Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume I Part 70

"'Coming in force!' said the fellow. 'Dragoons! By this road!'

"'Dragoons? By this road?' repeated every man of the party, looking at each other like men sentenced to be hanged.

"Scarcely had they spoken when we heard the distant noise of cavalry advancing at a brisk trot. Lord, what a scene ensued! The soldiers ran hither and thither like frightened sheep; some pulled out crucifixes and began to say their prayers; others fired off their muskets in a panic; the mule-drivers cut their traces, and endeavored to get away by riding; and the intendant took to his heels, screaming out to us, as he went, to fight manfully to the last, and that he'd report us favorably to the Junta.

"Just at this moment the dragoons came in sight; they came galloping up, shouting like madmen. One look was enough for my fellows; they sprang to their legs from their devotions, fired a volley straight at the new moon, and ran like men.

"I was knocked down in the rush. As I regained my legs, Tom O'Flaherty was standing beside me, laughing like mad.

"'Eh, Monsoon! I've kept my word, old fellow! What legs they have! We shall make no prisoners, that's certain. Now, lads, here it is! Put the horses to, here. We shall take but one, Monsoon; so that your gallant defence of the rest will please the Junta. Good-night, good-night! I will drink your health every night these two months.'

"So saying, Tom sprang to his saddle; and in less time than I've been telling it, the whole was over and I sitting by myself in the gray moonlight, meditating on all I saw, and now and then shouting for my Portuguese friends to come back again. They came in time, by twos and threes; and at last the whole party re-a.s.sembled, and we set forth again, every man, from the intendant to the drummer, lauding my valor, and saying that Don Monsoon was a match for the Cid."

"And how did the Junta behave?"

"Like trumps, Charley. Made me a Knight of Battalha, and kissed me on both cheeks, having sent twelve dozen of the rescued wine to my quarters, as a small testimony of their esteem. I have laughed very often at it since. But hush, Charley? What's that I hear without there?"

"Oh, it's my fellow Mike. He asked my leave to entertain his friends before parting, and I perceive he is delighting them with a song."

"But what a confounded air it is! Are the words Hebrew?"

"Irish, Major; most cla.s.sical Irish, too, I'll be bound!"

"Iris.h.!.+ I've heard most tongues, but that certainly surprises me. Call him in, Charley, and let us have the canticle."

In a few minutes more, Mr. Free appeared in a state of very satisfactory elevation, his eyebrows alternately rising and falling, his mouth a little drawn to one side, and a side motion in his knee-joints that might puzzle a physiologist to account for.

"A sweet little song of yours, Mike," said the major; "a very sweet thing indeed. Wet your lips, Mickey."

"Long life to your honor and Master Charles there, too, and them that belongs to both of yez. May a gooseberry skin make a nightcap for the man would harm either of ye."

"Thank you, Mike. And now about that song."

"It's the ouldest tune ever was sung," said Mike, with a hiccough, "barring Adam had a taste for music; but the words--the poethry--is not so ould."

"And how comes that?"

"The poethry, ye see, was put to it by one of my ancesthors,--he was a great inventhor in times past, and made beautiful songs,--and ye'd never guess what it's all about."

"Love, mayhap?" quoth Monsoon.

"Sorra taste of kissing from beginning to end."

"A drinking song?" said I.

"Whiskey is never mentioned."

"Fighting is the only other national pastime. It must be in praise of sudden death?"

"You're out again; but sure you'd never guess it," said Mike. "Well, ye see, here's what it is. It's the praise and glory of ould Ireland in the great days that's gone, when we were all Phenayceans and Armenians, and when we worked all manner of beautiful contrivances in gold and silver,--bracelets and collars and teapots, elegant to look at,--and read Roosian and Latin, and played the harp and the barrel-organ, and eat and drank of the best, for nothing but asking."

"Blessed times, upon my life!" quoth the major; "I wish we had them back again."

"There's more of your mind," said Mike, steadying himself. "My ancesthors was great people in them days; and sure it isn't in my present situation I'd be av we had them back again,--sorra bit, faith! It isn't, 'Come here, Mickey, bad luck to you, Mike!' or, 'That blackguard, Mickey Free!'

people'd be calling me. But no matter; here's your health again, Major Monsoon--"

"Never mind vain regrets, Mike. Let us hear your song; the major has taken a great fancy to it."

"Ah, then, it's joking you are, Mister Charles," said Mike, affecting an air of most bashful coyness.

"By no means; we want to hear you sing it."

"To be sure we do. Sing it by all means; never be ashamed. King David was very fond of singing,--upon my life he was."

"But you'd never understand a word of it, sir."

"No matter; we know what it's about. That's the way with the Legion; they don't know much English, but they generally guess what I'm at."

This argument seemed to satisfy all Mike's remaining scruples; so placing himself in an att.i.tude of considerable pretension as to grace, he began, with a voice of no very measured compa.s.s, an air of which neither by name nor otherwise can I give any conception; my princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt being derived from a tol-de-rol chorus of the major, which concluded each verse, and indeed in a lower key accompanied the singer throughout.

Since that I have succeeded in obtaining a free-and-easy translation of the lyric; but in my anxiety to preserve the metre and something of the spirit of the original, I have made several blunders and many anachronisms. Mr.

Free, however, p.r.o.nounces my version a good one, and the world must take his word till some more worthy translator shall have consigned it to immortal verse.

With this apology, therefore, I present Mr. Free's song:

AIR,--_Na Guilloch y' Goulen_.

Oh, once we were illigint people, Though we now live in cabins of mud; And the land that ye see from the steeple Belonged to us all from the Flood.

My father was then King of Connaught, My grand-aunt Viceroy of Tralee; But the Sa.s.senach came, and signs on it, The devil an acre have we.

The least of us then were all earls, And jewels we wore without name; We drank punch out of rubies and pearls,-- Mr. Petrie can tell you the same.

But except some turf mould and potatoes, There's nothing our own we can call; And the English,--bad luck to them!--hate us, Because we've more fun than them all!

My grand-aunt was niece to Saint Kevin, That's the reason my name's Mickey Free!

Priest's nieces,--but sure he's in heaven, And his failins is nothin' to me.

And we still might get on without doctors, If they'd let the ould Island alone; And if purple-men, priests, and t.i.the-proctors Were crammed down the great gun of Athlone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. FREE'S SONG.]

As Mike's melody proceeded, the major's thorough ba.s.s waxed beautifully less,--now and then, it's true, roused by some momentary strain, it swelled upwards in full chorus, but gradually these pa.s.sing flights grew rarer, and finally all ceased, save a long, low, droning sound, like the expiring sigh of a wearied bagpipe. His fingers still continued mechanically to beat time upon the table, and still his head nodded sympathetically to the music; his eyelids closed in sleep; and as the last verse concluded, a full-drawn snore announced that Monsoon, if not in the land of dreams, was at least in a happy oblivion of all terrestrial concerns, and caring as little for the woes of green Erin and the altered fortunes of the Free family as any Saxon that ever oppressed them.

There he sat, the finished decanter and empty goblet testifying that his labors had only ceased from the pressure of necessity; but the broken, half-uttered words that fell from his lips evinced that he reposed on the last bottle of the series.

"Oh, thin, he's a fine ould gentleman!" said Mike, after a pause of some minutes, during which he had been contemplating the major with all the critical ac.u.men Chantrey or Canova would have bestowed upon an antique statue,--"a fine ould gentleman, every inch of him; and it's the master would like to have him up at the Castle."

"Quite true, Mike; but let us not forget the road. Look to the cattle, and be ready to start within an hour."