Future Imperfect

Future Imperfect

Ballygilhooley Workhouse Dec 28^th 1848 A.D.

Warden’s Report

Future Imperfect

Ballygilhooley Workhouse Dec 28^th 1848 A.D.

Warden’s Report

‘Tis a grim Christmastime that’s in it. At least, one positive weather vane on the horizon means that we may be on the cusp of finally dispensing with the case of one Larry Muldoon, who has caused great agitation and disturbance in the workhouse, as a result of his ‘strange dreams’. The saga began last July when the aforementioned individual complained of the quality of the gruel, or stirabout, as Mr. Muldoon preferred to call it.

Mr. Muldoon, a large, skeletonous character with a protruding vein on the right of his forehead, approached the Supervisor, the very Rev. Dismus Moycarkey, and announced that he, Laurence Patrick Muldoon, and also the rest of the assembled unworthy indigents gathered there, had rights. Very Rev. Moycarkey looked at Muldoon and caught by the sight of his venous forehead was immediately reminded of the Styx at Oxford as it appeared in the map on the refectory wall there when he was a divinity student. On gathering his wits, Very Rev. Moycarkey set to demolishing the fellow’s assertions. ‘Rights?’ Whatever do you mean? Rights. Have you lost your scintilla of sanity, Muldoon? Rights. Whoever heard of such nonsense?’

‘We have rights,’ Muldoon reiterated, quietly.

‘Rights, man.’ What would they be? Explain yourself since you are so insistent on this matter.

‘We have human rights.’

‘Human rights, never heard of such codswallop. Muldoon, go back to the end of the gruel queue for that! A person should know his place in the order of things, sir.’

‘We have human rights,’ Muldoon said boldly. All heads turned in the direction of the unfolding scene where Mr. Muldoon was taking centre stage in the drama. ‘All human beings are born equal and have rights,’ Muldoon asserted.

‘That’s very nebulous. In fact it’s downright lunacy and nothing less. What in tarnation are you talking about, Muldoon? There is right from wrong, and in between the good and respectable citizenry of this borough are keeping you alive with gruel bought from their hard earned money. What about their rights?  Are you even faintly aware of what’s right and what’s wrong, Mr. Mulddon, sir? Do you deserve this porridge? No, I should think not. You do not own it, and you did not earn it. You have no rights in the matter, except to eat your gruel.’

‘Who made the world?’ Muldoon asked

Moyvcarkey was taken aback and visibly jerked in his place. He thought for a moment and said, ‘God made the world. Mr. Mulddon, I have a divine degree from no less a place than Oxford, the beloved, Dreaming Spires, so if anybody knows anything around here, it is I, Mister. God made the world, Muldoon. That’s an obvious truth.’

‘Is it now? Muldoon asked almost sneeringly. ‘Well if God made the world and everything in it, is it right that the big shots should lord it over others and make them feel guilty for even being alive. If we are so unworthy of life, just let us die and spare us your morality and your watery fare. If you want to give us charity then give it, but don’t buy it back with your self-satisfied triumphalism.’

‘Where are you getting all this stuff, Mulddon?’ Why, it’s outrageous, heretical even, a threat to the decent order.’

‘It may seem a strange and lunatic thing to admit this, but, I, Larry Muldoon, have acquired the ability to travel forwards in time, and when I am dreaming I converse with learned men from the future who tell me that your morality is akin to savagery even though you all consider yourselves to be good Christians, and men of God, and faithful to His command.

‘You’re mad, Mr. Muldoon. What you assert is impossible.’

‘It’s funny, but any idea that you can’t handle, or one that is outside your world view, beyond your comfort zones, you immediately give it a disparaging name in order that you don’t have to assay it, or more accurately that you don’t have to confront yourselves and the extent of your own petty delusions of grandeur.’

Note 1 : This is an accurate though not strictly verbatim report of what initially came to pass in the Ballygilhooly District Workhouse. May Almighty God have mercy on all respectable folk?

Watden’s Report Ballygilholey Workhouse Jan 28^th

It is a full month since the lunacy started, and the indigents are beginning to get restless, saying that they have a right to more than gruel and a better, more comfortable bed. As I walk the yards, I can discern some of them looking at me with ever more suspicious eyes, as if I, the Warden, was the devil himself, depriving these useless wretches of the things given to them by God, Himself. They are but paupers, and the good citizenry of means do not deprive them of their gruels.   Agitation is rising, and around here the word agitation means a lot more than in other places where I have been stationed. And Muldoon is holding to his line. Several attempts by learned gentlemen, men possessed of the best learning that Oxford and Cambridge can endow, have been unable to budge him from his contention that these wretches are worth more than they are. He is a threat to the social order and to peace and respectability, not to mention Christian living and a sense of right proportion, and common decency. And every time we think that we have Muldoon on a point of argument he quotes the Lord Himself, and then asks us defiantly are we going to deny the Creator, the Almighty One, He for Whom the world was made? I need not tell you that it is very frustrating. As a precautionary tactic, and since these are known as a volatile people, we have drafted in an extra regiment of horse and a unit of footmen, and they are all happily ensconced in comfortable quarters with extra rations of rum and grog having been put at their disposal. In short, we are ready for anything, and Muldoon can quote God till he is blue in the face, but we will maintain the social equilibrium whether it be God or no God, or Old Nick himself, come what may. Whatever it is, it matters not. We are ready to repel the ungrateful wretches and their so-called rights.

Note 2 Ledger 31

Things came to such a pitch last night that the Board decided on a new tactic. Dr. Mindfell was called from the Ballymadder Lunatic Society in order to make an examination. Of course, we know the man is mad, but proving it seems to be very difficult as the more we question him, the more he points out where we are mad. Gadzooks! The wretches began to protest with shouts and cries of disdain. Dr. Mindfell, being of a wise disposition, managed to calm the situation down sufficiently so that the wretches took their wooden spoons and sent their stirabout and gruel down their throats without further, undue reluctance.  Mindfell was exhausted after the experience. As he tucked into his grouse and wildfowl pie and expedited it down his throat with the aid of some good, French brandy he said, ‘be warned, the calm is merely temporary’. He said these words with awe as if he could see the future, and as the servants brought in some partridge meat, we knew that the future was not going to be ‘perfect’.

And so it proved.

The problem of Larry Mulddon’s reveries did not go away or dissolve. As the Summer wore on, his dreams increased in quantity and strangeness until they seemed to reach the point of sheer absurdity. Indeed, we had no clue or idea what manner of language he was speaking when he referred to mobiles, remotes, internets, birth control devices, sim cards and female liberation, along with strange other words and phrases of a similar ilk.  He held meetings where the assembled wretches were shown drawings of these things and Mulddon went into small details about what these things were and their uses and abuses. Both the destitute of Ballygillhooley Workhouse, together with the wandering vagrants and vagabonds who inhabited the surrounding area began to agitate, and fights and small skirmishes broke out between them and the newly arrived foot soldiers. A further problem arose when the ‘foot’ demanded more rum rations as the work was becoming much more onerous than at first believed. The foot soldiers were beginning to believe in this human rights nonsense too, and began making representations for more rum. We now regret that we gave into this demand as with the extra grog the foot has partly gone over to the other side, saying that Muldoon’s words deserve a fair examination.

There’s no doubt about it, Larry Muldoon, was getting to us, getting to everyone. He was a one-man revolution and difficult as a fox to get at since he hid behind God and all that Bible palaver of his. The rumour circulated that Muldoon was a prophet, and it would be dire to interfere with someone like that.  The tingle of fear rose on many a goose pimple whenever the subject was broached and as the grog flowed in the numerous, local shebeens, the talk became more agitated and venomous towards the natural, God-given order of things. 

Ballygilholey Workhouse: Minutes of Committee Meeting RE: Mr. Laurence Muldoon

A decision was made to arrest Muldoon. Either he was convicted of fomenting revolution and treachery, or it was decided that he was to be irrevocably insane, suffering from dementia praecox, or, perhaps, moral lunacy and mental decay. Common or garden pox would be a sufficient diagnosis in his case. Whichever way it went, Muldoon would be removed from society and either hanged or tainted with madness. In the event of the latter case, once the diagnosis was clearly established no manner of argument or protest on his behalf would be listened to again, and both the decent citizenry together with the unworthy wretches could safely ignore Muldoon, as society would declare him to be as mad as the proverbial hatter, or crazy as a hare in the merry month of March. Hopefully, the end of this affair was in sight, and we the peaceful folk could sup our partridge puddings after Sunday school in peace once again

Note 3

Alas and alack, our best hopes proved to be mere vanity. Mulddon’s notions have come at us from a very painful angle. It all began when an officer of the foot mentioned ‘female liberation’ to Reverend Moycarkey’s spouse. On further enquiry, Mrs. Ellen Moycarkey began to demand more and more of her husband. She claimed equality with him, and this turn of events has left Moycarkey in a deleterious position, and, it seems, he has taken to the cooking wine as never before. At the very mention of the name ‘Muldoon’, he goes into something similar to a nervous delirium, and it is some time before his shakings end, and he is able to return to normal. On the last occasion, Dr, Stephen Fairley Normal, the resident junior doctor at Ballymadder, had to administer a liberal dose of bromide to Moycarkey in order to asset some calm in the holy man, and the latter seems to be waxing worse with each passage of the new moon.. All this is an entirely unexpected turn of the tide, and it thrusts at the very heart of moral society and its upright citizenry.  Now, it appears that the fire of female emancipation is spreading like a blaze amongst dry brushwood, and it is rumoured that even the paid wenches in the shebeens and salons have taken up the torch of liberty, rights and female emancipation. I never imagined that my ears could be assailed with such rot.  

Ballygilhooley Workhouse Logbook 3 H

A most alarming development has occurred. Last night someone broke into the pantry and stole three, large pumpkin pies, two freshly shot grouse, a succulent pigeon pie and a quantity of finest, drinking port. This is a tragedy to the household of great proportions, especially the larceny of the port.  Reports are coming in that the ladies of the shebeens have suddenly become moral and have abandoned their previous ‘work’. They are being ardently courted by the foot, and I am reliably informed that the horse are not immune to this new situation. I can hear the incessant sound of wedding bells as highly questionable ‘marriages’ are being conducted both day and night between the shebeen wenches and the unrecalcitrant foot and horse. It seems they have no need to make a ‘living’ now that they have big, strong soldiers to look after them. The constant carillion of bells is very disturbing. Muldoon has disappeared, and all efforts to detain and arraign him have proved vain. Lord, the moral order has capsized, and it seems that these wenches and wretches have grabbed the reins of power for their own ends. My own wife is barracking me for her rights, and I fear greatly for the stability of society. And Dr. Fairley Normal has abandoned his post as he is besotted by one, Mary Maguire, who is said to be very pretty and buxom with it. I am surrounded by anarchy and madness, but as I stand alone, I shall not bow to the inevitable reign of Muldoon’s ‘human rights’. I have my blunderbuss at the ready and have acquired a good store of food. Further there is plenty of cooking wine left, and I shall sup on that as I wait for the stars to fall from the heavens and the sun to darken in the mid afternoon. I am prepared for anything, and heaven knows, nothing shall deter me from the moral good. Come one, come all, sirrahs, and this good man shall have you dispatched to the graveyard before you can utter ‘female liberation,’ or any other rubbish that has been perpetrated by Mr. Larry Muldoon, or by Mr. Beelzebub, himself.

Methinks, his name is not Muldoon, but rather it is more akin to Mul-Doom.

Nay, it shall not be. My dirk and dagger, and my trusty blunderbuss, shall assert what every sane and responsible person knows to be right, and that’s not human rights. How can men of substance, wealth and land be deemed equal to those wretches who dig potatoes and sup of illegal distills as they dance their jigs in their rambling houses until the morning. It is not only illegal, it is entirely unjust. It does not make sense, and I, for one, will resist this insanity until kingdom come, or failing that, until the blue blooded folk assert that black is white, and blue is the colour of the grass. In short, that means never, and never shall it be.