Hieroglyphic Tales | Page 9

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