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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ or send him to heaven a little sooner than was absolutely necessary.

      The herbs of the colloughs were sometimes successfully resorted to; whether accidental or actual preventives or antidotes, it is not easy to determine: but when I detail the ulterior remedy to cure the hydrophobia in Ireland, or at least to render it perfectly innoxious, I am well aware that I shall stand a good chance of being honoured by the periodicals with the appellation of a “bouncer,” as on occasion of the former volumes: but the ensuing case, as I can personally vouch for the fact, I may surely give with tolerable confidence.

      KILLING WITH KINDNESS

      Illustration of the Irish horror of hydrophobia – Thomas Palmer, of Rushhall, Esquire, magistrate and land-agent, &c. – A substantial bill of fare – Dan Dempsey, of the Pike, is bitten by a mad dog – Application to the magistrate for legal permission to relieve him of his sufferings – Mode of relief proposed – Swearing scholars – Permission obtained – Dan regularly smothered, by way both of cure and preventive– Fate of Mr. Palmer himself – Allen Kelly, of Portarlington – “New Way to Pay Old Debts.”

      Such a dread had the Irish of the bite of a mad dog, that they did not regard it as murder, but absolutely as a legal and meritorious act, to smother any person who had arrived at an advanced stage of hydrophobia. If he made a noise similar to barking, his hour of suffocation was seldom protracted.

      In this mode of administering the remedy, it was sometimes difficult to procure proper instruments; for they conceived that by law the patient should be smothered between two feather-beds, – one being laid cleverly over him, and a sufficient number of the neighbours lying on it till he was “out of danger.”

      The only instance I am able to state from my own knowledge occurred about the year 1781. Thomas Palmer, of Rushhall, in Queen’s County, was then my father’s land-agent, and at the same time a very active and intelligent magistrate of that county. He was, gratis, an oracle, lawyer, poet, horse – cow – dog and man doctor, farmer, architect, brewer, surveyor, and magistrate of all work. He was friendly and good-natured, and possessed one of those remarkable figures now so rarely to be seen in society. I feel I am, as usual, digressing; – however, be the digression what it may, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of depicting my old friend, and endeavouring to render him as palpable to the vision of my reader as he is at this moment to my own.

      Palmer was one of that race of giants for which the rich and extensive barony of Ossory, in Queen’s County (now the estate of the Duke of Buckingham), was then and had long been celebrated. His height was esteemed the middle height in that county – namely, about six feet two inches; he was bulky without being fat, and strong, though not very muscular. He was, like many other giants, split up too much, and his long dangling limbs appeared still longer from their clothing, which was invariably the same: – a pair of strong buck-skin breeches, never very greasy, but never free from grease; half jack-boots; massive, long silver spurs, either of his own or of somebody’s grandfather’s; a scarlet waistcoat with long skirts; and a coat with “all the cloth in it.” These habiliments rendered him altogether a singular but not other than respectable figure. His visage made amends for both his outré boots and breeches; it was as well calculated as could be for a kind-hearted, good-humoured, convivial old man. His queue wig, with a curl at each side, had his grizzle hair combed smoothly over the front of it; and he seldom troubled the powder-puff, but when he had got the “skins whitened,” in order to “dine in good company.” He was the hardest-goer either at kettle or screw (except Squire Flood of Roundwood) of the whole grand-jury, for whose use he made a new song every summer assize: and it was from him I heard the very unanswerable argument, “that if a man fills the bottom of his glass, there can be no good reason why he should not also fill the top of it; and if he empties the top of his glass, he certainly ought in common civility to pay the bottom the same compliment:” – no man ever more invariably exemplified his own theorem.

      Thomas Palmer was hale and healthy; – his fifty-seventh year had handed him over safe and sound to its next neighbour: his property was just sufficient (and no more) to gallop side by side with his hospitality. When at home, his boiler was seldom found bubbling without a corned round withinside it; and a gander or cock turkey frequently danced at the end of a string before the long turf fire. Ducks, hares, chickens, or smoked ham, often adorned the sides of his table; whilst apple-dumplings in the centre and potatoes at cross corners completed a light snack for five or six seven-feet Ossoronians, who left no just reason to the old cook and a couple of ruddy ploughmen, (who attended as butlers,) to congratulate themselves upon the dainty appetites of their masters, or the balance of nourishment left to liquidate the demand of their own stomachs. But, alas! those pleasurable specimens of solid fare have passed away for ever! As age advances, Nature diminishes her weights and measures in our consumption, and our early pounds and Scotch pints (two bottles) are at length reduced to the miserable rations of ounces and glassfuls.

      At this magistrate’s cottage, which had as stout a roof to it as any mansion in the county, I once dined, about the year 1781, when the state of medicine in Ireland was exemplified in a way that neither Cullen, Darwin, Perceval, James, or any other learned doctor ever contemplated, and which I am convinced – had it been the practice in Italy – Doctor Morgan would not have passed over in total silence.

      We had scarcely finished such a meal as I have particularised, and “got into the punch,” when a crowd of men, women, and children, came up to the door in great confusion, but respectfully took off their hats and bonnets, and asked humbly to speak to his worship.

      Tom Palmer seemed to anticipate their business, and inquired at once “if Dan Dempsey of the Pike (turnpike) was in the same way still?”

      “Ough! please your worship,” cried out twenty voices together, “worse, your worship, worse nor ever, death’s crawling upon him – he can’t stop, and what’s the use in leaving the poor boy in his pains any longer, your worship? We have got two good feather-beds at the Pike, and we want your worship’s leave to smother Dan Dempsey, if your worship pleases.”

      “Ough avourneen! he growls and barks like any mastiff dog, please your worship,” cried a tremulous old woman, who seemed quite in terror.

      “You lie, Nancy Bergin,” said her older husband, “Dan Dempsey does not bark like a mastiff; – it’s for all the world like your worship’s white lurcher, when she’s after the rabbits, so it is!”

      “He snapped three times at myself this morning,” said another humane lady, “and the neighbours said it were all as one, almost, as biting me.”

      “Hush! hush!” said the magistrate, waving his hand: “any of you who can read and write, come in here.”

      “Ough! there’s plenty of that sort, please your worship,” said Maurice Dowling, the old schoolmaster. “Sure it’s not ignorance I’d be teaching my scholards every day these forty years, except Sundays and holidays, at the Pike. There’s plenty of swearing scholards here any how, your worship.”

      “Come in any three of you, then, who can clearly swear Dan Dempsey barks like a dog, – no matter whether like a mastiff or a lurcher – and attempts to bite.”

      The selection was accordingly made, and the affidavit sworn, to the effect that “Dan Dempsey had been bit by a mad dog; that he went mad himself, barked like any greyhound, and had no objection to bite whatever Christian came near him. Squire Palmer then directed them to go back to the Pike, and said they might smother Dan Dempsey if he barked any more in the morning; but told them to wait till then.

      “Ah, then, at what hour, please your worship?” said Nan Bergin, accompanied by several other female voices, СКАЧАТЬ