In the midst of the great moving picture of Indian history, during the middle period of our century, we may have a moment’s attention to spare for the friendship of the three rulers of the time; and some sympathy for them under the discovery so clearly appointed to them,—that the fulfilment of the highest and most lawful dreams of youthful ambition involves a very full experience of the mournfulness of human life.
THE FAIR OF BALLINASLOE.
(A TRUE INCIDENT. BY THE AUTHOR OF “RECOMMENDED TO MERCY.”)
A great time enthirely in the troublesome little island “over the say” is the yearly Fair of Ballinasloe. All the world is there—all the Irish sporting and farming world at least; and they, and their stock together, are a sight worth coming some little distance to behold. The ground where the animals stand is a sea of mud of course—of mud up to the fetlocks of the horses; but nevertheless they trot and gallop gallantly through the same, urged thereto by the “boys,” who have a name, and a just one, all the world over for making the best of their “horse bastes,” and for understanding the art of circumventing their natural enemies, id est, the Saxon and the stranger. The sun shone—no very common event—on the horse day of the great fair, in the year 185—, and the scene on which the rare luminary looked down was, as I have said, a curious one enough. There were knots of sporting gentlemen, composed both of English and Irish, although the latter element preponderated, and they were one and all occupied in discussing the merits of the many magnificent, weight-carrying hunters which the grooms were now riding, as quietly as it is in the nature of Paddy to do, for the gentlemen’s inspection, and now leaping backwards and forwards over the high bar erected for the acrobatic performances of the equine race. There were crowds upon crowds of the finest peasantry in the world standing about amongst the rough country ponies in the slippery, tenacious mud of the park; and amongst them might be seen many a closely shorn face above its priestly coat, while Fathers Conway and Daly, apparently thoroughly in their element, loafed about through the throng with words of counsel to the members of their flock, and a scowl for the inimies who were on the watch to enter and despoil the sheepfold. The business of the day had gone on briskly enough, and many a Celtic steed had changed its owner, whilst not a few had passed into the hands of the useful, though hated Saxon. It was still early in the afternoon; but nevertheless not a few of those who had attended the fair, but who lived at a distance from Ballinasloe, had already betaken themselves to the railway station, and were waiting for the overdue train from the west which was to carry them and their gains to “Daublin.” There was, amongst the waiting crowd, none of the order and seeming patience, and certainly none of the taciturnity which is characteristic of the English traveller at a railway station; but on the contrary, the sounds of blarney, chaff, and laughter filled the air, and everywhere your ear might catch the import of racy words redolent of fun and harmless satire, while jests at the expense of such unlucky countrymen as were, with crest-fallen countenances, taking back their tired animals to their little “holdings,” seemed to be amongst the most popular of the witticisms which were flying about.
“Bedad! and she’s a fine baste enthirely,” said a countryman, in a long-skirted frieze coat, and with shirt collars up to his eyes, and who was alluding to a low-shouldered, over-worked pony, which was being placed in a crowded truck. “A fine little baste that you had along wid you, Dominick; and you niver to be so much as axed where you was going! Well!—well!”
“It isn’t the likes of her that does be selling along wi’ the tip-top cattle for the gentle folks,” remarked another man—a snug farmer doubtless, for his “Carolina” hat was very new and tall, and his stout frieze coat of the thickest and the best. “It isn’t for a poor man’s baste a man would be coming to the fair. It’s them’s the lads as makes the money,” he added, in a lower tone, and pointing to a stout, middle-aged man who, with an air of conscious importance, was walking up and down the platform. The countryman whom the last speaker had been addressing had no time to reply, for at that moment the feeble apology for a whistle which is the best approach to that inspiring railway music which Irish skill has yet arrived at, gave warning of the train’s approach, and in another moment every one was engrossed in the struggle for places in the already nearly filled carriages.
The frieze-coated small farmers were hustled with very little ceremony, and but small amount of consideration as regarded their powers of compression, into a third-class carriage; but such poor accommodation as it afforded was apparently not to the taste of the stout and self-satisfied individual I have alluded to, for, after glancing at its humbler occupants, he turned away, and ensconced himself in a more aristocratic vehicle. In the same compartment, and amongst other passengers whom it is not necessary to describe, were two young men of the buckeen, or very small landed gentry class. They were brothers, too, and students at Galway College, being withal tolerably wild specimens of the aborigines of the far west; with happy tempered faces, and eyes brimming over with the “fun” which they “poked” at every one who gave them the chance of a merry thrust at his or her expense.
When the stout cattle-dealer (for such he was) settled himself in his place alongside the Galway brothers—whose names, as I may here remark, were O’Flaherty—he looked a placid and contented man enough; but another moment sufficed to change the expression of his countenance entirely, for an almost livid hue overspread his cheeks, and his eyes glared with the wide, open aspect of despair. In another instant he sprang upon his feet, and cried with what was something very nearly approaching to a howl, the while he patted his rotund person vigorously:
“My notes! By , my notes! Two hunder pound I had in the fair, the price of the large brown hunter, and by the powers! but the
