Hieroglyphic Tales
TALE IV.
_The Peach in Brandy. A Milesian Tale._
Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,[1] king of Kilkenny, the thousandand fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king ofSpain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; whobeing arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by herroyal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined toresign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, hedeclared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre intothe princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set theexample, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience toher. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics andaddresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transportedwith having a new sovereign, and the university, according to customimmemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body hadforgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow andexcessive joy they felt on losing one monarch and getting another.
Her majesty was now in the fifth year of her age, and a prodigy of senseand goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped withinimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirelyIrish, and that she did not intend any longer to go in leading-strings,as a proof of which she immediately declared her nurse prime-minister.The senate applauded this sage choice with even greater encomiumsthan the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million ofsugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles ofusquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it washer royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arosefrom the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching oneanother, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle hermajesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as apigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard herto Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the maceknocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not tohave any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see theceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killedby her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of thecrown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the deadchildren, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king andwished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had nowrecovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon whichMr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presenceof mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for havingasserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their presentmost lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachmentwas voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name isunfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journalsafterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became firstlord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata'ssuccessor. The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whosename is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived ason before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to thecrown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iotawhether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, whenit was conceived--here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, thequeen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, whoentered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interruptedby the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question forwhich was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go anddrink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to avery long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which hecontrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, thatit produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages andmassacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, andwhich were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says myauthor, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for thesake of those who never may have heard it. These are his words:
It happened that the archbishop of Tuum (anciently called Meum by the Roman catholic clergy) the great wit of those times, was in the queen-mother's closet, who had the young queen in her lap. [5] His grace was suddenly seized with a violent fit of the cholic, which made him make such wry faces, that the queen-mother thought he was going to die, and ran out of the room to send for a physician, for she was a pattern of goodness, and void of pride. While she was stepped into the servant's hall to call somebody, according to the simplicity of those times, the archbishop's pains encreased, when perceiving something on the mantle-piece, which he took for a peach in brandy, he gulped it all down at once without saying grace, God forgive him, and found great comfort from it. He had not done licking his lips before the queen-mother returned, when queen Grata cried out, "Mama, mama, the gentleman has eat my little brother!" This fortunate event put an end to the contest, the male line entirely failing in the person of the devoured prince. The archbishop, however, who became pope by the name of Innocent the 3d. having afterwards a son by his sister, named the child Fitzpatrick, as having some of the royal blood in its veins; and from him are descended all the younger branches of the Fitzpatricks of our time. Now the rest of the acts of Grata and all that she did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Kilkenny?
NOTES ON TALE IV.
_This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of JohnFitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject ofthis story._
[Footnote 1: _Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family ofFitzpatrick._]
[Footnote 2: _Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, herheart was entirely English._]
[Footnote 3: _Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons._]
[Footnote 4: _The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wishedhim joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead._]
[Footnote 5: _Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irishauthor is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having saidthat the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks ofqueen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother'slap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of thequestion_. Like a child _does not import that she actually was a child:she only sat_ like a child; _and so she might though thirty years old.Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of agebefore he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of thetribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants afterthey are past their infancy._]