[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.]
LXXXI.
Quem patronem rogaturus.
The brave people of Melbourne remembered the state prisoners, forgotten by the Ballaarat diggers, who now that the storm was over, considered themselves luckily cunning to have got off safe; and therefore could afford to “joe” again; the red-streak near Golden-point, having put every one in the good old spirits of the good old times.
Yourself devoting to the public cause,
You ask the people if they be “there” to die:
Yes, yes hurrah the thund’ring applause,
Too soon, alas! you find out the lie!
Cast in a gaol, at best you are thought a fool,
Red hot grows your foe; your friend too cool.
An angel, however, was sent to the undefended state prisoners. Hayes and myself were the first, who since our being in trouble, did grasp the hand of a gentleman, volunteering to be our friend.
James Macpherson Grant, solicitor, is a Scotchman of middle-size, middle-height; and the whole makes the man, an active man of business, a shrewd lawyer, and up to all the dodges of his profession. His forehead announces that all is sound within; his benevolent countenance assures that his heart is for man or woman in trouble. He hates oppression; so say his eyes. He scorns humbug; so says his nose. His manners declare that he was born a gentleman.
I very soon gave him hints for my defence, quite in accordance with what I have been stating above, and his clerk took the whole down in short-hand. He encouraged me to be of good cheer, “You need not fear,” said he, “you will soon be out, all of you.”
God bless you, Mr. Grant! For the sake of you and Mr. Aspinall, the barrister, I smother now my bitterness, and pass over all that I suffered on account of so many postponements.
Timothy Hayes, when we returned broken-hearted for the FIFTH (!) time to our gaol, did we not curse the lawyers!
A wild turn of mind now launched my soul to the old beloved spot on the
Eureka, and there I struck out the following anthem.
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], pages 103-104
Editor’s notes:
quem patronem rogaturus [quem patronum rogaturus] = (Latin) “what patron I to beseech?”, or “to what patron choose to pray”, or “which patron to ask”; a line from the Latin hymn “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”), believed to have been written by Thomas of Celano (circa. 1200 – circa.1255), and used as a part of the Requiem Mass (Mass for the Dead) in the Roman Catholic Church [also used as a line in the play Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)] [Carboni used the preceding line from “Dies Irae” as the title for chapter LXXVI (76)]
References:
quem patronum rogaturus:
“Dies Irae”, The Franciscan Archive (accessed 27 December 2012)
The Eclectic Review, MDCCCXXXVII; January – June; New Series, Vol. I, William Ball, London, 1837, page 40 (2nd last line) (accessed 27 December 2012)]
“Dies Irae”, Wikipedia (accessed 10 January 2013)
“Hymni Et Cantica”, The Latin Library [see: “Dies irae (Hymnus in exequiis) Thomas of Celano, fl.1215”] (accessed 10 January 2013)
“Thomas of Celano”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent (accessed 27 December 2012)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller (translated by Lord Francis Leveson Gower). Faust: A Drama, by Goethe. And Schiller’s Song of the Bell, John Murray, London, 1823, page 230
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