Dublin Folktales (8 page)

Then, as Le Fanu describes it:

This turn of events leads Bob Martin to foreswear drink altogether, that and a lack of invitations from other publicans to ensconce himself on their premises. Some time later, Bob Martin is sent for to receive instructions on a funeral that is to come to the graveyard. He is delayed and on his way home has to pass Phil Slaney's closed public house. To his surprise, he sees a man with a glass and a bottle of whiskey
sitting outside, with a saddled horse beside him. The man beckons Bob Martin over, but he declines, saying he has to be away home and anyway he no longer drinks alcohol.

The man follows him in the darkness waving the bottle and the glass at him. The horse walks along behind him. The man is dressed for a journey with a riding coat and a hat upon his head. In the darkness, Bob can not see his face beneath the brim of his hat. Bob hurries along and the man hurries after him. As soon as Bob arrives at his house, he bangs on the plank door in terror to be allowed in.

The man flings the glass at him but instead of liquid coming towards him, Bob sees only flame that seems to want to destroy him. The door opens behind him but not before a gust of wind blows away the stranger's hat, and the sexton beholds that his skull is roofless. Like poor Peter in the first story, Bob Martin falls down senseless, this time into his own doorway.

The following morning, when daylight comes to his door, Bob Martin and his wife see the old thorn tree beside the door was burnt during the night. Whether it was lightning that struck it during an overnight storm, or an angry Phil Slaney come to take Bob Martin away on the horse on a ride to Hell, we don't know.

Just as we don't know why a howling dog came down the Main Street of Chapelizod seeking someone still unnamed when all of the good people of that town stayed inside with doors firmly locked. For it is better to remain indoors when terror stalks the streets of Chapelizod that old, old, village on the outskirts of Dublin city.

Some strange things happen in Dublin from time to time. At the end of the eighteenth century, a man sat in a Dublin dock awaiting sentence for treason. Plenty of others had sat there before him, on the way to their judicially prescribed death. This man was unusual in that his head was on fire while the judge made ready his sentencing address.

This state of affairs did not last long for the Revd William Jackson expired before the judge could pass sentence on him. Jackson’s head was seen by a witness to be smoking when he removed his hat. And so this man of the cloth and later the pen denied Lord Clonmel the opportunity of sentencing him to anything other than a Christian burial.

Events took an even more bizarre twist, when the judge ordered that the body should remain where it was until an inquest could be carried out on the death of this supposed Irish revolutionary and French spy.

Jackson’s early life would not have suggested that such a bizarre turn of events was to lie in the future. Born in Newtownards, County Down, in 1737, Jackson studied at Oxford and was ordained a preacher. Although he gained some popularity as a preacher, he soon found that it was not a sustainable occupation. Instead, he took up journalism and partisan writing as a means of earning a living. Much of his subsequent life was given over to partisanship of one sort or another, operating as an eighteenth-century equivalent of a spin doctor to various causes and individuals
in return for financial return. At one stage, he joined forces with the actor John Palmer to build a new theatre in the City of London. The pair persuaded investors to contribute more than £18,000 to the construction of the Royalty Theatre. However, they neglected to obtain Lord Chamberlain’s authorisation for their first stage production and, as a consequence, the theatre closed after the opening night. Naturally, the investors initiated legal action against the partners, citing fraud by the pair.

Jackson fled to France, where he became involved in the revolutionary fervour that was sweeping that country. By 1793, Jackson was commissioned as a spy by the French. He was recruited to travel to England and Ireland to assess the Irish public’s inclination towards armed revolution against the British. By the age of fifty-eight, he was in Dublin and met with Wolfe Tone and other United Irishmen. His task was to persuade the Irish that France would lend aid to their nationalist cause if they would rebel against the Crown.

The Society of United Irishmen wanted to end British rule over Ireland and establish an independent Irish republic. However, in passing through London on his way to Dublin, Jackson divulged his plans to John Cockayne, an old friend of his, and an attorney. Cockayne was not of Jackson’s convictions, though he pretended to be. It was to be Jackson’s undoing. Once Cockayne heard what was afoot, he entered into private communication with Prime Minister Pitt in London and informed him of the purpose of Jackson’s visit to Dublin. He revealed everything that had passed between him and his friend. When Jackson left London for Dublin, he was accompanied by Cockayne. Following his meetings in Dublin with United Irishmen, Jackson sent a report by Wolfe Tone speaking about a possible rebellion, along with other letters, in the mail. These were seized by the authorities.

Jackson was arrested on a charge of high treason. He was to be tried a year later and convicted on Cockayne’s
evidence. The year-long delay was at his request, allowing him time to assemble a defence and to procure witnesses. It was all to no avail. On 23 April 1795, he was found guilty and was to be sentenced to death by Lord Clonmel. However, Jackson determined that he would end his life in his own way.

He is said to have enjoyed breakfast with his second wife on that fateful morning. Jackson had lost his first wife to breast cancer in the early 1770s. What happened next is told in
Gilbert’s Streets of Dublin
which was published in the 1850s, many years after the event, though it was still spoken about in Dublin, for it is not too often that a prisoner dies in the dock. Rarer still does it occur by the defendant’s own hand. He took poison that morning, possibly supplied by his wife. When he removed his hat in court, one observer noted that steam or smoke immediately rose from his head. He was not at all well, most people agreed, and he did not look well. His health deteriorated while Chief Justice Lord Clonmel was speaking.

The convicted man’s condition worsened more as his lawyers made detailed and wide-ranging speeches, hoping to save their client the worst of sentencing. They were trying to keep their client alive while he was intent on killing himself. The judge was impatient to pass sentence of death on him. So ill did Jackson become, that a chair was brought for him to sit on while he suffered the pangs of pain which were wracking his entire body. Such was his evident distress, that it was proposed by the defence that he should be remanded, as he was in a state of health that rendered any communication between him and his counsel impracticable.

However, the Chief Justice was in a hurry to sentence the dying man. It was pointed out that Jackson was, by then, in a state of insensibility, which left the court in a quandary. Clonmel, stating the blinding obvious, said it was impossible to pronounce the judgment of the court upon him while he was in that condition. Nonetheless, Thomas Kinsley, one of the jurors, offered to physically examine the Revd Jackson to see how he was. This was agreed to by all concerned, with
the exception of one defendant who was past giving permission for anything.

Kinsley went into the dock with Jackson, and in a short time informed the court that in his opinion the prisoner was certainly dying. Clonmel ordered that Kinsley be sworn in to ensure the evidence being given was truthful, just in case. Once he was duly sworn, Clonmel asked Kinsley if he was in any profession that might give authority to his opinion on the health of the prisoner. Kinsley replied that he was an apothecary. Clonmel, still intent on passing sentence, asked if Jackson was capable of hearing the judgment. Kinsley said he did not think he could. Lord Clonmel ordered that Jackson be taken away, and that care be taken that no mischief be done to him. Revd Jackson was to be remanded until further orders of the court. Under the circumstances, Clonmel said, it was as much for the defendant’s advantage as for anyone else’s to adjourn the hearing.

However, the Sheriff now informed the court that the prisoner was in fact dead. Given this turn of events, Lord Clonmel ordered that an inquest be held on the body. He wanted to know by what means Revd Jackson had died. The Court made to adjourn, but as Clonmel was retiring from the bench to his chamber, the Sheriff inquired how he should act with regard to the dead body. His lordship, without pausing in his progress, replied that he should act as is usual in such cases; as if prisoners expired in the dock, with their wigs on fire, on a regular basis. His comment was interpreted to mean that the corpse should stay where it was. The body of the deceased therefore remained in the dock, unmoved from the position, in which its owner had expired. It stayed there until the following day, when an inquest was held.

It was found that, on his way to court that morning, Jackson had reportedly vomited out of the carriage window, suggesting that something was amiss before his head ever started to steam in court. An autopsy on the corpse found
that Jackson had ingested a large quantity of a metallic poison. The suggestion was that it had been administered by his wife, but she was never proceeded against for such a crime, though she could have been said to have benefitted from the sudden demise of her husband. The effect of his suicide was that, since he had not been sentenced for treason by the court, his family could inherit his goods, and a pension to boot.

The remains of the Revd Jackson were brought to St Michan’s church on Church Street and buried in the graveyard there. His resting place was close to the church, underneath which are the mummified remains of several people, preserved by the unique atmosphere in the limestone vaults. Among the remains are a 100-year-old nun; a very large man, popularly believed to have been a crusader; a body with its feet and right hand severed; and the Sheares brothers, Henry and John, who took part in the 1798 rebellion. A suitable collection of silent companions for the man that cheated the court out of taking his life away from him by voluntarily giving up his own life.

Interred in the same graveyard as Jackson is Oliver Bond, a leader of the United Irishmen, whom Jackson in all probability had met. Bond also cheated the Crown of its punishment of him for his activities. Bond was arrested in 1798 and sentenced to death. Like Jackson, he was defended by John Philpot Curran and George Ponsonby, eminent men in their day. His sentence was commuted, but within five weeks he died suddenly of apoplexy. These men certainly had a lot to talk about, wherever they all ended up in the afterlife. Especially when Clonmel joined them in their new abode. We can but hope that it was not a place where heads on fire is so normal a sight that no one remarks on it.

Say what you like, but it’s hard to claim that St Valentine is actually a Dubliner. For that you would need to be either born in the city, or to have lived in Dublin long enough to seem like you are a local. Having your bones brought to Dublin by a priest, on his way home from a business trip, is not quite the same thing.

This is supposed to have happened to St Valentine’s remains, which are now venerated in Dublin. However, there are other cities that claim to posses the remains of the patron saint of lovers. Maybe his bones were separated and everyone has a part of him. Or maybe there may have been umpteen Valentines in existence, so when they all died, their bones could have been spread around the world, so fretting lovers could seek their intercession in matters romantic. Whoever he was, the feast of St Valentine was established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who included Valentine among those whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God. Which is what love seems to be at times: something reverenced by man but known only to God.

To cast even more doubt on the Valentine legend, the official feast day was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, when he ordered a cull of uncertain saints. The 14 February feast day of St Valentine
was officially relegated to calendars of local or national interest at that time. So, while the day is celebrated in many countries, it is no longer recognised as a feast day by his official church.

On that day each year, many loving couples attend Whitefriar Street church to visit the shrine there of St Valentine, wherein his bones are said to lie. And the story of how they got to be there goes like this …

John Spratt was a gifted Irish preacher and a Master of Sacred Theology of the Order of Calced Carmelites when he visited Rome in 1835. His speaking style attracted praise, and many of his listeners were moved to present him with gifts of appreciation when he had finished speaking. Pope Gregory XVI gave the best gift of all. He gave John the supposed remains of St Valentine to bring home to Dublin to his order: the Whitefriar Street Carmelites. Not wishing to be excommunicated for saying no to a pope, John brought his new possession home with him to Dublin, where it has been ever since.

His modern-day order offers the following explanation of what happened. When the bones arrived in Dublin they were accompanied by a letter from the powers that be in the Vatican. It said that the Vatican certified and attested that it had freely given to the Very Revd Fr Spratt the blessed body of St Valentine. Furthermore, it said that on 27 December 1835, the remains were taken out of the cemetery of St Hippolytus in the Tiburtine Way, Rome, together with a small vessel said to be tinged with St Valentine’s blood. They were deposited in a wooden case covered with painted paper. They were then tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with papal seals.