The House by the Church-Yard | Page 5

in a hearse, by easy stages, from her house of Lisnabane, in
the county of Sligo, to the church-yard of Chapelizod. There was a
great flat stone over that small parcel of the rector's freehold, which the
family held by a tenure, not of lives, but of deaths, renewable for ever.
So that my uncle, who was a man of an anxious temperament, had little
trouble in satisfying himself of the meerings and identity of this narrow
tenement, to which Lemuel Mattocks, the sexton, led him as straight
and confidently as he could have done to the communion-table.

My uncle, therefore, fiated the sexton's presentment, and the work
commenced forthwith. I don't know whether all boys have the same
liking for horrors which I am conscious of having possessed--I only
know that I liked the churchyard, and deciphering tombstones, and
watching the labours of the sexton, and hearing the old world village
talk that often got up over the relics.
When this particular grave was pretty nearly finished--it lay from east
to west--a lot of earth fell out at the northern side, where an old coffin
had lain, and good store of brown dust and grimy bones, and the yellow
skull itself came tumbling about the sexton's feet. These fossils, after
his wont, he lifted decently with the point of his shovel, and pitched
into a little nook beside the great mound of mould at top.
'Be the powers o' war! here's a battered head-piece for yez,' said young
Tim Moran, who had picked up the cranium, and was eyeing it
curiously, turning it round the while.
'Show it here, Tim;' 'let me look,' cried two or three neighbours, getting
round as quickly as they could.
'Oh! murdher;' said one.
'Oh! be the powers o' Moll Kelly!' cried another.
'Oh! bloody wars!' exclaimed a third.
'That poor fellow got no chance for his life at all, at all!' said Tim.
'That was a bullet,' said one of them, putting his finger into a clean
circular aperture as large as a half-penny.
'An' look at them two cracks. Och, murther!'
'There's only one. Oh, I see you're right, two, begorra!'
'Aich o' them a wipe iv a poker.'
Mattocks had climbed nimbly to the upper level, and taking the skull in

his fist, turned it about this way and that, curiously. But though he was
no chicken, his memory did not go far enough back to throw any light
upon the matter.
'Could it be the Mattross that was shot in the year '90, as I often heerd,
for sthrikin' his captain?' suggested a by-stander.
'Oh! that poor fellow's buried round by the north side of the church,'
said Mattocks, still eyeing the skull. 'It could not be Counsellor
Gallagher, that was kilt in the jewel with Colonel Ruck--he was hot in
the head--bud it could not be--augh! not at all.'
'Why not, Misther Mattocks?'
'No, nor the Mattross neither. This, ye see, is a dhry bit o' the yard here;
there's ould Darby's coffin, at the bottom, down there, sound enough to
stand on, as you see, wid a plank; an' he was buried in the year '93.
Why, look at the coffin this skull belongs to, 'tid go into powdher
between your fingers; 'tis nothin' but tindher.'
'I believe you're right, Mr. Mattocks.'
'Phiat! to be sure. 'Tis longer undher ground by thirty years, good, or
more maybe.'
Just then the slim figure of my tall mild uncle, the curate, appeared, and
his long thin legs, in black worsted stockings and knee-breeches,
stepped reverently and lightly among the graves. The men raised their
hats, and Mattocks jumped lightly into the grave again, while my uncle
returned their salute with the sad sort of smile, a regretful kindness,
which he never exceeded, in these solemn precincts.
It was his custom to care very tenderly for the bones turned up by the
sexton, and to wait with an awful solicitude until, after the reading of
the funeral service, he saw them gently replaced, as nearly as might be,
in their old bed; and discouraging all idle curiosity or levity respecting
them, with a solemn rebuke, which all respected. Therefore it was, that
so soon as he appeared the skull was, in Hibernian phrase, 'dropt like a

hot potato,' and the grave-digger betook himself to his spade so nimbly.
'Oh! Uncle Charles,' I said, taking his hand, and leading him towards
the foot of the grave; 'such a wonderful skull has come up! It is shot
through with a bullet, and cracked with a poker besides.'
''Tis thrue for him, your raverence; he was murthered twiste over,
whoever he was--rest his sowl;' and the sexton, who had nearly
completed his work, got out of the grave again, with a demure activity,
and raising the brown