289 THE IRISH LOCHINVAR. Now droopes our bride, and in her virgin state WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. I. THE Bay of Galway presents the boldest and most picturesque ocean panorama on the western coast of Ireland. It is eight miles across, and vessels of twelve hundred tons burthen can float upon its waters up to the quay of the old Spanish town. Standing on the shore you look out over the broad Atlantic, and if your sight were long enough to carry you such a distance you could see the headlands of Labrador straight before you. One side of this bay is in the county of Galway, and the other side in the county of Clare, a geographical division of some importance in the incident we are about to relate. Early in the present century a few cottages stood on the hill that overlooks the Clare side of the bay, commanding from their rustic windows a clear view of the intervening waters and the opposite shore. In the winter season, when the storms, which, on this coast, are sometimes very wild, happen to run high, it is a service of danger to cross from shore to shore in an open boat. But the people of this region, especially the fearless dwellers in the fishing village of the Claddagh, are not much given to making calculations of perils if they have any motive for putting out to sea. The spot upon which the cottages stood is now a waste, choked up with weeds and fern. The desertion of the place originated in the following circumstances. Two brothers, Hugh and Teague Feely, inhabited one of these dwellings, which they had inherited from their father, with a few acres of potato ground, and a stretch of meadow. The rebellion of 1798 had brought heavy calamities upen the family; and, although it does not come within the proper limits of our story to trace any of the historical antecedents of the Feely sept, we are bound to say that these two brothers would have found themselves in much more comfortable circumstances if some of their relations had been better farmers and more discreet patriots. As it was, they had to struggle hard to live upon a legacy heavily mortgaged with domestic incumbrances. But Hugh, the elder brother, was a steady and resolute man, and by dint of unfaltering perseverance he succeeded in recovering the position, which, before the time ofthe troubles, had been held in that locality by his family. He was even reputed to be rich-a term which must always, in such cases, be taken in a relative, and not in a positive sense. Hugh had enjoyed the advantage of a complete course of education at a hedge-school. Poor Teague had never received any education at all; and the superior attainments of the elder brother were brought ought in remarkable relief whenever the subject in discussion between them happened to turn upon reading and writing, which were as profound mysteries to Teague as the riddles of the Sphinx or the Sybilline leaves. But people must pay some penalties for their accomplishments; and if Hugh had the advantage over Teague in the way of erudition, Teague took revenge upon him by the airiness and vivacity of his jokes. Hugh was a very reserved man, reserved almost to gloom; perhaps it was his scholarship that made him so grave and silent. Now Teague, who was not burthened with learning of any sort, would rattle away like the wheel of a mill, and was the merriest fellow in the whole country round. So that if Hugh had the best of the argument, whenever matters resolved themselves into that shape, Teague had the best of the fun, whatever shape they took. There was also another difference between them, which told very considerably in favour of Teague's side of the question. Hugh had lived for a year or two in Dublin, and had picked up notions of breeding which rendered his manners peculiarly remote and grand. Amongst other refinements, he endeavoured to get rid of his provincial dialect, clipping his words very carefully, and speaking as little as possible to avoid committing himself to any involuntary vulgarisms. Teague, on the other hand, had never been in the capital, and his ignorance of fashionable life afforded him a perpetual source of pleasantry, which no man could avail himself of with more whimsical humour. And in addition to this, he gloried in a rich Connaught brogue, which he would not turn his back upon for the finest gentleman in the land, and which, to confess to a trifling frailty of his, he would every now and then heighten and exaggerate, with the malicious design of showing off the weak point of his brother's character. The characteristics of the two brothers were so strongly opposed, and so notorious in the neighbourhood, that they at last passed into "nicknames," the people of Galway being famous for their talent at fastening soubriquets upon their friends. Hugh was familiarly known as Grim Hugh, and Teague was popularly called Teague the Rattler. II. At the hour of five, on a cold winter's morning, a light was seen moving backwards and forwards in the parlour window of Feely's cottage on the Clare heights. It was the indefatigable Teague, who was the earliest riser of the family, and who was preparing his toilet to make an excursion to the barn. In a few minutes he opened the latch, and, with his lantern in his hand, proceeded, under the shelter of a low mud wall, towards a roofless tattered enclosure, which was jocularly called the barn. The sleep was not yet quite out of his eyes, and he staggered along very much after the manner of a sailor in a high wind, picking himself up rather awkwardly at every alternate step, to steady himself towards the point of his destination. As he advanced in this way, he suddenly struck against some person who seemed to be standing bolt upright in the angle between the wall and the barn. Teague was never put out by accidents of any kind. "Holloa!" he exclaimed; "it's there you are, whoever you are; and what the divil brings you there, I'd like to know. The top o' the morning to you, and maybe it's in your bed you'd be if I wanted you." The man made no reply, but, evidently anxious to avoid observation, endeavoured to get away, when Teague clutched at his short freize jacket, and, with a sudden jerk, brought him back again. "No, jewel, you shan't slip through my fingers, if you were twice as big. Speak out; what are you doing lurking here in the grey of the morning, like an evil spirit ?" and raising the lantern, he looked into the face of the stranger, making a discovery which threw him into a violent paroxysm of laughter. "Hugh-ha-ho, ha, ho, ho! why, I'd as soon have thought of meeting ould Nick himself at this blessed hour. What's come to you, man? Isn't it well you are? And dressed too, by the powers? Sure you knew I had the kays.” "Do I not often rise early, brother?" demanded Hugh, in a peculiarly gruff and disagreeable voice. "Ah! then may be you do," answered Teague, with a long whistle, which was meant to imply that he had no great confidence in the truth of the hypothesis he had just ventured upon. 66 "It's a cold morning," said Hugh. "Are we to have rain to-day?" Why, then," said Teague, "I can't exactly say. It looks mighty quare, and there's a sough in the wind that's enough to wet one to the heart." "Don't say that, Teague," replied Hugh, quickly; "don't say that." "Ah, what matter what I say," answered Teague. mined to rain, I can't prevent it. 'Happy is the bride that the sun shines on, And happy is the corpse that the rain rains on!' "If it's deter As I'm neither a bride nor a corpse, the divil a hair it matters to me whether it rains or not.' "But it does to me, Teague," said Hugh. "In the regard of what?" demanded Teague. "In the regard of a certain business that is to be done to-day." "And what's that, Hugh?” "Where is your Sunday coat, Teague ?" inquired Hugh. your pumps clean? You must dress yourself neat to-night." "Are "I must, must I? Well, that'll be no great trouble to me. But what am I to dress myself for ?" "To dance at your brother's wedding, Teague," replied Hugh. Teague was, for once in his life, perfectly astonished. He held the lantern up to his brother's face, and, after throwing the light as straight as he could into his eyes, he went on,-" Dance at your wedding? Is it dreaming you are? Divil a dream. I know that eye of yours of ould. Divil a dream in that eye. And it's to dance you want me : would you have any objection if I were to sing into the bargain?" "I want you to get Brallaghan to bring his pipes," said Hugh; "and mind that you put on your best for the wedding. We must have no work to-day, Teague. It's a great holiday, and you must make the old place rock with fun. I depend upon you for that." "Just stop a bit," replied Teague; "I don't know whether you're making a fool of me or of yourself; but if it was your wake you were asking me to instead of your wedding, Hugh, avourneen, you know you might depind upon me for the fun. But I'm thinking-the Lord save us!-that you're walking in your sleep, and don't know rightly what you 're talking about. Will you answer me one question, Hugh? Now stand there straight before me, and put your hands behind your back, and look at me, and answer me—is it Martha Burke that's to the fore in this wedding?" "You're a bit of a conjurer, Teague," returned Hugh, with a very grim smile; "it's Martha, sure enough. And the Burkes are coming, and Jim Doolan, and everybody; and as the honour of the family's at stake, we must give them a welcome that will ne'er be forgot By them that was there, and them that was not.'" "Hough!" exclaimed Teague, springing up into the air with a sort of ecstacy, and swinging the lantern round his head so furiously that the light was blown out, "I can hardly keep the jig out of my feet already. And it's going to be married you are! Oh, then more of that to you, Hugh! By my faith, I'm thinking it isn't so early you'll be getting up to-morrow morning, Hugh, avick! Bad luck, and a pair of them, to that dirty lantern that wouldn't keep steady. Its easy to see that the light doesn't shine on you this morning, Hugh; but you'll have plenty of it to-night, you divil!" and Teague, groping his way by the wall, for the sky was dismally dark and heavy, turned back towards the house to relight his lantern. Hugh stood for a moment, with the grisly air of a man who was revolving some very profound problem in his mind, and then began muttering to himself, as he moved away into the darkness towards a scrambling path that led down the face of the cliff to the strand below: "Happy is the bride that the sun shines on!' Was that a drop of rain? I wonder whether Martha 's stirring yet. What would she say if she knew that the first light I saw this morning went out upon me? The rain is coming-Lord defend us !-and a storm is on the sea. But the sun's not up yet. There's comfort in that, and it's natural too that it should rain in winter. Of course, of course, let it rain till it's tired. I wonder I'm such a fool. And maybe, after all, the sun 'll shine out by and by ;" and thus, with many broken words of doubt and fear, summoning up hope and bravado as well as he could against the grain of his superstitions, Hugh descended to the beach. III. Miles Burke was a character such as is not to be met in any part of the habitable world except the west of Ireland. There are many lines of Burkes in that quarter, and each of them claims an antiquity which, for the common honour and glory of the name, none of them are ever known to dispute; and as the tribes of Burkes that are found wandering in a variety of costumes, and under as great a variety of circumstances and occupations over the wilds of Connemara and the mountainous ranges of Clare, are nearly as numerous as pebbles on the sea-shore, it follows, as an unimpeachable corollary, that the individual Burke whose local reputation should eclipse that of all his namesakes put together, must have been a remarkable man. And that man was Miles Burke. Whether he was entitled to the distinction by the remoteness of his descent, or the force of his personal merits, we are not able to say; but certain it is that Miles Burke was the most notorious man of his name in the whole province of Munster, a pre-eminence of fame which cannot be appreciated by people who have not had the advantage of being bred up amongst the Burkes. Con Burke, the father of Miles Burke, used to declare that he was lineally descended from Con of the Hundred Battles. But ten thousand battles lying so far back on the genealogical roll, are of no avail to a man who is put to extremities in fighting the battle of life. The family |