The Black Prophet Part 31

The words had barely proceeded out of his lips, when a peal of thunder, astonis.h.i.+ngly loud, broke, as it were, over their very heads, having been preceded by a flash of lightning, so bright, that the long, well-defined grave was exposed, in all its lonely horrors, to Sarah's eye.

"That's odd, now," said she, "that the thunder should come as he said them very words; but thank G.o.d that it was Dalton that did the deed, for if it was himself he'd not keep it back now, when the truth would be sure to come out."

"It was he, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury," proceeded her father, "an' my conscience, my lord, during all this long time--"

He here muttered something which she could not understand, and after stooping down, and putting his hand on the grave a second time, he turned about and retraced his steps home. It appeared, however, that late as the hour was, there were other persons abroad as well as themselves, for Sarah could distinctly hear the footsteps of several persons pa.s.sing along the adjoining road, past the Grey Stone, and she also thought that among the rest might be distinguished the voice of Red Rody Duncan. The Prophet quietly opened the door, entered as usual, and went to bed; Sarah having also retired to her own little sleeping place, lay for some time, musing deeply over the incidents of the night.

CHAPTER XX. -- Tumults--Confessions of Murder.

The next morning opened with all the dark sultry rain and black cloudy drapery, which had, as we have already stated, characterized the whole season. Indeed, during the year we are describing, it was known that all those visible signs which prognosticate any particular description of weather, had altogether lost their significance. If a fine day came, for instance, which indeed was a rare case, or a clear and beautiful evening, it was but natural that after such a dark and dreary course of weather, the heart should become glad and full of hope, that a permanent change for the better was about to take place; but alas, all cheerful hope and expectation were in vain. The morrow's sun rose as before, dim and gloomy, to wade along his dismal and wintry path, without one glimpse of enlivening light from his rising to his setting.

We have already mentioned slightly, those outrages, to which the disease and misery that scourged the country in so many shapes had driven the unfortunate and peris.h.i.+ng mult.i.tudes. Indeed, if there be any violation of the law that can or ought to be looked upon with the most lenient consideration and forbearance, by the executive authorities, it is that which takes place under the irresistible pressure of famine. And singular as it may appear, it is no less true, that this is a subject concerning which much ignorance prevails, not only throughout other parts of the empire, but even at home here in Ireland, with ourselves.

Much for instance is said, and has been said, concerning what are termed "Years of Famine," but it is not generally known that since the introduction of the potato in this country, no year has ever past, which in some remote locality or other, has not been such to the unfortunate inhabitants. The climate of Ireland is so unsettled, its soil so various in quality and the potato so liable to injury from excess of either drought or moisture, that we have no hesitation in stating the startling fact of this annual famine as one we can vouch for, upon our personal knowledge, and against the truth of which we challenge contradiction.

Neither does an autumn pa.s.s without a complaint peculiar to those who feed solely upon the new and unripe potato, and which, ever since the year '32 is known by the people as the potato cholera. With these circ.u.mstances the legislature ought to be acquainted, inasmuch as they are calamities that will desolate and afflict the country so long as the potato is permitted to be, as it unfortunately is, the staple food of the people. That we are subject in consequence of that fact, to periodical recurrences of dearth and disease, is well known and admitted; but that every season brings its partial scourge of both these evils to various remote and neglected districts in Ireland, has not been, what it ought long since to have been, an acknowledged and established fact in the sanatory statistics of the country. Indeed, one would imagine, that after the many terrible visitations which we have had from dest.i.tution and pestilence, a legislature sincerely anxious for the health and comfort of the people, would have devoted itself, in some reasonable measure, to the human consideration of such proper sumptuary and sanatory enactments, as would have provided not only against the recurrence of these evils, but for a more enlightened system of public health and cleanliness, and a better and more comfortable provision of food for the indigent and poor. As it is at present, provision dealers of all kinds, meal-mongers, forestallers, butchers, bakers, and hucksters, combine together, and sustain such a general monopoly in food, as is at variance with the spirit of all law and humanity, and const.i.tutes a kind of artificial famine in the country; and surely; these circ.u.mstances ought not to be permitted, so long as we have a deliberative legislature, whose duty it is to watch and guard the health and morals of the people.

At the present period of our narrative, and especially on the gloomy morning following the Prophet's unconscious visit to the grave of the murdered man, the popular outrages had risen to an alarming height. Up to the present time occasional outbreaks, by small and detached groups of individuals, had taken place at night or before dawn, and rather in a timid or fugitive manner, than with the recklessness of men who a.s.semble in large crowds, and set both law and all consequences at open defiance.

Now, however, dest.i.tution and disease had wrought such woeful work among the general population, that it was difficult to know where or how to prescribe bounds to the impetuous resentment with which they expressed themselves against those who held over large quant.i.ties of food in order to procure high prices. At this moment the country, with its waste, unreaped crops, tying in a state of plashy and fermenting ruin, and its desolate and wintry aspect, was in frightful keeping with the appearance of the people when thus congregated together. We can only say, that the famine crowds of that awful year should have been seen in order to have been understood and felt. The whole country was in a state of dull but frantic tumult, and the wild crowds as they came and went in the perpetration of their melancholy outrages, were worn down by such starling evidences of general poverty and suffering, as were enough to fill the heart with fear as well as pity, even to look upon. Their cadaverous and emaciated aspects had something in them so wild and wolfish, and the fire of famine blazed so savagely in their hollow eyes, that many of them looked like creatures changed from their very humanity by some judicial plague, that had been sent down from Heaven to punish and desolate the land. And in truth there is no doubt whatsoever, that the intensity of their sufferings, and the natural panic which was occasioned by the united ravages of disease and famine, had weakened the powers of their understanding, and impressed upon their bearing and features an expression which seemed partly the wild excitement of temporary frenzy, and partly the dull, hopeless apathy of fatuity--a state to which it is well known that misery, sickness, and hunger, all together, had brought down the strong intellect and reason of the wretched and famis.h.i.+ng mult.i.tudes. Nor was this state of feeling confined to those who were goaded by the frightful sufferings that prevailed. On the contrary, thousands became victims of a quick and powerful contagion which spread the insane spirit of violence at a rapid rate, affecting many during the course of the day, who in the early part of the morning had not partaken of its influence. To no other principle than this can we attribute the wanton and irrational outrages of many of the people. Every one acquainted with such awful visitations must know that their terrific realities cause them, by wild influences that run through the whole ma.s.ses, to forget all the decencies and restraints of ordinary life, until fear and shame, and becoming respect for order, all of which const.i.tute the moral safety of society--are thrown aside or resolved into the great tyrannical instinct of self-preservation, which, when thus stimulated, becomes what may be termed the insanity of desolation. We know that the most savage animals as well as the most timid will, when impelled by its ravenous clamors, alike forget every other appet.i.te but that which is necessary for the sustainment of life. Urged by it alone, they will sometimes approach and a.s.sail the habitations of man, and, in the fury of the moment, expose themselves to his power, and dare his resentment; just as a famine mob will do, when urged by the same instinct, in a year of scarcity.

There is no beast, however, in the deepest jungle of Africa itself, so wild, savage and ferocious, as a human mob, when left to its own blind and headlong impulses. On the morning in question, the whole country was pouring forth its famished hordes to intercept meal-carts and provision vehicles of all descriptions, on their way to market or to the next sea-port for s.h.i.+pment; or to attack the granaries of provision dealers, and all who, having food in large quant.i.ties, refused to give it gratis, or at a nominal price to the poor. Carts and cars, therefore, mostly the property of unoffending persons, were stopped on the highways, there broken, and the food which they carried openly taken away, and, in case of resistance, those who had charge of them were severely beaten. Mills were also attacked and pillaged, and in many instances large quant.i.ties of flour and grain not only carried off, but wantonly and wickedly strewn about the streets and destroyed.

In all these acts of violence there was very little shouting; the fact being that the wretched people were not able to shout; unless on rare occasions; and sooth to say, their vociferations were then but a faint and feeble echo of the noisy tumults which in general characterize the proceedings of excited and angry crowds. Truly, those pitiable gatherings had their own peculiarities of misery. During the progress of the pillage, individuals of every age, s.e.x, and condition--so far as condition can be applied to the lower cla.s.ses--might be seen behind ditches, in remote nooks--in porches of houses, and many on the open highways and streets, eating, or rather gobbling up raw flour, or oat-meal; others, more fortunate, were tearing and devouring bread, with a fury, to which only the unnatural appet.i.tes of so many famished maniacs could be compared. As might be expected, most of these inconsiderate acts of license were punished by the consequences which followed them. Sickness of various descriptions, giddiness, retchings, fainting fits, convulsions, and in some cases, death itself, were induced by this wolfish and frightful gluttony on the part of the starving people. Others, however, who possessed more sense, and maintained a greater restraint over their individual sufferings, might be seen in all directions, hurrying home, loaded with provisions of the most portable descriptions, under which they tottered and panted, and sometimes fell utterly prostrate from recent illness or the mere exhaustion of want. Aged people, grey-haired old men, and old women bent with age, exhibited a wild and excited alacrity that was grievous to witness, while hurrying homewards--if they had a home, or if not, to the first friendly shelter they could get--a kind of dim exulting joy feebly blazing in their heavy eyes, and a wild sense of unexpected good fortune working in unnatural play upon the muscles of their wrinkled and miserable faces. The ghastly impressions of famine, however, were not confined to those who composed the crowds. Even the children were little living skeletons, wan and yellow, with a spirit of pain and suffering legible upon their fleshless but innocent features--while the very dogs, as was well observed, were not able to bark, unless they stood against a wall; for indeed, such of them as survived, were nothing but ribs and skin. At all events, they a.s.sisted in making up the terrible picture of general misery which the country at large presented. Both day and night, but at night especially, their hungry howlings could be heard over the country, or mingling with wailings which the people were in the habit of pouring over those whom the terrible typhus was sweeping away with such wide and indiscriminate fatality.

Our readers may now perceive, that the sufferings of these unhappy crowds, before they had been driven to these acts of violence, were almost beyond belief. At an early period of the season, when the potatoes could not be dug, miserable women might be seen early in the morning, and in fact, during all hours of the day, gathering weeds of various descriptions, in order to sustain life; and happy were they who could procure a few handfuls of young nettles, chicken-weed, sorrel, pres.h.a.gh, bugla.s.s, or seaweed, to bring home as food, either for themselves or their unfortunate children. Others, again, were glad to creep or totter to stock-farms, at great distances across the country, in hope of being able to procure a portion of blood, which, on such melancholy occasions, is taken from the heifers and bullocks that graze there, in order to prevent the miserable poor from peris.h.i.+ng by actual starvation and death.

Alas! little do our English neighbors know or dream of the horrors which attend a year of severe famine in this unhappy country. The crowds which kept perpetual and incessant siege to the houses of wealthy and even of struggling small farmers, were such! as scarcely any pen could describe.

Neither can we render anything like adequate justice to the benevolence and charity--nay, we ought to say, the generosity and magnanimity of this and the middle cla.s.ses in general, In no country on earth could such n.o.ble instances of self-denial and sublime humanity be witnessed.

It has happened in thousands of instances that the last miserable morsel, the last mouthful of nouris.h.i.+ng liquid, the last potato, or the last six-pence, has been divided with wretched and desolate beings who required it more, and this, too, by persons who, when that was gone, knew not to what quarter they could turn with a hope of replacing for themselves that which they had just shared in a spirit of such genuine and exalted piety.*

* It is as well to state here that the season described in this tale is the dreadful and melancholy one of 1817; and we may add, that in order to avoid the charge of having exaggerated the almost incredible sufferings of the people in that year, we have studiously kept our descriptions of them within the limits of truth. Dr.

c.o.kkigan, in his able and very sensible pamphlet on "Fever and Famine as Cause and Effect in Ireland"--a pamphlet, by the way, which has been the means of conveying most important truths to statesmen, and which ought to be looked on as a great public benefit--has confirmed the accuracy of the gloomy pictures I was forced to draw. Here follow an extract or two:

"It is scarcely necessary to call to recollection the summer of 1810, cold and wet--corn uncut in November, or rotting in the sheaves on the ground--potatoes not ripened (and when unripe there cannot be worse food), containing more water than nutriment--straw at such an extravagant price as to render the obtaining of it for bedding almost impossible, and when procured, retaining from its half-fermented state, so much moisture, that the use was, perhaps, worse than the want of it. The same agent that destroyed the harvest spoiled the turf.

Seldom had such a multiplication of evils come together. In some of the former years, although food and bedding were deficient, the portion saved was of good quality, and fuel was not wanting: but in 1815 every comfort that might have compensated for partial want was absent. This description applies to the two years of 1816 and 1817. In midsummer of 1817, the blaze of fever was over the entire country. It had burst forth in almost a thousand different points. Within the short s.p.a.ce of a month, in the summer of 1817, the epidemic sprung forth in Tramore, Youghal, Kinsale, Tralee, and Clonmel, in Carrick-on-Suir, Iloscrea, Ballina, Castlebar, Belfast, Armagh, Omagh, Londonderry, Monasterevan, Tullamore and Slane. This simultaneous break-out shows that there must have been some universal cause."

Again:

"The poor were deprived of employment and were driven from the doors where before they had always received relief, lest they should introduce disease with them.

Thus, dest.i.tution and fever continued in a vicious circle, each impelling the other, while want of presence of mind aggravated a thousandfold the terrible infliction. Of the miseries that attend a visitation of epidemic fever, few can form a conception. The mere relation of the scenes that occurred in the country, even in one of its last visitations, makes one shudder in reading them. As Barker and Cheyne observe in their report, 'a volume might be filled with instances of the distress occasioned by the visitation of fever in 1817.'"

"'On the road leading from Cork, within a mile of the town (Kanturk), I visited a woman laboring under typhus; on her left lay a child very ill, at the foot of the bed another child just able to crawl about, and on her right the corpse of a third child who had died two days previously, which the unhappy mother could not get removed.'--Letter from Dr. O'Leary, Kanturk.

"'Ellen Pagan, a young woman, whose husband was obliged, in order to seek employment, to leave her almost dest.i.tute in a miserable cabin, with three children, gave the shelter of her roof to a poor beggar who had fever. She herself caught the disease, and from the terror created in the neighborhood, was, with her three children, deserted--except that some person left a little water and milk at the window for the children,--one about four, the other about three years old, and the other an infant at her breast. In this way she continued for a week, when a neighbor sent her a loaf of bread, which was left in the window. Four days after this he grew uneasy about her, and one night having prepared some tea and bread, he set off to her ralief. When he arrived, the following scene presented itself:--In the window lay the loaf, where it had been deposited four days previously; in one corner of the cabin, on a little straw, without covering of any kind, lay the wretched mother, actually dying, and her infant dead by her side, for the want of that sustenance which she had not to give; on the floor lay the children, to all appearance dying also of cold and hunger. At first they refused to take anything, and he had to pour a little liquid down their throats--with the cautious administration of food they gradually recovered. The woman expired before the visitor quitted the house.'-- Letter from Dr. Mucarthney, Monivae.

"'A man, his wife, and two children lay together in a fever. The man died in the night; his wife, nearly convalescent, was so terrified with his corpse in the same bed with her, that she relapsed, and died in two days after; the children recovered from fever, but the eldest lost his reason by the fright. Many other scenes have I witnessed, which would be too tedious to relate.'--Barker & Oheyne's Report.

"I know not of any visitation so much to be dreaded as epidemic fever; it is worse than the plague, for it lasts throughout all seasons. Cholera may seem more frightful, but it is in reality less destructive. It terminates rapidly in death, or in as rapid recovery.

Its visitation, too, is short, and it leaves those who recover unimpaired in health and strength. Civil war, were it not for its crimes, would be, as far as regards the welfare of a country, a visitation less to be dreaded than epidemic fever."

"It is not possible, then, to form an exaggerated picture of the sufferings of a million and a half of people in these countries, in their convalescence from fever, deprived of, not only the comforts, but even the necessaries of life, with scanty food, and fuel, and covering, only rising from fever to slowly fall victims to those numerous chronic diseases that are sure to seize upon enfeebled const.i.tutions. Death would be to many a more merciful dispensation than such a recovery."--Famine and Fever, as Clause and Effect in Ireland, &a., &o. By D. J. Cohkigan, Esq., M.D., M.K.C.S.B. Dublin: J. Fannin & Co., Grafton Street.

It was to such a state of general tumult that the Prophet and his family arose on the morning of the following day. As usual, he was grim and sullen, but on this occasion his face had a pallid and sunken look in it, which apparently added at least ten years to his age. There was little spoken, and after breakfast he prepared to go out. Sarah, during the whole morning, watched his looks, and paid a marked attention to every thing he said. He appeared, however, to be utterly unconscious of the previous night's adventure, a fact which his daughter easily perceived, and which occasioned her to feel a kind of vague compa.s.sion for him, in consequence of the advantage it might give Nelly over him; for of late she began to partic.i.p.ate in her father's fears and suspicions of that stubborn and superst.i.tious personage.

"Father," said she, as he was about to go out, "is it fair to ax where you are going?"

"It's neither fair nor foul," he replied; "but if it's any satisfaction to you to know, I won't tell you."

"Have you any objections then, that I should walk a piece of the way with you?"

"Not if you have come to your senses, as you ought, about what I mentioned to you."

"I have something to say to you," she replied, without noticing the allusion he had made; "something that you ought to know."

"An' why not mention it where we are?"

"Bekaise I don't wish her there to know it."

"Thank you, ma'am," replied Nelly; "I feel your kindness--an,' dear me, what a sight o' wisdom I'll lose by bein' kep' out o' the saicret--saicret indeed! A fig for yourself an' your saicret; maybe I have my saicret as well as you."

"Well, then," replied Sarah, "if you have, do you keep yours as I'll keep mine, and then we'll be aiquil. Come, father, for I must go from home too. Indeed I think this is the last day I'll be with either of you for some time--maybe ever."

"What do you mane?" said the father.

"Hut!" said the mother, "what a goose you are! Charley Hanlon, to be sure; I suppose she'll run off wid him. Oh, thin, G.o.d pity him or any other one that's doomed to be blistered wid you!"

Sarah flashed like lightning, and her frame began to work with that extraordinary energy which always accompanied the manifestation of her resentment.

"You will," said she, approaching the other--"you will, after your escape the other day; you--no, ah! no--I won't now; I forgot myself.

Come, father,--come, come; my last quarrel with her is over."

"Ay," returned Nelly, as they went out, "there you go, an' a sweet pair you are--father and daughter!"

"Now, father," resumed Sarah, after they had got out of hearing, "will you tell me if you slep' well last night?"

"Why do you ax?" he replied; "to be sure I did."

"I'll tell you why I ax," she answered; "do you know that you went last night--in the middle of the night--to the murdhered man's grave, in the glen there?"

It is impossible to express the look of astonishment and dismay which he turned up on her at these words.

"Sarah!" he said, sternly; but she interrupted him.

"It's thruth," said she; "an I went with--"