Swift lay here for seven days waiting for the packet to sail. On the 28th of September it set forth, but was obliged by stress of weather to return, and it does not appear how much longer he was detained. In these empty days of waiting he wrote the verses:—
Lo, here I sit at holy head, With muddy ale and mouldy bread ; I’m fastened both by wind and tide, I see the ships at anchor ride. All Christian vittals stink of fish, I’m where my enemyes would wish. Convict of lies is ev’ry sign, The Inn has not one drop of wine, The Captain swears the sea’s too rough— (He has not passengers enough.) And thus the Dean is forc’d to stay. Till others come to help the pay.
The room smoked, but it was too cold to be without a fire. “There is,” he writes, “or should be, a Proverb here:”
When Mrs. Welsh’s chimney smokes, ’Tis a sign she’ll keep her folks; But when of smoke the room is clear, It is a sign we shan’t stay here.
Thus his notes run on: “Dined like a king all alone for seven days. Whoever would wish to live long should live here, for a day is longer than a week, and, if the weather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Pray pity poor Wat, for he is called Dunce, Puppy, and Liar five hundred times an hour; and yet he means not ill, for he means nothing.” Wat he ordered to wipe his wet gown and cassock, and he did so with a meal-bag, with the result that it was caked thickly with a kind of meal-plaster. When at last the Dean did leave Holyhead, he carried with him memories not likely to be speedily effaced.
Wesley had something like these experiences in 1748, when he was storm-bound for eleven days. He spent the time mainly in preaching, but for all practical purposes might just as well have stayed within doors, for he laments that his congregations did not understand English. It is difficult to decide whose was the greater foolishness—that of the preacher who preached in a strange tongue, or that of those who listened to words they could not comprehend. Two years later he was at Holyhead, detained for three days, and then, obliged by storms to return for another eight, he “expounded the story of Dives and Lazarus to a room full of men daubed with gold and silver.” _They_, at any rate, seemed to understand, for they “took it in ill part, and went away railing and blaspheming.” These “sons of Belial,” as he calls them, returned, and would have seriously injured him, but that he was locked in the room. They were at last dispersed by a courageous maidservant, who threw a bucket of water over them.