The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain: The Works of William Carleton, Volume OneCarleton, William
General
The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain: The Works of William Carleton, Volume One
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The man viewed the money, looked at him for a moment, burst into tears,
and hurried away, without saying a word, to procure food for himself and
his children.
Our readers need not imagine for a moment that the scenes with which we
have endeavored to present them, in,the wretched hut of Trailcudgel,
are at all overdrawn. In point of fact, they fall far short of thousands
which might have been witnessed, and were witnessed, during the years of
'47, '48, '49, and this present one of '50. We are aware that so many
as twenty-three human beings, of all ages and sexes, have been found by
public officers, all lying on the same floor, and in the same bed--if
bed it can be termed--nearly one-fourth of them stiffened and putrid
corpses. The survivors weltering in filth, fever, and famine, and
so completely maddened by despair, delirium, and the rackings of
intolerable pain, in its severest shapes--aggravated by thirst and
hunger--that all the impulses of nature and affection were not merely
banished from the heart, but superseded by the most frightful peals
of insane mirth, cruelty, and the horrible appetite of the ghoul and
vampire. Some were found tearing the flesh from the bodies of the
carcasses that were stretched beside them. Mothers tottered off under
the woful excitement of misery and frenzy, and threw their wretched
children on the sides of the highways, leaving them there, with shouts
of mirth and satisfaction, to perish or be saved, as the chances might
turn out--whilst fathers have been known to make a wolfish meal upon the
dead bodies of their own offspring. We might, therefore, have carried
on our description up to the very highest point of imaginable horror,
without going beyond the truth.
It is well for the world that the schemes and projects of ambition
depend not in their fulfilment upon the means and instruments with
which they are sought to be accomplished. Had Sir Thomas Gourlay,
for instance, not treated his daughter with such brutal cruelty, an
interview must have taken place between her and Lord Cullamore, which
would, as a matter of course, have put an end forever to her father's
hopes of the high rank for which he was so anxious to sacrifice her.
The good old nobleman, failing of the interview he had expected, went
immediately to London, with a hope, among other objects, of being in
some way useful to his son, whom he had not seen for more than two
years, the latter having been, during that period, making the usual tour
of the Continent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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