Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February, 1885

Tragedies at Maghera

Mrs. Majilton was in a state of much excitement one day in the summer of ’98 because parties of soldiers were passing her house one after another. Her house was close to the high-road, half-way between Feeny and Dungiven, and stood in a comfortable little farmyard. She was a Church Protestant, dreadfully afraid of the rebels, and consequently very glad to see the red-coats in the country. They had been marching past her house all morning, and she had stood at the door with the baby in her arms, wishing them “God speed.”

The men had exchanged a cheerful greeting with her now and then, and as they went by she caught some of their conversation; the word Maghera was repeated over and over again. They were marching to Maghera; no time must be lost; they could not delay for refreshment or rest. The day wore on, and a party of stragglers stopped at her door, young lads, mere recruits, who had lagged behind the main body, not being able to endure the hardships of their forced march from Londonderry as well as the older men. Their sergeant, a bronzed veteran, asked the good woman to give them a drink of water, for the love of God.

“I have sworn at the poor fellows till I’m hoarse, ma’am; but they’re giving up, and I must let them rest a minute.”

Mrs. Majilton ran to lay the baby in its cradle; then she opened the barrel, filled a large bowl half full of oatmeal, poured water upon it, and handed it to the men, who sat down in the yard, and passed the bowl from one to another.

“That’s both meat and drink,” said they, gratefully.

“Our orders are to hurry on to Maghera without stopping, for we’ve got to burn it to the ground,” said the sergeant.

“God bless me, sir, what’s occurring at Maghera?”

She knew that Maghera was a country town farther off than Dungiven. Some of her neighbors had been there, but she had never travelled so far herself. The sergeant told her that news had reached Derry that the rebels were in force at Maghera, and were murdering all who refused to join them. There were few newspapers in those days, and no penny post; rumor spread and perhaps exaggerated the evil tidings. It was said that a young girl combing her hair beside her hearth had been shot dead by a party of men who came to look for her father. They looked in at the window, saw her, and murdered her out of revenge because her father had escaped them. “And now,” concluded the sergeant, “our orders are that Maghera is to be destroyed.”

Mrs. Majilton, who knew her Bible well, remembered the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of Nineveh – that wicked city; and she thought the soldiers were the Lord’s instruments to execute His judgment upon Maghera.

When the party of recruits got as far as Dungiven they found that counter-orders had come – Maghera was not to be burnt after all; but sufficient troops to quiet the country were to be sent on, while the remainder halted at Dungiven. We shall accompany two of the soldiers who pressed forward. As they neared the town, scenes of desolation met them on every hand – deserted houses, smouldering thatch, burnt stackyards. They were told that the rebels had taken to the mountains when they heard the troops were coming. The men separated; some explored one road, some another, hoping to inclose the enemy in a net.

As Privates John Buckley and Tom Green advanced up one of these mountain roads they were appalled by the terrible loneliness of the place. Here a farmhouse stood empty, its door hanging off the hinges; there were blackened circles where stacks of corn had been; again they saw a cottage with a smouldering thatch, and no sign of life near, excepting a starved cat that prowled about the door.

The rebels had clearly passed that way; those were the marks they had left behind them. At length, where the lane seemed about to lose itself in a mountain pass, they came to a cottage whose door stood open. It looked like a comfortable small farmer’s homestead: a pretty garden, gay with common flowers, was at one side of the house; there were laburnums and lilacs just out of blossom; red and white roses in full blossom; tall orange lilies with bursting buds; rows of peas and beans and plots of cabbages. The whole place had a civilized air, and reminded the Englishmen of their own homes. The pretty green railing and rustic gate; the orderly stackyard and offices, gave an impression of neatness, taste, and comfort unusual in that country.

The men went into the kitchen of the farmhouse. There was no fire upon the hearth. The turf had burnt to ashes under a great black pot of potatoes that hung upon the crook, and two children sat disconsolately leaning against each other beside the cold hearth.

Buckley explored the “room,” and Green the loft; there was no trace of human being to be found; the children were the only inmates of the place.

The eldest child, a little girl of about four years old, with pretty blue eyes and curly hair, looked up curiously, but did not move. Her tiny brother was too languid to raise his head from her shoulder.

“Are you alone in the house?” asked Green.

“Ay,” replied the child.

“Where are your father and mother?”

“They are sleeping in the garden; they ha’ been there this good wee while,” answered the little one, fixing her serious eyes upon them. “Come, an’ I’ll show you where they are.”

She got up, gave her hand confidingly to the man, and led him to the garden, the other soldier following; and behind the cabbages they found a man and woman lying in a heap, stiff and cold, having evidently been piked to death.

“Come back to the house, my little dear,” cried Green, drawing the poor innocent away from the cruel sight. Her little brother still sat where they had left him, leaning his sick head against the wall. He was very faint and weak.

“Have you nothing to eat?” asked the men.

“My mammy has bread an’ butter in the kist, but she has the key in her pocket,” replied the little girl. They broke open the chest and found the food; but they had arrived too late to save the boy: he died in Buckley’s arms before they reached Maghera. Green carried the girl and presented her to his company. Each soldier subscribed toward her maintenance, and she grew up among them, the pet and plaything of all. She accompanied the regiment to England at the close of the rebellion, and nothing further was known of her by her old neighbors.

Micky O’Donnel’s Wake

Wildest of all the wild Donegal coast is the region lying between Fannet Lighthouse and Knockalla Fort. There are impassable bogs and mountain fastnesses which strangers cannot explore, but that are safe resorts for illicit distillers, the blue wreaths of smoke from whose stills may be seen curling against a dark background. In the years ’97 and ’98 these fastnesses were favorite haunts of the United Irishmen.

Fannet had a particularly bad name in those unsettled times. The Church Protestants were, of course, loyal, but they formed only a handful of the population; and the Presbyterians were, many of them, banded with the rebels. The Fannet landlords raised a company of yeomen, consisting of the Protestants aforesaid, and placed themselves at their head.

Help was at hand. Lord Cavan was sent over from England in command of soldiers; Knockalla Fort was garrisoned; and the yeomanry were called up to receive their arms and ammunition.

“You needna be giving the like of us arms, my lord,” said old Anthony Gallagher, “for the Catholics will take them from us.”

Lord Cavan was amused at the fellow’s outspokenness, and replied that he had come over to make Fannet so quiet that not one of the rebels would venture so much as to speak. The yeomen got their guns and bayonets, and the soldiers were ready to support them. Lord Cavan, a stern and fierce soldier, kept his word; he quieted Fannet so that the Catholics did not dare to speak. The Protestants had been reduced to an abject state of terror before his arrival by the horrible murder of Dr. Hamilton their rector, a zealous magistrate, who was followed to the house of a neighboring clergyman and shot. He went to spend the night with a brother-rector at some distance from Fannet, and the rectory was surrounded by United Irishmen, who clamored that the Doctor should be given up to them.

“Those are Fannet men; I know their voices,” said he. The door was soon burst open; the attacking party rushed in, found the family in the garrets, and dragged their captive downstairs. He clung with both hands to the banisters, and one of the women servants took a candle and held the flame to his fingers till he was forced to let go his hold. He was taken to the lawn and his brains were blown out.

This atrocity had determined the Government to send troops to Fannet.

It was soon after this that Anthony Gallagher and the troop he served in were at Kerrykeel fair and were attacked by a party of the rebels. The yeomen were commanded to draw their bayonets and beat them off, and all the United Men retreated and got away except a man called Micky O’Donnel from Ballywhoriskey, at the Bottom of Fannet. He was found dead on the street, pierced through the heart. Lord Cavan rode up at that moment, followed by men from the Fort. “Take that corpse with you, boys,” said he, “an’ hang it in chains from the walls of Knockalla Fort. It will be a warning to the rest of the villains.” Anthony and two soldiers were left in charge of the corpse, but the villagers assembling in force, there was a rescue, and Micky O’Donnel was carried off before the yeomen got back, attracted by the noise of shouting, to protect their comrades. Lord Cavan was in a rage when he heard what had happened, and swore a round oath that that corpse should yet hang in chains from Knockalla Fort as a warning to the rest of Fannet; and he despatched a party to recover it.

It was known that Micky O’Donnel belonged to the Bottom of Fannet, so the party set out along the banks of Mulroy, where they fell in with the yeomen, and all went on together. But every house along the road was empty, and there were no men at work in the fields; it was like a country of the dead.

Along the wild Atlantic shore; among the bent-covered sand hills; up to the miserable row of hovels called the town of Shanna, went the soldiers; but still not a human being was to be seen. The whole population had taken to the mountains.

At length they reached the last cabin in the village of Ballywhoriskey, and there they discovered the dead man laid out on the wretched bed, with two tallow candles burning at his head.

“Feen a crathur” (we quote the words of Anton Gallagher, our informant, son of the Anthony who was present at the scene) – “feen a crathur was in the house but the corpse on the bed an’ two ould women waking it. The women cried an’ lamented, an’ went on their knees to the officer to lave the poor corpse where it was to get Christian burial; an’ the gentleman thought it a pity o’ them, an’ left the wake wantin’ Micky after all. It was my father tould me the story.”

“Have you got your father’s gun and bayonet?”

“Ay, ma’am, in troth I have! If you ladyship honors me wi’ a visit you’ll see them hanging up over the chimney. I wouldna part wi’ them for goold. There’s many a winter’s night the Catholics coming home frae the market will stop at we’er door an’ cry, “King William’s men, come out!” an’ then it’s all the mother an’ me can do to keep the boys from taking down their grandfather’s gun, an’ going out to meet them.” —Belgravia.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

It is exactly one hundred years ago since Dr. Johnson wrote his last letter to Lucy Porter, in which he announced to her that he was very ill, and that he desired her prayers. Less than a fortnight later, on the 13th of December, 1784, he was dead. All through the year his condition had given his friends more than anxiety. The winter of 1783 had been marked by collapse of the constitution; to the ceaseless misery of his skin was now added an asthma that would not suffer him to recline in bed, a dropsy that made his legs and feet useless through half of the weary day. It is somewhat marvellous that he got through this terrible winter, the sufferings of which are painfully recorded in his sad correspondence. It is difficult to understand why, just when he wanted companionship most, his friends seem all to have happened to desert him. Of the quaint group of invalids in mind and body to whom his house had been a hospital, all were gone except Mrs. Desmoulins, who was bedridden; and we may believe that their wrangling company had never been so distasteful to himself as to his friends. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, as we know, had more or less valid reasons for absence, and Boswell, at least, was solicitous in inquiry. We must, however, from whatever cause, think of Johnson, who dreaded solitude, as now almost always alone, mortified by spiritual pains no less acute than his physical ones, torturing his wretched nights with Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, and with laborious and repeated diagnosis of his own bodily symptoms. It is strange to think that, although he was the leading man of letters in England, and the centre of a whole society, his absence from the meetings of his associates seems scarcely to have been noticed. It was not until in February he was relieved that he allowed himself to speak of the danger he had passed through. Then he confessed his terror to Lucy Porter, in the famous words, “Pray for me; death, my dear, is very dreadful; let us think nothing worth our care but how to prepare for it;” and asked Boswell to consult the venerable physician, Sir Alexander Dick, as to the best way of avoiding a relapse.

Boswell felt it a duty to apply not to Dick only, but to various leading doctors. In doing so he reminded them, with his extraordinary foppishness, of “the elegant compliment” which Johnson had paid to their profession in his Life of Garth, the poet-physician. The doctors, with one accord, and thinking without doubt far more of Johnson himself than of Garth, clustered around him with their advice and their prescriptions, and the great man certainly received for the brief remainder of his days such alleviation as syrup of poppies and vinegar of squills could give him. Mrs. Boswell, encouraged by a more favorable account of his health, invited him down to Auchinlech in March. He could not venture to accept, but he was pleased to be asked, and recovered so much of his wonted fire as to fancy, in a freak of strange inconsistency, that he would amuse himself by decorating his London study with the heads of “the fathers of Scottish literature.” To Langton, who – as Johnson justly thought, with unaccountable “circumduction” – had made inquiries about his old friend through Lord Portmore, he expressed a hope of panting on to ninety, and said that “God, who has so wonderfully restored me, can preserve me in all seasons.” It is very pathetic to follow the old man through the desolate and wearisome months: nor can we easily understand, from any of the records we possess, why he was allowed to be so much alone. On Easter Monday, after recording without petulance that his great hope of being able to go out on the preceding day had been doomed to disappointment, he goes on to say, “I want every comfort. My life is very solitary and very cheerless… I am very weak, and have not passed the door since the 13th of December.”

Bright weather came in May, and Johnson went to Islington for a change of air. Boswell came back to town, and the sage was able to go to dinner-parties day after day, without at first exasperating his symptoms. In June he went to Oxford, on the famous occasion when he told the people in the coach that “Demptster’s sister had endeavored to teach him knotting, but that he had made no progress;” and at Oxford, as we know, he talked copiously, and with all his old vivacity. No doubt, though Boswell does not like to confess it, the constant dissipation, intellectual and mildly social, of those two summer months was mischievous to the frail revival of his health. At the dinner of the Literary Club, June 22, every one noticed how ill he looked. Perhaps the true cause of this was a secret chagrin which we can now appreciate, the final apostasy of Mrs. Thrale from his friendship. At all events, Reynolds and Boswell were sufficiently frightened to set their heads together for the purpose of getting their old friend off to Italy. We are divided between satisfaction that the inevitable end did not reach the old man sociable in the midst of strange faces and foreign voices, and bewildered indignation at the still mysterious cabal which wrecked so amiable an enterprise. If Lord Thurlow was shifty, however, other friends were generous. Dr. Brocklesbury, the physician, pressed Johnson to become his guest that he might the more carefully attend upon him. From Ashbourne, whither he had been prevailed upon to go, he kept this last-mentioned friend well posted in the sad fluctuations of his health, and we see him gradually settling down again into wretchedness. His mind recurred constantly to the approaching terror. To Dr. Burney he writes in August, “I struggle hard for life. I take physic and take air; my friend’s chariot is always ready. We have run this morning twenty-four miles, and could run forty-eight more. But who can run the race with death?” Reflections of this class fill all his letters of that autumn; and in October he sums up his condition in saying to Heberden that “the summer has passed without giving him any strength.” It is strange that still no one seemed to notice what is plain to us in every line of his correspondence, that Johnson was dying. With himself, however, the thought of death was always present; and even in discussing with Miss Seward so frivolous a theme as the antics of a learned pig, Johnson was suddenly solemnized by recollecting that the pig had owed its life to its education. One hardly knows whether to smile or to sigh at the quaint and suggestive peroration: “The pig, then, has no cause to complain; protracted existence is a good recompense for very considerable degrees of torture.” To protract existence was now all Johnson’s thought, and he set his powerful will to aid him in the struggle. His only hopes were those which his strength of will supplied him with. “I will be conquered,” he said, “I will not capitulate.”

It was not till he reached London in November that he consented to capitulate. The terror of death was now upon him, indeed. “Love me as well as you can,” he wrote to Boswell; “teach the young ones to love me.” On the 8th of November he closed the diary of his symptoms – his ægri ephemeris– now become worse than useless. His suffering, dejection, and restless weakness left his brain, however, unclouded, and less than a week before the end he corrected an error in a line from Juvenal which Dr. Brocklesbury had carelessly recited. The chronicle of the rapid final decline is given with great simplicity and force by Hoole in that narrative of the last three weeks of the life of Dr. Johnson which he contributed to the European Magazine in 1799, and which Mr. Napier has reprinted in one of the many appendices to his invaluable edition. At last, exactly a year after his original attack of asthma, the end came at seven o’clock in the evening of Monday, the 13th of December.

Devoid, as it is, of all the elements of external romance, there is perhaps no record of the extinction of genius which attracts more universal interest than this death of Samuel Johnson. So much of frivolity or so much of cant attends most of us even to the tomb, that the frank terror, expressed through a long life by this otherwise most manly and courageous person, has possessed a great fascination for posterity. The haunting insincerity of verse, particularly of eighteenth-century verse, had extracted even from Johnson, in the pages of The Vanity of Human Wishes, the usual rose-colored commonplace about death being “Kind Nature’s signal for retreat;” but he completely cleared his own mind of cant, even though a little clung about his singing robes. Boswell has given us an extraordinary instance of his habitual and dismal apprehensions in the celebrated conversation in 1769, which started with a discussion of David Hume’s supposed indifference to the idea of death. Not less familiar are the passionate asseverations with which Johnson startled Mrs. Knowles and Miss Seward in 1778 by repeating again and again that to exist in pain is better, far better, than to cease to exist altogether. These and other revelations of Johnson’s conversation have perhaps led us to exaggerate his habitual terror. There are, at least, instances to be drawn from less hackneyed sources which display his attitude towards eternity less painfully. Of these perhaps the most remarkable is that recorded in the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, when, on a calm Sunday afternoon, sailing from Ramsay to Skye, Johnson delivered himself of a little homily. The text was a passage from The Cypress Grove of Drummond of Hawthornden, which Boswell had happened to quote. Drummond had said that a man should leave life as cheerfully as a visitor who has examined an antiquary’s cabinet sees the curtain drawn again, and makes way to admit fresh pilgrims to the show. Johnson stripped the conceit to the skin, as he was in the habit of doing: —

“Yes, sir, if he is sure he is to be well after he goes out of it. But if he is to grow blind after he goes out of the show-room, and never to see anything again, or if he does not know whither he is to go next, a man will not go cheerfully out of a show-room. No wise man will be contented to die if he thinks he is to go into a state of punishment. Nay, no wise man will be contented to die, if he thinks he is to fall into annihilation, for however unhappy any man’s existence may be, he would rather have it than not exist at all. No; there is no rational principle by which a man can die contented, but a trust in the mercy of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ.”