagainst them, and then, instead of leaving off, they doubled and trebledtheir stakes, and continued doing so until they had lost nearly the wholeof their funds. Quite furious, they now swore that Murtagh had cheatedthem, and insisted on having their property restored to them. Murtagh,without a word of reply, went to the door, and shouting into the passagesomething in Irish, the room was instantly filled with bogtrotters, eachat least six feet high, with a stout shillealah in his hand. Murtagh,then turning to his guests, asked them what they meant by insulting ananointed priest; telling them that it was not for the likes of them toavenge the wrongs of Ireland. 'I have been clane mistaken in the wholeof ye,' said he; 'I supposed ye Irish, but have found to my sorrow thatye are nothing of the kind; purty fellows to pretend to be Irish, whenthere is not a word of Irish on the tongue of any of ye, divil aha'porth; the illigant young gentleman to whom I taught Irish inDungarvon times of old, though not born in Ireland, has more Irish in himthan any ten of ye. He is the boy to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, ifever foreigner is to do it.' Then, saying something to the bogtrotters,they instantly cleared the room of the young Irelanders, who retiredsadly disconcerted; nevertheless, being very silly young fellows, theyhoisted the standard of rebellion; few, however, joining them, partlybecause they had no money, and partly because the priests abused themwith might and main, their rebellion ended in a lamentable manner,themselves being seized and tried, and though convicted, not deemed ofsufficient importance to be sent to the scaffold, where they might havehad the satisfaction of saying--

  'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.'

  My visitor, after saying that of the money won Murtagh retained aconsiderable portion, that a part went to the hierarchy for what werecalled church purposes, and that the --- took the remainder, which itemployed in establishing a newspaper, in which the private characters ofthe worthiest and most loyal Protestants in Ireland were traduced andvilified, concluded his account by observing that it was the commonbelief that Murtagh, having by his services, ecclesiastical andpolitical, acquired the confidence of the priesthood and favour of theGovernment, would, on the first vacancy, be appointed to the high officeof Popish Primate of Ireland.