The House by the Church-Yard

ions have changed, some old phrases dropped out, and new ones come in; and snuff and hair-powder, and sacques and solitaires quite passed away — yet men and women were men and women all

old inn, just beyond the turnpike at the sweep of the road, leading over the buttressed bridge by the mill, was first to welcome the excursionist from Dublin, under the sign of the Phoenix. There, in the grand wainscoted back-parlour, with ‘the great and good King William,’ in his robe, garter, periwig, and sceptre presiding in the panel over the chimneypiece, and confronting the large projecting window, through which the river, and the daffodils, and th

Martin’s Row to slip between its flank and the orchard that overtopped the river wall. Well! it is gone. I blame nobody. I suppose it was quite rotten, and that the rats would soon have thrown up their lease of it; and that it was taken down, in short, chiefly, as one of the players said of ‘Old Drury,’ to prevent the inconvenience of its coming down of itself. Still a peevish but h

many a lord lieutenant, in point, and gold lace, and thunder-cloud periwig, sate in awful isolation, and listened to orthodox and loyal sermons, and took French rappee; whence too, he stepped forth between the files of the guard of honour of the Royal Irish Artillery from the barrack over the wa

y a traditional tenure among the families and dignitaries of the town and vicinage (who are they now?), and sigh for the queer, old, clumsy reading-desk and pulpit, grown dearer from the long and hopeless separation; and wonder where the tables of the Ten Commandments

nd all that, I believe the earth, or rather that grim giant factory, which is now the grand feature and centre of Ch

nd regretfully forth, through their glassy eyes, upon the changed scene.

hood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of

e tree — that stalworth elm. It has not grown an inch these hundred years. It does not look a day older than it did fifty years ago, I can tell you. There he stands the same; and yet a stranger in the place of his birth, in a new order of things, joyless, busy, transformed Chapelizod, listening, as it seems

adventure — perhaps, on the whole, more pleasant to read about, and dream of, than they were to live in. Still their violence, follies, and hospitalities, softened by distance, and illuminated with a sort of barbaric splendour, have long presented to my fancy the glowing and e

urate of Chapelizod. On the second day of his, or rather my sojourn (I take leave to return to the first person), there was a notable funeral of an old lady. Her name was Darby, and her journey to her last home was very considerable, being made in a hearse, by easy stages, from her house of Lisnabane, in the county of Sligo, to the church-yard of Chapelizod. There was a great flat stone over th

e same liking for horrors which I am conscious of having possessed — I only know that I liked the churchyard, and deciphering

d coffin had lain, and good store of brown dust and grimy bones, and the yellow skull itself came tumbling about the sexton’s feet. These fo

ez,’ said young Tim Moran, who had picked up the cranium,

cried two or three neighbours, get

dher;’ s

rs o’ Moll Kelly

wars!’ excla

o chance for his life a

putting his finger into a clean circu

hem two cracks

Oh, I see you’re ri

em a wipe i

ist, turned it about this way and that, curiously. But though he was no chick

the year ‘90, as I often heerd, for sthri

still eyeing the skull. ‘It could not be Counsellor Gallagher, that was kilt in the je

Misther

e bottom, down there, sound enough to stand on, as you see, wid a plank; an’ he was buried in the year ‘93. Why

u’re right, M

ger undher ground by thirty

ches, stepped reverently and lightly among the graves. The men raised their hats, and Mattocks jumped lightly into the grave again, whi

aw them gently replaced, as nearly as might be, in their old bed; and discouraging all idle curiosity or levity respecting them, with a solemn rebuke, which all respecte

rds the foot of the grave; ‘such a wonderful skull has come up! It

his work, got out of the grave again, with a demure activity, and raising the brown relic with great reverence, out of regard for my good u

’twas undoubtedly a murder; ay, indeed! He sustained t

just from behind my uncle, in a pensioner’s cocked hat, leggings, and long old-world

r was hid under a black patch — and there was a deep red scar across his forehead, slanting from the patch that covered the extinguished orb. His face was purplish, the tinge deepening towards the lumpish top of his nose, on the s

ly, and touching his hat — for coming of a military stock him

eplied the man, reciprocating h

nterrogated the sexton, as one in auth

cried ‘attention’ to a raw recruit, without turning his head,

se skull that was, S

, you’re a grave-digger, my fine fellow,’ he continued, accosting the se

ong, my fine fellow, as yo

ok the skull from the sexton’s hands; ‘and I’ll tell you mor

n?’ said my uncle, who did not like t

remembered it like this morning — I could swear to it — when he laughed; ay, and that sharp corner to it — hang him,

enquired the curate, who could not understand th

— the Royal Irish Artille

pacity?’ pursue

ered the mulber

me ago, I dare say,’ said my un

was; but you see the sprig of shillelagh was too hard for him — ha, ha, ha!’ and he gav

ng his hand hastily upon his arm, for the knock was h

Colonel-enSecond was General Chattesworth, and Colonel Stafford was Lieutenant–Colonel, and under him Major O’Neill; Captains, four — Cluffe, Devereux, Barton, and B

terposed my uncle, ‘Fir

s,

does a Lieutenant

you see this old skull, Sir: well, ’twas a nine days’ wonder, and the queerest business you ever heerd tell of. Why, Sir, the women was frightened out of

yes — the funeral has arrived; and for t

hurch, where he assumed his gown

mains re-deposited decently in their place; and then, having disrobed, I saw him look

way during the

’ said my uncle, peerin

and we saw nothing of his cocked hat and red single-b

ndeed of anyone else there. So I returned, just as my uncle, having made the tea, shut down the lid of his silver tea-pot with a little smack; and with a kind but absent smile upon me, he took his book, sat down and

zly a memento, and of which in all human probability I never was to hear more, looked out dejectedly from the window, when, whom should I behold marching up the street, at slow time, towards th

ncle Charles, here

e, tripping in the carpet in his eager

un down, my boy, and

brought his left shoulder forward, thanked the curate, saluting soldier-fashion, with his hand to his hat, palm foremost. I’ve observed, indeed, than those grim old camp

d table by the fire, which, the evening being sharp, was pleasant; and the old fellow being seated, he brewed his nectar, to his heart’s content; and as we

, with whose family I had the honour to be connected. And this journal, to me, with my queer cat-like affection for this old village, a perfect treasure — and the interminable bundles of letters, sorted and arranged so neatly, with little abstracts of their

tinted and saddened to my eye. My boyish imagination, perhaps, kindled all the more at the story, by reason of it being a good deal connected with the identical old house in which we three — my de