Hieroglyphic Tales: The Peach in Brandy: A Milesian Tale

The Peach in Brandy: A Milesian Tale

TALE IV.

Fitz Scanlan Mac Giolla l'ha druig,[1] king of Kilkenny, the thousand
and fifty-seventh descendant in a direct line from Milesius king of
Spain, had an only daughter called Great A, and by corruption Grata; who
being arrived at years of discretion, and perfectly initiated by her
royal parents in the arts of government, the fond monarch determined to
resign his crown to her: having accordingly assembled the senate, he
declared his resolution to them, and having delivered his sceptre into
the princess's hand, he obliged her to ascend the throne; and to set the
example, was the first to kiss her hand, and vow eternal obedience to
her. The senators were ready to stifle the new queen with panegyrics and
addresses; the people, though they adored the old king, were transported
with having a new sovereign, and the university, according to custom
immemorial, presented her majesty, three months after every body had
forgotten the event, with testimonials of the excessive sorrow and
excessive 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 sense
and goodness. In her first speech to the senate, which she lisped with
inimitable grace, she assured them that her [2] heart was entirely
Irish, 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 encomiums
than the last, and voted a free gift to the queen of a million of
sugar-plumbs, and to the favourite of twenty thousand bottles of
usquebaugh. Her majesty then jumping from her throne, declared it was
her royal pleasure to play at blindman's-buff, but such a hub-bub arose
from the senators pushing, and pressing, and squeezing, and punching one
another, to endeavour to be the first blinded, that in the scuffle her
majesty was thrown down and got a bump on her forehead as big as a
pigeon's egg, which set her a squalling, that you might have heard her
to Tipperary. The old king flew into a rage, and snatching up the mace
knocked out the chancellor's brains, who at that time happened not to
have any; and the queen-mother, who sat in a tribune above to see the
ceremony, fell into a fit and [3] miscarried of twins, who were killed
by her majesty's fright; but the earl of Bullaboo, great butler of the
crown, happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead
children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and
wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now
recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which
Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence
of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having
asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present
most lawful and most religious sovereign queen Grata. An impeachment
was voted by a large majority, though not without warm opposition,
particularly from a celebrated Kilkennian orator, whose name is
unfortunately not come down to us, it being erased out of the journals
afterwards, as the Irish author whom I copy says, when he became first
lord of the treasury, as he was during the whole reign of queen Grata's
successor.

The argument of this Mr. Killmorackill, says my author, whose
name is lost, was, that her majesty the queen-mother having conceived a
son before the king's resignation, that son was indubitably heir to the
crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota
whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when
it was conceived--here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the
queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who
entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted
by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for
which was carried without a negative; and then the house being resumed,
the debate was cut short by the impatience of the majority to go and
drink her majesty's health. This seeming violence gave occasion to a
very long protest, drawn up by sir Archee Mac Sarcasm, in which he
contrived to state the claim of the departed foetus so artfully, that
it produced a civil war, and gave rise to those bloody ravages and
massacres which so long laid waste the ancient kingdom of Kilkenny, and
which were at last terminated by a lucky accident, well known, says my
author, to every body, but which he thinks it his duty to relate for the
sake 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 John
Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
this story.

[Footnote 1: Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
Fitzpatrick.]

[Footnote 2: Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
heart 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, wished
him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead.]

[Footnote 5: Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
question_. 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 age
before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
they are past their infancy.]

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