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1 Oct 1849The Frightful Child of Ballyshannon.
This apparition is tolerably well authenticated, & serving a penulsiary interest from its connexion with the celebrated Lord Lastleragh.
He is supposed to have been visited by it in the Barracks of Ballyshannon to Donegal, Ireland shen leaving in the Londonsbury sicilitic - He was then to the Hon. Robert Stewart.
I have several times heard the unconstance talked of at Ballyshannon, with the addition that at Stewart was remarked to be subject to unusual gloom & melancholy, for a considerable period after the spectral visit. The particulars are variously told, but the following verse-acount of the matter is in accord ance with Lord Lastleragh's own statement, as reported by No Walter Scott, who once in London heard him vilate the story, with visible emotion. It is walter however reglected to note the goblins address, the trans and the trans fant Terrible and it is here for the first time, I believe, in print, assigned to its proper locality.
1d Oct.
W. Allingham
A Regiment, filing row by row,
One evening sixty years ago,
As wintry dusk was wearing late,
Though Ballyshannon's old bridge-gate,
Changed passwords with the pacing guard,
Left-wheeled into the barrack-yard,
And halted willingly; for tired
The men were, dropping, soaked, & mired,
And even the highest in command,
With trumbling knees & fevered hand,
Felt on his horse, almost as jacked
And glad to end the march as they sid.
Do wonder then that he introduces
To bed betimes; & though twere true
His quarters here proved strange & nough;
Watched as they seemed, with trimming rough,
From long disease; yet in a pile
Bleaked on the hearth in ancient style
The teaf & bogared
Bogarood & turf with sorval roar,
Flung ruddy blaze on wall & floor,
And the new-comer thought he night
On suck a fagged November night,
Even in a rougher place have found
A door to Sleep's Enchanted Ground.
But when & he tried, - he tried in vain.
A queer, unusual, & desert train
Of jumbling fancies resed his train;
Till, as the wisery hours went by,
He ever grew, he knew not why,
More anxious; & his heart was sick.
And the puble in his pillowed say beat thick.
The wide, half-furnished barrack room
was full of heavy midnight gloom;
Save when the sinking coals gave birth
To mouldering flashes on the hearth,
And from the single darkness made
A thousand ghost the forms of shade,
On which the waker gazed & gazed,
Until his thoughts grew mazed & mazed,
And down at lengths his acking lids were evigled.
When suddenly - O heaven! - the fire
Leaped up into a dagging pyre,
And boldly from the brightened hearth
& staked Child stepped forth!
With a total frozen start,
A bound, - a pansing of the heart,
He saw. It came across the floor,
It's size increasing more & more
At every step; until a dread
Gigantic form stood by his bed.
For some heavy seconds, space
It glared into his rigid face;
Then backward moved with stand just back,
Drinking every step it took,
Till the staked Child returned
Into the fire, which brightly burned
To greet it; then black sudden gloom
sink upon the silent room.
Silent save the monstone
Through the arches of the bridge,
And under neath the casement ledge.
Then, through the Holy Island still
were nests of goblins left, to fill
each menderly nook & corner close,
like spiders in an ancient house:
And this one read within the face
Sinking on its developing-place,
Lines of wood, despair, & blood;
By spirits only understood;
As mortals now can read the same
In the letters of his name
Who in what haunt chamber lay,
When we call him - Lastleragh -