[Editor: This is a chapter from The Eureka Stockade by Raffaello Carboni. A glossary has been provided to explain various words and phrases that may be unfamiliar to modern readers.]
LXXVIII.
Homo natus de muliere, brevi vivens tempore repletur multis miseries. Qui quasi flos conterritur et egreditur; postea velut umbra disperditur.
It is not the purpose of this book, to begin a lamentation about my four long, long months in the gaol. My health was ruined for ever: if that be a consolation to any one; let him enjoy it. To say more is disgusting to me and would prove so to any one, whose motto is “Fair-play.”
A dish of hominy (Indian meal), now and then fattened with grubs, was my breakfast.
A dish of scalding water, with half a dozen grains of rice, called soup, a morsel of dry bullock’s flesh, now and then high-flavoured, a bit of bread eternally sour — any how the cause of my suffering so much of dysentery, and a couple of black murphies were my dinner.
For tea, a similar dish of hominy as in the morning, with the privilege of having now and then a bushranger or a horse-stealer for my mess-mate, and often I enjoyed the company of the famous robbers of the Victoria Bank.
But the Sunday! Oh the Sunday! was the most trying day. The turnkeys, of course, must enjoy the benefit of the sabbath cant, let the prisoners pray or curse in their cells. I was let out along with the catholics, to hear mass. I really felt the want of Christian consolation. Our priest was always in a hurry, twice did not come, once said half the mass without any assistant; never could I hear two words together out of his short sermon. Not once ever came to see us prisoners.
After mass, I returned to my cell, and was let out again for half an hour among all sorts of criminals, some convicted, some waiting their trial, in the large yard, to eat our dinner, and again shut up in the cell till the following Monday.
Source:
Raffaello Carboni. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion, Public Library of South Australia, Adelaide, 1962 [facsimile of the 1855 edition], page 100
Editor’s notes:
*Homo natus de muliere, brevi vivens tempore repletur multis miseries. Qui quasi flos conterritur et egreditur; postea velut umbra disperditur. = (Latin) “Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. Frightened, like a flower, and it goeth out; afterwards wrecked as a shadow” (*rough translation); from Job 14:1-2 in the Latin Bible, “Homo natus de muliere, brevi vivens tempore, repletur multis miseriis. Qui quasi flos egreditur et conteritur, et fugit velut umbra, et numquam in eodem statu permanent” (“Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. Who comes forth like a flower, and is destroyed, and flees as a shadow, and never continues in the same state.”)
References:
“Job 14”, New Advent (accessed 14 January 2013)
“Job 14:1”, Online Multilingual Bible (accessed 14 January 2013)
“Job 14:2”, Online Multilingual Bible (accessed 14 January 2013)
“Job 14 : Douay-Rheims Bible parallel: Christian Community, New Jerusalem, Clementine Latin Vulgate, Biblia Sacra Vulgatam”, Veritas Bible (accessed 14 January 2013)
The Institute of Australian Culture
Speak Your Mind