Humours of Irish Life

HUMOURS OF
: IRISH LIFE :

Drawn by]	[Geo. Morrow
Frank Webber wins the wager

HUMOURS
OF IRISH LIFE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY CHARLES L. GRAVES, M.A.

NEW YORK:
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Printed by The
Educational Company
of Ireland Limited
at The Talbot Press
Dublin

Introduction.

The first of the notable humorists of Irish life was William Maginn, one of the most versatile, as well as brilliant of Irish men of letters.

He was born in Cork in 1793, and was a classical schoolmaster there in early manhood, having secured the degree of LL.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, when only 23 years of age. The success in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of some of his translations of English verse into the Classics induced him, however, to give up teaching and to seek his fortunes as a magazine writer and journalist in London, at a time when Lamb, De Quincey, Lockhart and Wilson gave most of their writings to magazines.

Possessed of remarkable sparkle and finish as a writer, considering with what little effort and with what rapidity he poured out his political satires in prose and verse, and his rollicking magazine sketches, it was no wonder that he leaped into popularity at a bound. He was the original of the Captain Shandon of Pendennis and though Thackeray undoubtedly attributed to him a political venality of which he was never guilty, whilst describing him during what was undoubtedly the latter and least reputable period in his career, it is evident that he considered Maginn to be, as he undoubtedly was, a literary figure of conspicuous accomplishment and mark in the contemporary world of letters.

Amongst his satiric writings, his panegyric of Colonel Pride may stand comparison even with Swift’s most notable philippics; whilst his Sir Morgan O’Doherty was the undoubted ancestor of Maxwell’s and Lever’s hard drinking, practical joking Irish military heroes, and frequently appears as one of the speakers in Professor Wilson’s “Noctes Ambrosianae,” of which the doctor was one of the mainstays.

Besides his convivial song of “St. Patrick,” his “Gathering of the Mahonys,” and his “Cork is an Eden for you, Love, and me,” written by him as genuine “Irish Melodies,” to serve as an antidote to what he called the finicking Bacchanalianism of Moore, he contributed, as Mr. D. J. O’Donoghue conclusively proves, several stories, including “Daniel O’Rourke,” printed in this volume, to Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of Ireland,” first published anonymously in 1825—a set of Folk Tales full of a literary charm which still makes them delightful reading. For just as Moore took Irish airs, touched them up and partnered them with lyrics to suit upper class British and Irish taste, so Croker gathered his Folk Tales from the Munster peasantry with whom he was familiar and, assisted by Maginn and others, gave them exactly that form and finish needful to provide the reading public of his day with an inviting volume of fairy lore.

Carleton and the brothers John and Michael Banim, besides Samuel Lover, whose gifts are treated of elsewhere in this introduction, followed with what Dr. Douglas Hyde rightly describes as Folk Lore of “an incidental and highly manipulated type.”

A more genuine Irish storyteller was Patrick Kennedy, twice represented in this volume, whose “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt” and “Fireside Stories of Ireland” were put down by him much as he heard them as a boy in his native county of Wexford, where they had already passed with little change in the telling from the Gaelic into the peculiar Anglo-Irish local dialect which is markedly West Saxon in its character.

His lineal successor as a Wexford Folklorist is Mr. P. J. McCall, one of whose stories, “Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess” we reproduce, and a woman Folk tale teller, Miss B. Hunt, adds to our indebtedness to such writers by her recently published and delightful Folk Tales of Breffny from which “McCarthy of Connacht” has been taken for these pages.

We have also the advantage of using Dr. Hyde’s “The Piper and the Puca,” a foretaste, we believe, of the pleasure in store for our readers in the volume of Folk Tales he is contributing to “Every Irishman’s Library” under the engaging title of “Irish Saints and Sinners.”

In a survey of the Anglo-Irish humorous novel of recent times, the works of Charles Lever form a convenient point of departure, for with all his limitations he was the first to write about Irish life in such a way as to appeal widely and effectively to an English audience. We have no intention of dwelling upon him at any length—he belongs to an earlier generation—but between him and his successors there are points both of resemblance and of dissimilarity sufficient to make an interesting comparison. The politics and social conditions of Lever’s time are not those of the present, but the spirit of Lever’s Irishman, though with modifications, is still alive to-day.

Lever had not the intensity of Carleton, or the fine humanity of Kickham, but he was less uncompromising in his use of local colour, and he was, as a rule, far more cheerful. He had not the tender grace or simplicity of Gerald Griffin, and never wrote anything so moving or beautiful as “The Collegians,” which will form a special volume of this Library, but he surpassed him in vitality, gusto, exuberance and knowledge of the world.

Overrated in the early stages of his career, Lever paid the penalty of his too facile triumphs in his lifetime, and his undoubted talents have latterly been depreciated on political as well as artistic grounds. His heroes were drawn, with few exceptions, from the landlord class or their faithful retainers. The gallant Irish officers, whose Homeric exploits he loved to celebrate, held commissions in the British army. Lever has never been popular with Nationalist politicians, though, as a matter of fact no one ever exhibited the extravagance and recklessness of the landed gentry in more glaring colours. And he is anathema to the hierophants of the Neo-Celtic Renascence on account of his jocularity. There is nothing crepuscular about Lever; you might as well expect to find a fairy in a railway station.

Again, Lever never was and never could be the novelist of literary men. He was neither a scholar nor an artist; he wrote largely in instalments; and in his earlier novels was wont to end a chapter in a manner that rendered something like a miracle necessary to continue the existence of the hero: “He fell lifeless to the ground, the same instant I was felled to the earth by a blow from behind, and saw no more.” In technique and characterisation his later novels show a great advance, but if he lives, it will be by the spirited loosely-knit romances of love and war composed in the first ten years of his literary career. His heroes had no scruples in proclaiming their physical advantages and athletic prowess; Charles O’Malley, that typical Galway miles gloriosus, introduces himself with ingenuous egotism in the following passage:

“I rode boldly with fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles of us; I could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to cooking a salmon, my equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher.”

The life led by the Playboys of the West (old style) as depicted in Lever’s pages was one incessant round of reckless hospitality, tempered by duels and practical joking, but it had its justification in the family annals of the fire-eating Blakes and Bodkins and the records of the Connaught Circuit. The intrepidity of Lever’s heroes was only equalled by their indiscretion, their good luck in escaping from the consequences of their folly, and their susceptibility. His womenfolk may be roughly divided into three classes; sentimental heroines, who sighed, and blushed and fainted on the slightest provocation; buxom Amazons, like Baby Blake; and campaigners or adventuresses. But the gentle, sentimental, angelic type predominates, and finds a perfect representative in Lucy Dashwood.

When Charles O’Malley was recovering from an accident in the hunting field, he fell asleep in an easy-chair in the drawing-room and was awakened by the “thrilling chords of a harp”:

“I turned gently round in my chair and beheld Miss Dashwood. She was seated in a recess of an old-fashioned window; the pale yellow glow of a wintry sun at evening fell upon her beautiful hair, and tinged it with such a light as I have often since then seen in Rembrandt’s pictures; her head leaned upon the harp, and, as she struck its chords at random, I saw that her mind was far away from all around her. As I looked, she suddenly started from her leaning attitude, and, parting back her curls from her brow, she preluded a few chords, and then sighed forth, rather than sang, that most beautiful of Moore’s melodies—

‘She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.’

Never before had such pathos, such deep utterance of feeling, met my astonished sense; I listened breathlessly as the tears fell one by one down my cheek; my bosom heaved and fell; and when she ceased, I hid my head between my hands and sobbed aloud.”

Lever’s serious heroines, apart from the fact that they could ride, did not differ in essentials from those of Dickens, and a sense of humour was no part of their mental equipment. The hated rival, the dark-browed Captain Hammersly, was distinguished by his “cold air and repelling hauteur,” and is a familiar figure in mid-Victorian romance. Lever’s sentiment, in short, is old-fashioned, and cannot be expected to appeal to a Feminist age which has given us the public school girl and the suffragist. There is no psychological interest in the relations of his heroes and heroines; Charles’s farewell to Lucy is on a par with the love speeches in “The Lyons Mail.” There is seldom any doubt as to the ultimate reunion of his lovers; we are only concerned with the ingenuity of the author in surmounting the obstacles of his own invention. He was fertile in the devising of exciting incident; he was always able to eke out the narrative with a good story or song—as a writer of convivial, thrasonic or mock-sentimental verse he was quite in the first class—and in his earlier novels his high spirits and sense of fun never failed.

In his easy-going methods he may have been influenced by the example of Dickens—the Dickens of the “Pickwick Papers”—but there is no ground for any charge of conscious imitation, and where he challenged direct comparison—in the character of Mickey Free—he succeeded in drawing an Irish Sam Weller who falls little short of his more famous Cockney counterpart. For Lever was a genuine humorist, or perhaps we should say a genuine comedian, since the element of theatricality was seldom absent. The choicest exploits of that grotesque Admirable Crichton, Frank Webber, were carried out by hoaxing, disguise, or trickery of some sort. But the scene in which Frank wins his wager by impersonating Miss Judy Macan and sings “The Widow Malone” is an admirable piece of sustained fooling: admirable, too, in its way is the rescue of the imaginary captive in the Dublin drain. As a delineator of the humours of University life, Lever combined the atmosphere of “Verdant Green” with the sumptuous upholstery of Ouida. Here, again, in his portraits of dons and undergraduates Lever undoubtedly drew in part from life, but fell into his characteristic vice of exaggeration in his embroidery. Frank Webber’s antics are amusing, but it is hard to swallow his amazing literary gifts or the contrast between his effeminate appearance and his dare-devil energy.

While “Lord Kilgobbin”—which ran as a serial in the “Cornhill Magazine” from October, 1870, to March, 1872—was not wholly free from Lever’s besetting sin, it is interesting not only as the most thoughtful and carefully written of his novels, but on account of its political attitude. Here Lever proved himself no champion à outrance of the landlords, but was ready to admit that their joyous conviviality was too often attended by gross mismanagement of their estates. The methods of Peter Gill, the land steward, are shown to be all centred in craft and subtlety—“outwitting this man, forestalling that, doing everything by halves, so that no boon came unassociated with some contingency or other by which he secured to himself unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny.” The sympathy extended to the rebels of ’98 is remarkable and finds expression in the spirited lines:—

These must have been almost the last lines Lever ever wrote, unless we accept the bitter epitaph on himself:

The bitterness of the epitaph lies in the fact that it was largely true; he had exhausted the vein of rollicking romance on which his fame and popularity rested. For the rest the charge of misrepresenting Irish life is met by so judicious a critic as the late Dr. Garnett with a direct negative:—

“He has not actually misrepresented anything, and cannot be censured for confining himself to the society which he knew; nor was his talent adapted for the treatment of such life in its melancholy and poetic aspects, even if these had been more familiar to him.”

Of the humorous Irish novelists who entered into competition with Lever for the favour of the English-speaking public in his lifetime, two claim special notice—Samuel Lover and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Lover has always been bracketed with Lever, whom he resembled in many ways, but he was overshadowed by his more brilliant and versatile contemporary. Yet within his limited sphere he was a true humorist, and the careless, whimsical, illogical aspects of Irish character have seldom been more effectively illustrated than by the author of ‘Handy Andy,’ and ‘The Gridiron.’ Paddy, as drawn by Lover, succeeds in spite of his drawbacks, much as Brer Rabbit does in the tales of Uncle Remus. His mental processes remind one of the story of the Hungarian baron who, on paying a visit to a friend after a railway journey, complained of a bad headache, the result of sitting with his back to the engine. When his friend asked, “Why did not you change places with your vis-à-vis?” the baron replied, “How could I? I had no vis-à-vis.” Lover’s heroes “liked action, but they hated work”: the philosophy of thriftlessness is summed up to perfection in “Paddy’s Pastoral”:—

For all his kindliness Lover laid too much stress on this happy-go-lucky fecklessness to minister to Irish self-respect. His pictures of Irish life were based on limited experience; in so far as they are true, they recall and emphasise traits which many patriotic Irishmen wish to forget or eliminate. An age which has witnessed the growth of Irish Agricultural Co-operation is intolerant of a novelist who for the most part represents his countrymen as diverting idiots, and therefore we prefer to represent him in this volume by “The Little Weaver,” one of those mock heroic tales in which Irishmen have excelled from his day to that of Edmund Downey. No better example could be given of his easy flow of humour in genuine Hiberno-English or of his shrewd portraiture of such simple types of Irish peasant character.

The case of Le Fanu is peculiar. His best-known novels had no specially characteristic Irish flavour. But his sombre talent was lit by intermittent flashes of the wildest hilarity, and it was in this mood that the author of “Uncle Silas” and “Carmilla” wrote “The Quare Gandher” and “Billy Malowney’s Taste of Love and Glory,” two of the most brilliantly comic extravaganzas which were ever written by an Irishman, and which no one but an Irishman could ever have written.

There is no Salic Law in letters, and since the deaths of Lever and Le Fanu the sceptre of the realm of Irish fiction has passed to women. But the years between 1870 and 1890 were not propitious for humorists, and the admirable work of the late Miss Emily Lawless, who had already made her mark in “Hurrish” before the latter date, does not fall within the present survey. The same remark applies to Mrs. Hartley, but there is a fine sense of humour in the delicate idylls of Miss Jane Barlow, twice represented in this volume.

By far the most widely read Irish novelist between 1880 and 1900 was the late Mrs. Hungerford, the author of “Molly Bawn” and a score of other blameless romances which almost rivalled “The Rosary” in luscious sentimentality. The scenes of her stories were generally laid in Ireland, and the stories themselves were almost invariably concerned with the courtship of lovely but impecunious maidens by eligible and affluent youths. No one in Mrs. Hungerford’s novels ever seemed to have any work to do. The characters lived in a paradise of unemployment, and this possibly accounts for Mrs. Hungerford’s immense popularity in America, where even the most indolent immigrants become infected with a passion for hard work. In the quality of gush she was unsurpassed, but her good nature and her frank delight in her characters made her absurdity engaging. Sentiment was her ruling passion; she did no more than scrape the surface of Irish social life; and she had no humour but good humour. But she had not enough of literary quality to entitle her work to rank beside that of the other women writers represented in this volume.

The literary partnership of Miss Edith Somerville and Miss Violet Martin—the most brilliantly successful example of creative collaboration in our times—began with “An Irish Cousin” in 1889. Published over the pseudonyms of “Geilles Herring” and “Martin Ross,” this delightful story is remarkable not only for its promise, afterwards richly fulfilled, but for its achievement. The writers proved themselves the possessors of a strange faculty of detachment which enabled them to view the humours of Irish life through the unfamiliar eyes of a stranger without losing their own sympathy. They were at once of the life they described and outside it. They showed a laudable freedom from political partisanship; a minute familiarity with the manners and customs of all strata of Irish Society; an unerring instinct for the “sovran word;” a perfect mastery of the Anglo-Irish dialect; and an acute yet well-controlled sense of the ludicrous. The heroine accurately describes the concourse on the platform of a small country station as having “all the appearance of a large social gathering or conversazione, the carriages being filled, not by those who were starting, but by their friends who had come to see them off.” When she went to a county ball in Cork she discovered to her dismay that all her partners were named either Beamish or Barrett:—

“Had it not been for Willy’s elucidation of its mysteries, I should have thrown away my card in despair. ‘No; not him. That’s Long Tom Beamish! It’s English Tommy you’ve to dance with next. They call him English Tommy because, when his Militia regiment was ordered to Aldershot, he said he was ‘the first of his ancestors that was ever sent on foreign service.’... I carried for several days the bruises which I received during my waltz with English Tommy. It consisted chiefly of a series of short rushes, of so shattering a character that I at last ventured to suggest a less aggressive mode of progression. ‘Well,’ said English Tommy confidentially, ‘ye see, I’m trying to bump Katie,’ pointing to a fat girl in blue. ‘She’s my cousin, and we’re for ever fighting.’”

As a set-off to this picture of the hilarious informality of high life in Cork twenty-five years ago, there is a wonderful study of a cottage interior, occupied by a very old man, his daughter-in-law, three children, two terriers, a cat, and a half-plucked goose. The conversation between Willy Sarsfield—who foreshadows Flurry Knox in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” by his mingled shrewdness and naiveté—and Mrs. Sweeny is a perfect piece of realism.

“Mrs. Sweeny was sitting on a kind of rough settle, between the other window and the door of an inner room. She was a stout, comfortable woman of about forty, with red hair and quick blue eyes, that roved round the cabin, and silenced with a glance the occasional whisperings that rose from the children. ‘And how’s the one that had the bad cough?’ asked Willy, pursuing his conversation with her with his invariable ease and dexterity. ‘Honor her name is, isn’t it?’—‘See, now, how well he remembers!’ replied Mrs. Sweeny. ‘Indeed, she’s there back in the room, lyin’ these three days. Faith, I think ’tis like the decline she have, Masther Willy.’—‘Did you get the Doctor to her?’ said Willy. ‘I’ll give you a ticket, if you haven’t one.’—‘Oh, indeed, Docthor Kelly’s afther givin’ her a bottle, but shure I wouldn’t let her put it into her mouth at all. God-knows what’d be in it. Wasn’t I afther throwin’ a taste of it on the fire to thry what’d it do, and Phitz! says it, and up with it up the chimbley! Faith, I’d be in dread to give it to the child. Shure, if it done that in the fire, what’d it do in her inside?—‘Well, you’re a greater fool than I thought you were,’ said Willy, politely.—‘Maybe I am, faith,’ replied Mrs. Sweeny, with a loud laugh of enjoyment. ‘But, if she’s for dyin’, the crayture, she’ll die aisier without thim thrash of medicines; and if she’s for livin’, ’tisn’t thrusting to them she’ll be. Shure, God is good, God is good——’—‘Divil a betther!’ interjected old Sweeny, unexpectedly. It was the first time he had spoken, and having delivered himself of this trenchant observation, he relapsed into silence and the smackings at his pipe.”

But the tragic note is sounded in the close of “An Irish Cousin”—Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have never lost sight of the abiding dualism enshrined in Moore’s verse “Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eyes”—and it dominates their next novel, “Naboth’s Vineyard,” published in 1891, a sombre romance of the Land League days. Three years later they reached the summit of their achievement in “The Real Charlotte,” which still remains their masterpiece, though easily eclipsed in popularity by the irresistible drollery of “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” To begin with, it does not rely on the appeal to hunting people which in their later work won the heart of the English sportsman. It is a ruthlessly candid study of Irish provincial and suburban life; of the squalors of middle-class households; of garrison hacks and “underbred, finespoken,” florid squireens. But secondly and chiefly it repels the larger half of the novel-reading public by the fact that two women have here dissected the heart of one of their sex in a mood of unrelenting realism. While pointing out the pathos and humiliation of the thought that a soul can be stunted by the trivialities of personal appearance, they own to having set down Charlotte Mullen’s many evil qualities “without pity.” They approach their task in the spirit of Balzac. The book, as we shall see, is extraordinarily rich in both wit and humour, but Charlotte, who cannot control her ruling passion of avarice even in a death chamber, might have come straight out of the pages of the Comédie Humaine. Masking her greed, her jealousy and her cruelty under a cloak of loud affability and ponderous persiflage, she was a perfect specimen of the fausse bonne femme. Only her cats could divine the strange workings of her mind:

“The movements of Charlotte’s character, for it cannot be said to possess the power of development, were akin to those of some amphibious thing whose strong darting course under the water is only marked by a bubble or two, and it required almost an animal instinct to note them. Every bubble betrayed the creature below, as well as the limitations of its power of hiding itself, but people never thought of looking out for these indications in Charlotte, or even suspected that she had anything to conceal. There was an almost blatant simplicity about her, a humorous rough-and-readiness which, joined to her literary culture, proved business capacity, and her dreaded temper, seemed to leave no room for any further aspect, least of all of a romantic kind.”

Yet romance of a sort was at the root of Charlotte’s character. She had been in love with Roddy Lambert, a showy, handsome, selfish squireen, before he married for money. She had disguised her tenderness under a bluff camaraderie during his first wife’s lifetime, and hastened Mrs. Lambert’s death by inflaming her suspicions of Roddy’s fidelity. It was only when Charlotte was again foiled by Lambert’s second marriage to her own niece that her love was turned to gall, and she plotted to compass his ruin.

The authors deal faithfully with Francie FitzPatrick, Charlotte’s niece, but an element of compassion mingles with their portraiture. Charlotte had robbed Francie of a legacy, and compounded with her conscience by inviting the girl to stay with her at Lismoyle. Any change was a god-send to poor Francie, who, being an orphan, lived in Dublin with another aunt, a kindly but feckless creature whose eyes were not formed to perceive dirt nor her nose to apprehend smells, and whose ideas of economy was “to indulge in no extras of soap or scrubbing brushes, and to feed her family on strong tea and indifferent bread and butter, in order that Ida’s and Mabel’s hats might be no whit less ornate than those of their neighbours.” In this dingy household Francie had grown up, lovely as a Dryad, brilliantly indifferent to the serious things of life, with a deplorable Dublin accent, ingenuous, unaffected and inexpressibly vulgar. She captivates men of all sorts: Roddy Lambert, who lunched on hot beefsteak pie and sherry; Mr. Hawkins, an amorous young soldier, who treated her with a bullying tenderness and jilted her for an English heiress; and Christopher Dysart, a scholar, a gentleman, and the heir to a baronetcy, who was ruined by self-criticism and diffidence. Francie respected Christopher and rejected him; was thrown over by Hawkins, whom she loved; and married Roddy Lambert, her motives being “poverty, aimlessness, bitterness of soul and instinctive leniency towards any man who liked her.” Francie had already exasperated Charlotte by refusing Christopher Dysart: by marrying Lambert she dealt a death-blow to her hopes and drove her into the path of vengeance.

But the story is not only engrossing as a study of vulgarity that is touched with pathos, of the vindictive jealousy of unsunned natures, of the cowardice of the selfish and the futility of the intellectually effete. It is a treasure-house of good sayings, happy comments, ludicrous incidents. When Francie returned to Dublin we read how one of her cousins, “Dottie, unfailing purveyor of diseases to the family, had imported German measles from her school.” When Charlotte, nursing her wrath, went to inform the servant at Lambert’s house of the return of her master with his new wife, the servant inquired “with cold resignation” whether it was the day after to-morrow:—

“‘It is, me poor woman, it is,’ replied Charlotte, in the tone of facetious intimacy that she reserved for other people’s servants. ‘You’ll have to stir your stumps to get the house ready for them.’—‘The house is cleaned down and ready for them as soon as they like to walk into it,’ replied Eliza Hackett, with dignity, ‘and if the new lady faults the drawing-room chimbley for not being swep, the master will know it’s not me that’s to blame for it, but the sweep that’s gone dhrilling with the Mileetia.’”

Each of the members of the Dysart family is hit off in some memorable phrase; Sir Benjamin, the old and irascible paralytic, “who had been struck down on his son’s coming of age by a paroxysm of apoplectic jealousy “; the admirable and unselfish Pamela with her “pleasant anxious voice”; Christopher, who believed that if only he could “read the ‘Field,’ and had a more spontaneous habit of cursing,” he would be an ideal country gentleman; and Lady Dysart, who was “a clever woman, a renowned solver of acrostics in her society paper, and a holder of strong opinions as to the prophetic meaning of the Pyramids.” With her “a large yet refined bonhomie” took the place of tact, but being an Englishwoman she was “constitutionally unable to discern perfectly the subtle grades of Irish vulgarity.” Sometimes the authors throw away the scenario for a whole novel in a single paragraph, as in this compressed summary of the antecedents of Captain Cursiter:

“Captain Cursiter was ‘getting on’ as captains go, and he was the less disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in that he had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences. It had happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes gradually opening to its drawbacks until, a few years before, the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness had brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, he committed the imbecility of horsewhipping him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment, he exchanged into the infantry with the settled conviction that all women were liars.”

Nouns and verbs are the bones and sinews of style; it is in the use of epithets and adjectives that the artist is shown; and Miss Martin and Miss Somerville never make a mistake. An episode in the life of one of Charlotte’s pets—a cockatoo—is described as occurring when the bird was “a sprightly creature of some twenty shrieking summers.” We read of cats who stared “with the expressionless but wholly alert scrutiny of their race”; of the “difficult revelry” of Lady Dysart’s garden party when the men were in a hopeless minority and the more honourable women sat on a long bench in “midge-bitten dulness.” Such epithets are not decorative, they heighten the effect of the picture. Where adjectives are not really needed, Miss Martin and Miss Somerville can dispense with them altogether and yet attain a deadly precision, as when they describe an Irish beggar as “a bundle of rags with a cough in it,” or note a characteristic trait of Roddy Lambert by observing that “he was a man in whom jealousy took the form of reviling the object of his affections, if by so doing he could detach his rivals”—a modern instance of “displiceas aliis, sic ego tutus ero.” When Roddy Lambert went away after his first wife’s funeral we learn that he “honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion.” These felicities abound on every page; while the turn of phrase of the peasant speech is caught with a fidelity which no other Irish writer has ever surpassed. When Judy Lee, a poor old woman who had taken an unconscionable time in dying was called by one of the gossips who had attended her wake “as nice a woman as ever threw a tub of clothes on the hills,” and complimented for having “battled it out well,” Norry the Boat replied sardonically:—

“Faith, thin, an’ if she did die itself she was in the want of it; sure, there isn’t a winther since her daughther wint to America that she wasn’t anointed a couple of times. I’m thinking the people th’ other side o’ death will be throuncin’ her for keepin’ them waitin’ on her this way.”

Humour is never more effective than when it emerges from a serious situation. Tragedy jostles comedy in life, and the greatest dramatists and romancers have made wonderful use of this abrupt alternation. There are many painful and diverting scenes in “The Real Charlotte,” but none in which both elements are blended so effectively as the story of Julia Duffy’s last pilgrimage. Threatened with eviction from her farm by the covetous intrigues of Charlotte, she leaves her sick bed to appeal to her landlord, and when half dead with fatigue falls in with the insane Sir Benjamin, to be driven away with grotesque insults. On her way home she calls in at Charlotte’s house, only to find Christopher Dysart reading Rossetti’s poems to Francie FitzPatrick, who has just timidly observed, in reply to her instructor’s remark that the hero is a pilgrim, “I know a lovely song called ‘The Pilgrim of Love’; of course, it wasn’t the same thing as what you were reading, but it was awfully nice, too.” This interlude is intensely ludicrous, but its cruel incongruity only heightens the misery of what has gone before and what follows.

“The Silver Fox,” which appeared in 1897, need not detain us long, though it is a little masterpiece in its way, vividly contrasting the limitations of the sport-loving temperament with the ineradicable superstitions of the Irish peasantry. Impartial as ever, the authors have here achieved a felicity of phrase to which no other writers of hunting novels have ever approached. Imagination’s widest stretch cannot picture Surtees or Mr. Nat Gould describing an answer being given “with that level politeness of voice which is the distilled essence of a perfected anger,” or comparing a fashionable Amazon with the landscape in such words as these:—

“Behind her the empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that frittered a myriad of sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and the gray and faint purple of the naked wood beyond it. It seemed too great a background for her powdered cheek and her upward glances at her host.”

But the atmosphere of “The Silver Fox” is sombre, and a sporting novel which is at once serious and of a fine literary quality must necessarily appeal to a limited audience. The problem is solved to perfection in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” a series of loosely-knit episodes which, after running a serial course in the “Badminton Magazine,” were republished in book form towards the close of 1899. There is only one chapter to cloud the otherwise unintermittent hilarity of the whole recital. The authors have dispensed with comment, and rely chiefly on dialogue, incident, and their intimate and precise knowledge of horses, and horse-copers of both sexes. An interested devotion to the noble animal is here shown to be the last infirmity of noble minds, for old Mrs. Knox, with the culture of a grande dame and the appearance of a refined scarecrow, went cub-hunting in a bath chair. In such a company a young sailor whose enthusiasm for the chase had been nourished by the hirelings of Malta, and his eye for points probably formed on circus posters, had little chance of making a good bargain at Drumcurran horse fair:—

“‘The fellow’s asking forty-five pounds for her,’ said Bernard Shute to Miss Sally; ‘she’s a nailer to gallop. I don’t think it’s too much.’—‘Her grandsire was the Mountain Hare,’ said the owner of the mare, hurrying up to continue her family history, ‘and he was the grandest horse in the four baronies. He was forty-two years of age when he died, and they waked him the same as ye’d wake a Christian. They had whisky and porther—and bread—and a piper in it.’—‘Thim Mountain Hare colts is no great things,’ interrupted Mr. Shute’s groom, contemptuously. ‘I seen a colt once that was one of his stock, and if there was forty men and their wives, and they after him with sticks, he wouldn’t lep a sod of turf.’—‘Lep, is it!’ ejaculated the owner in a voice shrill with outrage. ‘You may lead that mare out through the counthry, and there isn’t a fence in it that she wouldn’t go up to it as indepindent as if she was going to her bed, and your honour’s ladyship knows that dam well, Miss Knox.’—‘You want too much money for her, McCarthy,’ returned Miss Sally, with her air of preternatural wisdom. ‘God pardon you, Miss Knox! Sure a lady like you knows well that forty-five pounds is no money for that mare. Forty-five pounds!’ He laughed. ‘It’d be as good for me to make her a present to the gentleman all out as take three farthings less for her! She’s too grand entirely for a poor farmer like me, and if it wasn’t for the long, weak family I have, I wouldn’t part with her under twice the money.’—‘Three fine lumps of daughters in America paying his rent for him,’ commented Flurry in the background. ‘That’s the long, weak family.’”

The turn of phrase in Irish conversation has never been reproduced in print with greater fidelity, and there is hardly a page in the book without some characteristic Hibernianism such as “Whisky as pliable as new milk,” or the description of a horse who was a “nice, flippant jumper,” or a bandmaster who was “a thrifle fulsome after his luncheon,” or a sweep who “raised tallywack and tandem all night round the house to get at the chimbleys.” The narrative reaches its climax in the chapter which relates the exciting incidents of Lisheen races at second-hand. Major Yeates and his egregious English visitor Mr. Leigh Kelway, an earnest Radical publicist, having failed to reach the scene, are sheltering from the rain in a wayside public-house where they are regaled with an account of the races by Slipper, the dissipated but engaging huntsman of the local pack of hounds. The close of the meeting was a steeplechase in which “Bocock’s owld mare,” ridden by one Driscoll, was matched against a horse ridden by another local sportsman named Clancy, and Slipper, who favoured Driscoll, and had taken up his position at a convenient spot on the course, thus describes his mode of encouraging the mare:

“‘Skelp her, ye big brute!’ says I. ‘What good’s in ye that ye aren’t able to skelp her?’... Well, Mr. Flurry, and gintlemen,... I declare to ye when owld Bocock’s mare heard thim roars she stretched out her neck like a gandher, and when she passed me out she give a couple of grunts and looked at me as ugly as a Christian. ‘Hah!’ says I, givin’ her a couple o’ dhraws o’ th’ ash plant across the butt o’ the tail, the way I wouldn’t blind her, ‘I’ll make ye grunt!’ says I, ‘I’ll nourish ye!’ I knew well she was very frightful of th’ ash plant since the winter Tommeen Sullivan had her under a sidecar. But now, in place of havin’ any obligations to me, ye’d be surprised if ye heard the blaspheemious expressions of that young boy that was riding her; and whether it was over-anxious he was, turning around the way I’d hear him cursin’, or whether it was some slither or slide came to owld Bocock’s mare, I dunno, but she was bet up against the last obstackle but two, and before you could say ‘Shnipes,’ she was standin’ on her two ears beyant in th’ other field. I declare to ye, on the vartue of me oath, she stood that way till she reconnoithered what side Driscoll would fall, an’ she turned about then and rolled on him as cosy as if he was meadow grass!’ Slipper stopped short; the people in the doorway groaned appreciatively; Mary Kate murmured ‘The Lord save us’—‘The blood was druv out through his nose and ears,’ continued Slipper, with a voice that indicated the cream of the narration, ‘and you’d hear his bones crackin’ on the ground! You’d have pitied the poor boy.’—‘Good heavens!’ said Leigh Kelway, sitting up very straight in his chair. ‘Was he hurt, Slipper?’ asked Flurry, casually. ‘Hurt is it?’ echoed Slipper, in high scorn, ‘killed on the spot!’ He paused to relish the effect of the denouement on Leigh Kelway. ‘Oh, divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and, indeed, Mr. Flurry, it’s what we were all sayin’, it was a great pity your honour was not there for the likin’ you had for Driscoll.’”

Leigh Kelway, it may be noted, is the lineal descendant of the pragmatic English under-secretary in “Charles O’Malley,” who, having observed that he had never seen an Irish wake, was horrified by the prompt offer of his Galway host, a notorious practical joker, to provide a corpse on the spot. But this is only one of the instances of parallelism in which the later writers though showing far greater restraint and fidelity to type, have illustrated the continuance of temperamental qualities which Lever and his forerunner Maxwell—the author of “Wild Sports of the West”—portrayed in a more extravagant form. On the other hand it would be impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lever’s thrasonical narrator heroes and Major Yeates, R.M., whose fondness for sport is allied to a thorough consciousness of his own infirmities as a sportsman. There is no heroic figure in “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” but the characters are all lifelike, and at least half-a-dozen—“Flurry” Knox, his cousin Sally, and his old grandmother, Mrs. Knox, of Aussolas, Slipper, Mrs. Cadogan, and the incomparable Maria—form as integral a part of our circle of acquaintance as if we had known them in real life. “The Real Charlotte” is a greater achievement, but the R.M. is a surer passport to immortality.

The further instalment of “Experiences,” published a few years later did not escape the common lot of sequels. They were brilliantly written, but one was more conscious of the excellence of the manner than in any of their other works. The two volumes of short stories and sketches published in 1903 and 1906 under the titles of “All on the Irish Shore” and some “Irish Yesterdays” respectively show some new and engaging aspects of the genius of the collaborators. There is a chapter called “Children of the Captivity,” in which the would-be English humorist’s conception of Irish humour is dealt with faithfully—as it deserves to be. The essay is also remarkable for the passage in which they set down once and for all the true canons for the treatment of dialect. Pronunciation and spelling, as they point out, are, after all, of small account in its presentment:—

“The vitalising power is in the rhythm of the sentence, the turn of phrase, the knowledge of idiom, and of, beyond all, the attitude of mind.... The shortcoming is, of course, trivial to those who do not suffer because of it, but want of perception of word and phrase and turn of thought means more than mere artistic failure, it means want of knowledge of the wayward and shrewd and sensitive minds that are at the back of the dialect. The very wind that blows softly over brown acres of bog carries perfumes and sounds that England does not know; the women digging the potato-land are talking of things that England does not understand. The question that remains is whether England will ever understand.”

The hunting sketches in these volumes include the wonderful “Patrick Day’s Hunt,” which is a masterpiece in the high bravura of the brogue. Another is noticeable for a passage on the affection inspired by horses. When Johnny Connolly heard that his mistress was driven to sell the filly he had trained and nursed so carefully, he did not disguise his disappointment:

“‘Well, indeed, that’s too bad, miss,’ said Johnny comprehendingly. ‘There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went to America. God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I’d look at her winkers hanging on the wall I’d have to cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o’ the fair at Enniscar, an’ I was talking to a man an’ we coming down Dangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! An’ I didn’t look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew me talking, an’ she turned into me with the cart. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she’d be kissing me. Be dam, but I had to cry. An’ the world wouldn’t stir her out o’ that till I’d lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there’s nothing would rise your heart like a horse!’”

And if horses are irresistible, so are Centaurs. That is the moral to be drawn from “Dan Russel the Fox,” the latest work from the pen of Miss Somerville and Miss Martin, in which the rival claims of culture and foxhunting are subjected to a masterly analysis.

The joint authors of the “R.M.” have paid forfeit for achieving popularity by being expected to repeat their first resounding success. Happily the pressure of popular demand has not impaired the artistic excellence of their work, though we cannot help thinking that if they had been left to themselves they might have given us at least one other novel on the lines of “The Real Charlotte.” Their later work, again, has been subjected to the ordeal, we do not say of conscious imitation, but of comparison with books which would probably have never been written or would have been written on another plan, but for the success of the “R.M.” To regard this rivalry as serious would be, in the opinion of the present writer, an abnegation of the critical faculty. But we have not yet done with Irish women humorists. Miss Eleanor Alexander, the daughter of the Poet Archbishop of Armagh and his poet wife has given us in her “Lady Anne’s Walk,” a volume of a genre as hard to define as it has been easy to welcome, at times delicately allusive, now daringly funny—an interblending of tender reminiscences and lively fancy, reminding us perhaps most of old Irish music itself with its sweet, strange and sudden changes of mood. Humorous contrasts of the kind will be found in the chapter entitled “Old Tummus and the Battle of Scarva,” printed in these pages.

Another woman contestant for humorous literary honours was the late Miss Charlotte O’Conor Eccles, represented in this volume by the moving story of “King William.” Her “Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore” and “A Matrimonial Lottery” achieved popularity by their droll situations and exuberant fun, but her “Aliens of the West” contained work of much finer quality. She lets us behind the shutters of Irish country shop life in a most convincing manner, and the characters drawn from her Toomevara are as true to type as those of Miss Barlow. The disillusionment of Molly Devine “The Voteen,” with her commonplace, not to say vulgar surroundings, on her return from the convent school with its superior refinements, her refusal to marry so-called eligible, but to her, repulsive suitors, encouraged by her mother and stepfather and her final resolve to become a nun in order to escape further persecution of the kind, is told with convincing poignancy. A variant of this theme is treated with even more power and pathos in “Tom Connolly’s Daughter,” a story which we should like to see reprinted in separate form as it sets one thinking furiously, and its general circulation might do much to correct the love and marriage relations between young people in provincial Ireland.

And yet a final name has to be added to the long roll of Irishwomen who have won distinction as writers of fiction, beginning with Miss Edgeworth whose Irish writings will receive separate treatment in a volume in “Every Irishman’s Library” at the hands of Mr. Malcolm Cotter Seton. Championed by Canon Hannay himself, who furnishes a genial, whimsical, provocative introduction to her “The Folk of Furry Farm,” Miss Purdon there describes what, from the point of view of romance, is a new part of Ireland, for West Leinster is a land more familiar to fox-hunters than to poets. Miss Purdon has plenty of independence, but it is not the frigid impartiality of the student who contemplates the vagaries and sufferings of human nature like a connoisseur or collector. She shows her detachment by giving us a faithful picture of Irish peasant society without ever once breathing a syllable of politics, or remotely alluding to the equipment and machinery of modern life. The dramatis personæ are all simple folk, most of them poor; the entire action passes within a radius of a few miles from a country village; and only on one occasion, and at second hand do we catch so much as a glimpse of “the quality.” Throughout, Miss Purdon relies on the turn of the phrase to give the spirit of the dialect, and uses only a minimum of phonetic spelling.

That is the true and artistic method. But Miss Purdon is much more than a collector or coiner of picturesque and humorous phrases. She has a keen eye for character, a genuine gift of description and a vein of pure and unaffected sentiment; indeed, her whole volume is strangely compounded of mirth and melancholy, though the dominant impression left by its perusal is one of confidence in the essential kindliness of Irish nature, and the goodness and gentleness of Irish women.

But so far, the only formidable competitor Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have encountered is the genial writer who chooses to veil his identity under the freakish pseudonym of “George A. Birmingham.” Canon Hannay—for there can be no longer any breach of literary etiquette in alluding to him by his real name—had already made his mark as a serious or semi-serious observer of the conflicting tendencies, social and political, of the Ireland of to-day before he diverged into the paths of fantastic and frivolous comedy. “The Seething Pot,” “Hyacinth,” and “Benedict Kavanagh” are extremely suggestive and dispassionate studies of various aspects of the Irish temperament, but it is enough for our present purpose to note the consequences of a request addressed to Canon Hannay by two young ladies somewhere about the year 1907 that he would “write a story about treasure buried on an island.” The fact is recorded in the dedication of “Spanish Gold,” his response to the appeal, and the first of that series of jocund extravaganzas which have earned for him the gratitude of all who regard amusement as the prime object of fiction.

The contrast between his methods and those of the joint authors discussed above is apparent at every turn. He maintains the impartiality which marked his serious novels in his treatment of all classes of the community, but it is the impartiality not of a detached and self-effacing observer, but of a genial satirist. His knowledge of the Ireland that he knows is intimate and precise, and is shown by a multiplicity of illuminating details and an effective use of local colour. But the co-operation of non-Irish characters is far more essential to the development of his plots than in the case of the novels of Miss Somerville and Miss Martin. The mainspring of their stories is Irish right through. Canon Hannay depends on a situation which might have occurred just as well in England or America, while employing the conditions of Irish life to give it a characteristic twist or series of twists. Even his most notable creation, the Reverend Joseph John Meldon, is too restlessly energetic to be an altogether typical Irishman, to say nothing of his unusual attitude in politics: “Nothing on earth would induce me to mix myself up with any party.” An Irishman of immense mental activity, living in Ireland, and yet wholly unpolitical is something of a freak. Again, while the tone of his books is admirably clean and wholesome, and while his frankly avowed distaste for the squalors of the problem novel will meet with general sympathy, there is no denying that his treatment of the “love interest” is for the most part perfunctory or even farcical. Again, in regard to style, he differs widely from the authors of the “R.M.” Their note is a vivid conciseness; his the easy charm of a flowing pen, always unaffected, often picturesque and even eloquent, never offending, but seldom practising the art of omission.

But it is ungrateful to subject to necessarily damaging comparisons an author to whom we owe the swift passage of so many pleasant hours. It might be hard to find the exact counterpart of “J.J.” in the flesh, but he is none the less an unforgettable person, this athletic, exuberant, unkempt curate, unscrupulous but not unprincipled, who lied fluently, not for any mean purpose, but for the joy of mystification, or in order to carry out his plans, or justify his arguments. His strange friendship with Major Kent, a retired English officer, a natty martinet, presents no difficulties on the principle of extremes meeting, and thus from the start we are presented with the spectacle of the reluctant but helpless Major, hypnotised by the persuasive tongue of the curate, and dragged at his heels into all sorts of grotesque and humiliating adventures, and all for the sake of a quiet life. For “J.J.’s” methods, based, according to his own account, on careful observation and a proper use of the scientific imagination, involve the assumption by his reluctant confederate of a succession of entirely imaginary roles.

But if “J.J.” was a trying ally, he was a still more perplexing antagonist, one of his favourite methods of “scoring off” an opponent being to represent him to be something other than he really was to third persons. When the process brings the curate and the Major into abrupt conflict with two disreputable adventurers, he defends resort to extreme methods on grounds of high morality. Burglary, theft and abduction become the simple duty of every well-disposed person when viewed as a necessary means of preventing selfish, depraved and fundamentally immoral people from acquiring wealth which the well-disposed might otherwise secure.

“J.J.’s” crowning achievement is his conquest of Mr. Willoughby, the Chief Secretary, by a masterly vindication of his conduct on the lines of Pragmatism: “a statement isn’t a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful—it’s true.” “J.J.” only once meets his match—in Father Mulcrone, the parish priest of Inishmore, who sums up the philosophy of government in his criticism of Mr. Willoughby’s successor: “A fellow that starts off by thinking himself clever enough to know what’s true and what isn’t will do no good for Ireland. A simple-hearted innocent kind of man has a better chance.”

Needless to say, the rival treasure-hunters, both of them rogues, are bested at all points by the two padres, while poetic justice is satisfied by the fact that the treasure falls into the adhesive hands of the poor islanders, and “J.J.’s” general integrity is fully re-established in the epilogue, where, transplanted to an English colliery village, he devotes his energies to the conversion of agnostics, blasphemers and wife-beaters.

The extravagance of the plot is redeemed by the realism of the details; by acute sidelights on the tortuous workings of the native mind, with its strange blending of shrewdness and innocence; by faithful reproductions of the talk of those “qui amant omnia dubitantius loqui” and habitually say “it might” instead of “yes.” And there are delightful digressions on the subject of relief works, hits at the Irish-speaking movement, pungent classifications of the visitors to the wild West of Ireland, and now, and again, in the rare moments when the author chooses to be serious, passages marked by fine insight and sympathy. Such is the picture of Thomas O’Flaherty Pat, the patriarch of the treasure island:

“An elderly man and five out of the nine children resident on the island stood on the end of the pier when Meldon and the Major landed. The man was clad in a very dirty white flannel jacket and a pair of yellowish flannel trousers, which hung in a tattered fringe round his naked feet and ankles. He had a long white beard and grey hair, long as a woman’s, drawn straight back from his forehead. The hair and beard were both unkempt and matted. But the man held himself erect and looked straight at the strangers through great dark eyes. His hands, though battered and scarred with toil were long and shapely. His face had a look of dignity, of a certain calm and satisfied superiority. Men of this kind are to be met with here and there among the Connacht peasantry. They are in reality children of a vanishing race, of a lost civilisation, a bygone culture. They watch the encroachments of another race and new ideas with a sort of sorrowful contempt. It is as if understanding and despising what they see around them, they do not consider it worth while to try to explain themselves; as if, possessing a wisdom of their own, an æsthetic joy of which the modern world knows nothing, they are content to let both die with them rather than attempt to teach them to men of a wholly different outlook upon life.”

The element of extravaganza is more strongly marked in the plot of “The Search Party,” which deals with the kidnapping of a number of innocent people by an anti-militant anarchist who has set up a factory of explosives in the neighbourhood of Ballymoy. “J.J.” does not appear in propriâ personâ, but most of his traits are to be found in Dr. O’Grady, an intelligent but happy-go-lucky young doctor. The most attractive person in the story, however, is Lord Manton, a genially cynical peer with highly original views on local government and the advantages of unpopularity. Thus, when he did not want Patsy Devlin, the drunken smith, to be elected inspector of sheep-dipping, he strongly supported his candidature for the following reasons:—

“There’s a lot of stupid talk nowadays about the landlords having lost all their power in the country. It’s not a bit true. They have plenty of power, more than they ever had, if they only knew how to use it. All I have to do if I want a particular man not to be appointed to anything is to write a strong letter in his favour to the Board of Guardians or the County Council, or whatever body is doing the particular job that happens to be on hand at the time. The League comes down on my man at once, and he hasn’t the ghost of a chance.”

Excellent, too, is the digression on the comparative commonness of earls in Ireland, where untitled people tend to disappear while earls survive, though they are regarded much as ordinary people. Canon Hannay makes great play as usual with the humours of Irish officialdom, and his obiter dicta on the mental outlook of police officers are shrewd as well as entertaining. District-Inspector Goddard had undoubted social gifts, but he was an inefficient officer, being handicapped by indolence and a great sense of humour. There is something attractive, again, about Miss Blow, the handsome, resolute, prosaic young Englishwoman whose heroic efforts to trace her vanished lover are baffled at every turn. Everybody in Ballymoy told her lies, with the result that they seemed to her heartless and cruel when in reality they wished to spare her feelings. Others of the dramatis personæ verge on caricature, but the story has many exhilarating moments.

Exhilarating, too, is “The Major’s Niece,” which is founded on an extremely improbable imbroglio. So precise and business-like a man as Major Kent was not likely to make a mistake of seven or eight years in the age of a visitor especially when the visitor happened to be his own sister’s child. However, the initial improbability may be readily condoned in view of the entertaining sequel. “J.J.” reappears in his best form, Marjorie is a most engaging tomboy, and the fun never flags for an instant. But much as we love “J.J.,” we reluctantly recognise in “The Simpkins Plot” that you can have too much of a good thing, and that a man who would be a nuisance as a neighbour in real life is in danger of becoming a bore in a novel. At the same time the digressions and irrelevancies are as good as ever. It is pleasant to be reminded of such facts as that wedding cake is invariably eaten by the Irish post office officials, or to listen to Doctor O’Donoghue on the nutrition of infants:

“You can rear a child, whether it has the whooping cough or not, on pretty near anything, so long as you give it enough of whatever it is you do give it.”

Canon Hannay excels in the conduct of an absurd or paradoxical proposition, but he needs a word of friendly caution against undue reliance on the mechanism of the practical joke. Perhaps his English cure has demoralized “J.J.,” but we certainly prefer him as he was in Inishgowlan, convinced by practical experience that he would rather do any mortal thing than try to mind a baby and make butter at the same time.

Of Canon Hannay’s later novels, two demand special attention and for widely different reasons. In “The Red Hand of Ulster,” reverting to politics—politics, moreover, of the most explosive kind—he achieved the well-nigh impossible in at once doing full justice to the dour sincerity of the Orange North, and yet conciliating Nationalist susceptibilities. In “The Inviolable Sanctuary,” he has shown that a first-rate public-school athlete, whose skill in pastime is confined to ball games cuts a sorry figure alongside of a chit of a girl who can handle a boat. This salutary if humiliating truth is enforced not from any desire to further Feminist principles—Canon Hannay’s attitude towards women betrays no belief in the equality of the sexes—but because he cannot be bothered with the sentimentality of conventional love-making. It may be on this account that he more than once assigns a leading role to an ingenuous young Amazon into whose ken the planet of love will not swim for another four or five years.

During the last thirty years the alleged decadence of Irish humour has been a frequent theme of pessimistic critics. Various causes have been invoked to account for the phenomenon, which, when dispassionately considered, amounted to this, that the rollicking novel of incident and adventure had died with Lever. So, for the matter of that, had novels of the “Frank Fairleigh” type, with their authors. The ascendancy of Parnell and the régime of the Land League did not make for gaiety, yet even these influences were powerless to eradicate the inherent absurdities of Irish life, and the authors of the “R.M.” entered on a career which has been a triumphal disproval of this allegation as far back as 1889. At their best they have interpreted normal Irishmen and Irishwomen, gentle and simple, with unsurpassed fidelity and sympathy. But to award them the supremacy in this genre both as realists and as writers does not detract from the success won in a different sphere by Canon Hannay. His goal is less ambitious and aim is less unfaltering, but as an improvisor of whimsical situations and an ironic commentator on the actualities of Irish life he has invented a new form of literary entertainment which has the double merit of being at once diverting and instructive.

But as we believe this volume will sufficiently show, though these three novelists have so far transcended the achievements of contemporary writers on Irish life, they are being followed at no long distance by younger writers, for whom they have helped to find a public and in whose more mature achievements they may have to acknowledge a serious literary rivalry. We have dealt with the women writers to be found in this new group. It remains for us to criticise the work of the men who belong to it.

Mr. John Stevenson, otherwise Pat Carty, whose Rhymes have been so charmingly set to music by Sir Charles Stanford, and so delightfully sung by Mr. Plunket-Greene, possesses a whimsical gift, both in prose and verse, which gives fresh evidence of the awakening of an Ulster school of humorists. His “Boy in the Country” is descriptive of a child’s companionship in the country with farmers and their wives and servants, his falling under the spell of a beautiful lady whose romance he assists like a true young cavalier, and his association with that formidable open-air imp, Jim, a little dare-devil poacher and hard swearer, who sailed his boats with strips cut from his shirt tails and could give a canting minister as good as he got, instead of cowering under his preachment. The manners and customs of the farming class in the “Nine Glens of Antrim” could not be more simply and humorously told, and when the author divagates into such sketches as “The Wise Woman and the Wise Man,” and breaks into occasional verse faithfully descriptive of his natural surroundings, he is equally delightful.

Of course, he is not as old a craftsman as Mr. Shan Bullock, whose dry drollery has given the readers of his novels and stories so much pleasure, and whose serious purpose and close observation of Northern Irish character are so well recognised by all serious students of Irish life. He is represented in the volume by “The Wee Tea-Table,” a life-like sketch taken from his “Irish Pastorals.”

Mr. Frank Mathew, whose first literary work was his biography of his illustrious grand-uncle Father Mathew, has also written some admirable stories of Irish life, which appeared in “The Idler,” and have been collected in a volume called “At the Rising of the Moon.” “The Last Race,” by which he is represented in this volume, will give our readers a good taste of his graphic quality.

Mr. Padric Colum will speak for himself on Irish fiction in his introduction to an edition of Gerald Griffin’s “Collegians,” which is to form part of this series of Irish volumes. His finely distinctive literary style and intimate knowledge of Irish peasant life so clearly exhibited in his poems, plays and stories, is shown in these pages by that remarkable sketch of “Maelshaughlinn at the Fair,” written with the elemental abandon of Synge himself.

Finally, in absolute contrast with Mr. Colum’s idealistic work, comes the humorous realism of Lynn Doyle’s pictures of the Ulster Peasantry. But their efforts to over-reach one another, their love of poaching, and their marriage operations, afford the author of “Ballygullion” a congenial field for the display of his observation, his high spirits, and his genuine sense of the ridiculous. His comedy of “The Ballygullion Creamery Society” which fitly concludes this volume, is good, hearty, wholesome fun, and we only trust, in Ireland’s best interests, that its official stamp, a wreath of shamrocks and orange lilies—is not merely an unlikely if amiable suggestion, but is yet to have its counterpart in reality.

Preface.

The fiction of which this volume consists is in part fabulous in character, in part descriptive of actual Irish life upon its lighter side.

The Heroic stories and Folk-tales are, on chronological grounds, printed early in the book and are then followed by extracts from the writings of the Irish novelists of the first half and third quarter of the 19th Century—Maginn, Lever, Lover, and LeFanu.

Then come the writers who have made their mark in recent times, such as Miss Jane Barlow, the authors of “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,” and Canon Hannay, and lastly those of a new school amongst whom may be named Mr. Padraic Colum, “Lynn Doyle,” and Miss K. Purdon.

This may be said to be the general order of the contents of “Humours of Irish Life.” But where artistic propriety, suggesting contrasts of local colour and changes of subject, has called for it, a strict chronological sequence has been departed from; yet enough of it remains to enable the critic to observe what we believe to be a change for the better, both in the taste and technique of these Irish stories and sketches, as time has gone by.

It remains for us to express our cordial obligations to the following authors and publishers for the use of copyright material. To Messrs. Macmillan and Miss B. Hunt for the story of “McCarthy of Connacht,” from “Folk Tales of Breffny”; to Canon Hannay and Messrs. Methuen for chapters from “Spanish Gold” and “The Adventures of Dr. Whitty,” entitled “J. J. Meldon and the Chief Secretary,” and “The Interpreters”; to Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole and Mr. Fisher Unwin for “The Meet of the Beagles,” from the novel of “Patsy”; to Miss O’Conor Eccles and Messrs. Cassell for “King William,” a story in the late Miss Charlotte O’Conor Eccles’s “Aliens of the West”; to Miss Eleanor Alexander and Mr. Edward Arnold for “Old Tummus and the Battle of Scarva,” from “Lady Anne’s Walk,” and to the same publisher and to Mr. John Stevenson for a chapter entitled “The Wise Woman” from “A Boy in the Country”; to Messrs. James Duffy and Sons for Kickham’s Story of “The Thrush and the Blackbird”; to Mr. William Percy French for “The First Lord Liftenant”; to Mr. Frank Mathew for “Their Last Race,” from his volume “At the rising of the Moon”; to Miss K. Purdon for a chapter entitled “The Game Leg,” from her novel “The Folk of Furry Farm,” and to its publishers, Messrs. James Nisbet and Co. Ltd.; to Dr. Douglas Hyde for his Folk-tale of “The Piper and the Puca”; to Martin Ross and Miss E. Œ. Somerville and Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., for the use of two chapters—“Trinket’s Colt” and “The Boat’s Share”—from “Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.” and “Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.” respectively; to Mr. Shan Bullock for “The Wee Tea Table,” from his “Irish Pastorals”; to Miss Jane Barlow and Messrs. Hutchinson for “Quin’s Rick,” from “Doings and Dealings,” and for “A Test of Truth,” from “Irish Neighbours”; to Mr. Padraic Colum for his sketch “Maelshaughlinn at the Fair,” from his “A Year of Irish Life,” and to the publishers of the book, Messrs. Mills and Boon, Ltd.; to its author, “Lynn Doyle,” and its publishers, Maunsel & Co., for “The Ballygullion Creamery,” from “Ballygullion”; and to Mr. P. J. McCall and the proprietors of “The Shamrock” for the story “Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess.”

Finally, acknowledgment is due to the courtesy of the Proprietors and Editor of “The Quarterly Review” for leave to incorporate in the Introduction an article which appeared in the issue of that periodical for June, 1913.

CONTENTS

AUTHORS REPRESENTED

HUMOURS OF IRISH LIFE

Daniel O’Rourke.

From Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland.”

By Dr. Maginn (1793-1842).

People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke, but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the walls of the Phooka’s tower. I knew the man well: he lived at the bottom of Hungry Hill. He told me his story thus:—

“I am often axed to tell it, sir, so that this is not the first time. The master’s son, you see, had come from beyond foreign parts; and sure enough there was a dinner given to all the people on the ground, gentle and simple, high and low, rich and poor. Well, we had everything of the best, and plenty of it; and we ate, and we drunk, and we danced. To make a long story short, I got, as a body may say, the same thing as tipsy almost. And so, as I was crossing the stepping-stones of the ford of Ballyasheenogh, I missed my foot, and souse I fell into the water. ‘Death alive!’ thought I, ‘I’ll be drowned now!’ However, I began swimming, swimming, swimming away for dear life, till at last I got ashore, somehow or other, but never the one of me can tell how, upon a dissolute island.

“I wandered, and wandered about there, without knowing where I wandered, until at last I got into a big bog. The moon was shining as bright as day, or your lady’s eyes, sir (with your pardon for mentioning her), and I looked east and west, and north and south, and every way, and nothing did I see but bog, bog, bog. I began to scratch me head, and sing the Ullagone—when all of a sudden the moon grew black, and I looked up, and saw something for all the world as if it was moving down between me and it, and I could not tell what it was. Down it came with a pounce, and looked at me full in the face; and what was it but an eagle? So he looked at me in the face, and says he to me, ‘Daniel O’Rourke,’ says he, ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, I thank you sir,’ says I; ‘I hope you’re well’; wondering out of my senses all the time how an eagle came to speak like a Christian. ‘What brings you here, Dan?’ says he. ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ says I: ‘only I wish I was safe home again.’ ‘Is it out of the island you want to go, Dan?’ says he. ‘’Tis, sir,’ says I. ‘Dan,’ says he, ‘though it is very improper for you to get drunk on Lady-day, yet, as you are a decent, sober man, who ‘tends Mass well, and never flings stones at me or mine, nor cries out after us in the fields—my life for yours,’ says he, ‘so get on my back and grip me well for fear you’d fall off, and I’ll fly you out of the bog.’ ‘I am afraid,’ says I, ‘your honour’s making game of me; for who ever heard of riding horseback on an eagle before?’ ‘’Pon the honour of a gentleman,’ says he, putting his right foot on his breast, ‘I am quite in earnest: and so now either take my offer or starve in the bog—besides, I see that your weight is sinking the stone.’

“It was true enough, as he said, for I found the stone every minute going from under me. ‘I thank your honour,’ says I, ‘for the loan of your civility; and I’ll take your kind offer.’ I therefore mounted upon the back of the eagle, and held him tight enough by the throat, and up he flew in the air like a lark. Little I knew the trick he was going to serve me. Up—up—up, dear knows how far he flew. ‘Why, then,’ said I to him—thinking he did not know the right road home—very civilly, because why? I was in his power entirely: ‘sir,’ says I, ‘please your honour’s glory, and with humble submission to your better judgment, if you’d fly down a bit, you’re now just over my cabin, and I could be put down there, and many thanks to your worship.’

“‘Arrah, Dan,’ said he, ‘do you think me a fool? Look down in the next field, and don’t you see two men and a gun? By my word it would be no joke to be shot this way, to oblige a drunken blackguard that I picked off a cowld stone in a bog.’ Well, sir, up he kept, flying, flying, and I asking him every minute to fly down, and all to no use. ‘Where in the world are you going, sir?’ says I to him. ‘Hold your tongue, Dan,’ says he: ‘mind your own business, and don’t be interfering with the business of other people.’

“At last where should we come to, but to the moon itself. Now, you can’t see it from this, but there is, or there was in my time, a reaping-hook sticking out of the side of the moon, this way’ (drawing the figure thus on the ground with the end of his stick).

“‘Dan,’ said the eagle, ‘I’m tired with this long fly; I had no notion ’twas so far.’ ‘And, my lord, sir,’ said I, ‘who in the world axed you to fly so far—was it I? did not I beg, and pray, and beseech you to stop half-an-hour ago?’ ‘There’s no use talking, Dan,’ says he; ‘I’m tired bad enough, so you must get off, and sit down on the moon until I rest myself.’ ‘Is it sit down on the moon?’ said I; ‘is it upon that little round thing, then? why, sure, I’d fall off in a minute, and be kilt and split, and smashed all to bits; you are a vile deceiver, so you are.’ ‘Not at all, Dan,’ said he; ‘you can catch fast hold of the reaping hook that’s sticking out of the side of the moon, and ‘twill keep you up.’ ‘I won’t, then,’ said I. ‘May be not,’ said he, quite quiet. ‘But if you don’t, my man, I shall just give you a shake, and one slap of my wing, and send you down to the ground, where every bone in your body will be smashed as small as a drop of dew on a cabbage-leaf in the morning.’ ‘Why, then, I’m in a fine way,’ said I to myself, ‘ever to have come along with the likes of you’; and so, giving him a hearty curse in Irish, for fear he’d know what I said, I got off his back, with a heavy heart, took hold of the reaping-hook, and sat down upon the moon, and a mighty cold seat it was, I can tell you that.

“When he had me fairly landed, he turned about on me, and said, ‘Good morning to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ said he; ‘I think I’ve nicked you fairly now. You robbed me nest last year’ (’twas true enough for him, but how he found it out is hard to say), ‘and in return you are freely welcome to cool your heels dangling upon the moon like a cockthrow.’

“‘Is that all, and is this the way you leave me, you brute, you?’ says I. ‘You ugly, unnatural baste, and is this the way you serve me at last?’ ’Twas all to no manner of use; he spread out his great, big wings, burst out laughing, and flew away like lightning. I bawled after him to stop; but I might have called and bawled for ever, without his minding me. Away he went, and I never saw him from that day to this—sorrow fly away with him! You may be sure I was in a disconsolate condition, and kept roaring out for the bare grief, when all at once a door opened right in the middle of the moon, creaking on its hinges as if it had not been opened for a month before—I suppose they never thought of greasing ‘em, and out there walks—who do you think, but the man in the moon himself? I knew him by his bush.

“‘Good morrow to you, Daniel O’Rourke,’ says he; ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, thank your honour,’ said I. ‘I hope your honour’s well.’ ‘What brought you here, Dan?’ said he. So I told him how it was.

“‘Dan,’ said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff, when I was done, ‘you must not stay here.’

“‘Indeed, sir,’ says I, ‘’tis much against my will I’m here at all; but how am I to go back?’ ‘That’s your business,’ said he; ‘Dan, mine is to tell you that you must not stay, so be off in less than no time.’ ‘I’m doing no harm,’ says I, ‘only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.’ ‘That’s what you must not do, Dan,’ says he. ‘Pray, sir,’ says I, ‘may I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor traveller lodging; I’m sure ’tis not so often you’re troubled with strangers coming to see you, for ’tis a long way.’ ‘I’m by myself, Dan,’ says he; ‘but you’d better let go the reaping hook.’ ‘And with your leave,’ says I, ‘I’ll not let go the grip, and the more you bids me, the more I won’t let go;—so I will.’ ‘You had better, Dan,’ says he again. ‘Why, then, my little fellow,’ says I, taking the whole weight of him with my eye from head to foot, ‘there are two words to that bargain; and I’ll not budge, but you may if you like.’ ‘We’ll see how that is to be,’ says he; and back he went, giving the door such a great bang after him (for it was plain he was huffed) that I thought the moon and all would fall down with it.

“Well, I was preparing myself to try strength with him, when back again he comes, with the kitchen cleaver in his hand, and without saying a word he gives two bangs to the handle of the reaping hook that was keeping me up, and whap! it came in two. ‘Good morning to you, Dan,’ says the spiteful little old blackguard, when he saw me cleanly falling down with a bit of the handle in my hand; ‘I thank you for your visit, and fair weather after you, Daniel.’ I had not time to make any answer to him, for I was tumbling over and over, and rolling, and rolling, at the rate of a fox-hunt. ‘This is a pretty pickle,’ says I, ‘for a decent man to be seen at this time of night: I am now sold fairly.’ The word was not out of my mouth when, whizz! what should fly by close to my ear but a flock of wild geese; all the way from my own bog of Ballyasheenogh, or else, how should they know me? The ould gander, who was their general, turning about his head, cried out to me, ‘Is that you, Dan?’ ‘The same,’ said I, not a bit daunted now at what he said, for I was by this time used to all kinds of bedevilment, and, besides, I knew him of ould. ‘Good morrow to you,’ says he, ‘Daniel O’Rourke; how are you in health this morning?’ ‘Very well, sir,’ says I, ‘I thank you kindly,’ drawing my breath, for I was mighty in want of some. ‘I hope your honour’s the same.’ ‘I think ’tis falling you are, Daniel,’ says he. ‘You may say that, sir,’ says I. ‘And where are you going all the way so fast?’ said the gander. So I told him how I had taken the drop, and how I came on the island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle flew me up to the moon, and how the man in the moon turned me out. ‘Dan,’ said he, ‘I’ll save you: put out your hand and catch me by the leg, and I’ll fly you home.’

“‘Sweet is your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel,’ says I, though all the time I thought within myself that I don’t much trust you; but there was no help, so I caught the gander by the leg, and away I and the other geese flew after him as fast as hops.

“We flew, and we flew, and we flew, until we came right over the wide ocean. I knew it well, for I saw Cape Clear to my right hand, sticking up out of the water. ‘Ah! my lord,’ said I to the goose, for I thought it best to keep a civil tongue in my head, any way, ‘fly to land if you please.’ ‘It is impossible, you see, Dan,’ said he, ‘for a while, because, you see, we are going to Arabia.’ ‘To Arabia!’ said I; ‘that’s surely some place in foreign parts, far away. Oh! Mr. Goose: why, then, to be sure, I’m a man to be pitied among you.’ ‘Whist, whist, you fool,’ said he, ‘hold your tongue; I tell you Arabia is a very decent sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only there is a little more sand there.’

“Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind; ‘Ah! then, sir,’ said I, ‘will you drop me on the ship if you please?’ ‘We are not fair over her,’ said he. ‘We are,’ said I. ‘We are not,’ said he; ‘If I dropped you now you would go splash into the sea.’ ‘I would not,’ says I; ‘I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now, at once.’ ‘If you must, you must,’ said he; ‘there, take your own way,’ and he opened his claw, and, ‘deed, he was right—sure enough, I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night’s sleep, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say, but, lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold, salt water till there wasn’t a dry stitch on my whole carcase; and I heard somebody saying—’twas a voice I knew, too—‘Get up, you drunken brute, off o’ that’; and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water which she was splashing all over me—for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own. ‘Get up,’ said she again: ‘and of all places in the parish would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Carrigaphooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.’ And sure enough I had: for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales driving me through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the green ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I’d lie down in the same spot again, I know that.”

Adventures of Gilla na Chreck an Gour.

(THE FELLOW IN THE GOAT SKIN).

From “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts.”

By Patrick Kennedy (1801-1873).

(Told in the Wexford Peasant Dialect.)

Long ago a poor widow woman lived down by the iron forge near Enniscorthy, and she was so poor, she had no clothes to put on her son; so she used to fix him in the ash-hole, near the fire, and pile the warm ashes about him; and, accordingly, as he grew up, she sunk the pit deeper. At last, by hook or by crook, she got a goat-skin and fastened it round his waist, and he felt quite grand, and took a walk down the street. So, says she to him next morning, “Tom, you thief, you never done any good yet, and you six-foot high, and past nineteen; take that rope and bring me a bresna from the wood.” “Never say’t twice, mother,” says Tom; “here goes.”

When he had it gathered and tied, what should come up but a big joiant, nine-foot high, and made a lick of a club at him. Well become Tom, he jumped a-one side and picked up a ram-pike; and the first crack he gave the big fellow he made him kiss the clod. “If you have e’er a prayer,” says Tom, “now’s the time to say it, before I make brishe of you.” “I have no prayers,” says the giant, “but if you spare my life I’ll give you that club; and as long as you keep from sin you’ll win every battle you ever fight with it.”

Tom made no bones about letting him off; and as soon as he got the club in his hands he sat down on the bresna and gave it a tap with the kippeen, and says, “Bresna, I had a great trouble gathering you, and run the risk of my life for you; the least you can do is to carry me home.” And, sure enough, the wind of the word was all it wanted. It went off through the wood, groaning and cracking till it came to the widow’s door.

Well, when the sticks were all burned Tom was sent off again to pick more; and this time he had to fight with a giant with two heads on him. Tom had a little more trouble with him—that’s all; and the prayers he said was to give Tom a fife that nobody could help dancing to when he was playing it. Begonies, he made the big faggot dance home, with himself sitting on it. Well, if you were to count all the steps from this to Dublin, dickens a bit you’d ever arrive there. The next giant was a beautiful boy with three heads on him. He had neither prayers nor catechism no more nor the others; and so he gave Tom a bottle of green ointment that wouldn’t let you be burned, nor scalded, nor wounded. “And now,” says he, “there’s no more of us. You may come and gather sticks here till little Lunacy Day in harvest without giant or fairy man to disturb you.”

Well, now, Tom was prouder nor ten paycocks, and used to take a walk down the street in the heel of the evening; but some of the little boys had no more manners nor if they were Dublin jackeens, and put out their tongues at Tom’s club and Tom’s goat-skin. He didn’t like that at all, and it would be mean to give one of them a clout. At last, what should come through the town but a kind of bellman, only it’s a big bugle he had, and a huntsman’s cap on his head, and a kind of painted shirt. So this—he wasn’t a bellman, and I don’t know what to call him—bugleman, maybe—proclaimed that the King of Dublin’s daughter was so melancholy that she didn’t give a laugh for seven years, and that her father would grant her in marriage to whoever would make her laugh three times. “That’s the very thing for me to try,” says Tom; and so, without burning any more daylight, he kissed his mother, curled his club at the little boys, and set off along the yalla highroad to the town of Dublin.

At last Tom came to one of the City gates and the guards laughed and cursed at him instead of letting him through. Tom stood it all for a little time, but at last one of them—out of fun, as he said—drove his bagnet half an inch or so into his side. Tom did nothing but take the fellow by the scruff of his neck and the waistband of his corduroys and fling him into the canal. Some ran to pull the fellow out, and others to let manners into the vulgarian with their swords and daggers; but a tap from his club sent them headlong into the moat or down on the stones, and they were soon begging him to stay his hands.

So at last one of them was glad enough to show Tom the way to the Palace yard; and there was the King and the Queen, and the princess in a gallery, looking at all sorts of wrestling and sword-playing, and rinka-fadhas (long dances) and mumming, all to please the princess; but not a smile came over her handsome face.

Well, they all stopped when they seen the young giant, with his boy’s face and long, black hair, and his short, curly beard—for his poor mother couldn’t afford to buy razhurs—and his great, strong arms and bare legs, and no covering but the goat-skin that reached from his waist to his knees. But an envious, wizened basthard of a fellow, with a red head, that wished to be married to the princess, and didn’t like how she opened her eyes at Tom, came forward, and asked his business very snappishly. “My business,” says Tom, says he, “is to make the beautiful princess, God bless her, laugh three times.” “Do you see all them merry fellows and skilful swordsmen,” says the other, “that could eat you up without a grain of salt, and not a mother’s soul of ‘em ever got a laugh from her these seven years?” So the fellows gathered round Tom, and the bad man aggravated him till he told them he didn’t care a pinch of snuff for the whole bilin’ of ‘em; let ‘em come on, six at a time, and try what they could do. The King, that was too far off to hear what they were saying, asked what did the stranger want. “He wants,” says the red-headed fellow, “to make hares of your best men.” “Oh!” says the King, “if that’s the way, let one of ‘em turn out and try his mettle.” So one stood forward, with sword and pot-lid, and made a cut at Tom. He struck the fellow’s elbow with the club, and up over their heads flew the sword, and down went the owner of it on the gravel from a thump he got on the helmet. Another took his place, and another and another, and then half-a-dozen at once, and Tom sent swords, helmets, shields, and bodies rolling over and over, and themselves bawling out that they were kilt, and disabled, and damaged, and rubbing their poor elbows and hips, and limping away. Tom contrived not to kill anyone; and the princess was so amused that she let a great, sweet laugh out of her that was heard all over the yard. “King of Dublin,” says Tom, “I’ve the quarter of your daughter.” And the King didn’t know whether he was glad or sorry, and all the blood in the princess’s heart run into her cheeks.

So there was no more fighting that day, and Tom was invited to dine with the royal family. Next day Redhead told Tom of a wolf, the size of a yearling heifer, that used to be serenading (sauntering) about the walls, and eating people and cattle; and said what a pleasure it would give the King to have it killed. “With all my heart,” says Tom. “Send a jackeen to show me where he lives, and we’ll see how he behaves to a stranger.”

The princess was not well pleased, for Tom looked a different person with fine clothes and a nice green birredh over his long, curly hair; and besides, he’d got one laugh out of her. However, the King gave his consent, and in an hour and a half the horrible wolf was walking in the palace yard, and Tom a step or two behind, with his club on his shoulder, just as a shepherd would be walking after a pet lamb. The King and Queen and princess were safe up in their gallery, but the officers and people of the court that were padrowling about the great bawn, when they saw the big baste coming in gave themselves up, and began to make for doors and gates; and the wolf licked his chops, as if he was saying, “Wouldn’t I enjoy a breakfast off a couple of yez!” The King shouted out, “O Gilla na Chreck an Gour, take away that terrible wolf and you must have all my daughter.” But Tom didn’t mind him a bit. He pulled out his flute and began to play like vengeance; and dickens a man or boy in the yard but began shovelling away heel and toe, and the wolf himself was obliged to get on his hind legs and dance Tatther Jack Walsh along with the rest. A good deal of the people got inside and shut the doors, the way the hairy fellow wouldn’t pin them; but Tom kept playing, and the outsiders kept shouting and dancing, and the wolf kept dancing and roaring with the pain his legs were giving him; and all the time he had his eyes on Redhead, who was shut out along with the rest. Wherever Redhead went the wolf followed, and kept one eye on him and the other on Tom, to see if he would give him leave to eat him. But Tom shook his head, and never stopped the tune, and Redhead never stopped dancing and bawling and the wolf dancing and roaring, one leg up and the other down, and he ready to drop out of his standing from fair tiresomeness.

When the princess seen that there was no fear of anyone being kilt, she was so divarted by the stew that Redhead was in that she gave another great laugh; and well become Tom, out he cried, “King of Dublin, I have two quarters of your daughter.” “Oh, quarters or alls,” says the King, “put away that divel of a wolf and we’ll see about it.” So Gilla put his flute in his pocket, and, says he, to the baste that was sittin’ on his currabingo ready to faint, “Walk off to your mountains, my fine fellow, and live like a respectable baste; and if ever I find you come within seven miles of any town—.” He said no more, but spit in his fist, and gave a flourish of his club. It was all the poor divel wanted: he put his tail between his legs and took to his pumps without looking at man or mortial, and neither sun, moon, nor stars ever saw him in sight of Dublin again.

At dinner everyone laughed except the foxy fellow; and, sure enough, he was laying out how he’d settle poor Tom next day. “Well, to be sure!” says he, “King of Dublin, you are in luck. There’s the Danes moidhering us to no end. D—— run to Lusk wid ‘em and if anyone can save us from ‘em it is this gentleman with the goat-skin. There is a flail hangin’ on the collar-beam in Hell, and neither Dane nor Devil can stand before it.” “So,” says Tom to the King, “will you let me have the other half of the princess if I bring you the flail?” “No, no,” says the princess, “I’d rather never be your wife than see you in that danger.”

But Redhead whispered and nudged Tom about how shabby it would look to reneague the adventure. So he asked him which way he was to go, and Redhead directed him through a street where a great many bad women lived, and a great many shibbeen houses were open, and away he set.

Well, he travelled and travelled till he came in sight of the walls of Hell; and, bedad, before he knocked at the gates, he rubbed himself over with the greenish ointment. When he knocked, a hundred little imps popped their heads out through the bars, and axed him what he wanted. “I want to speak to the big divel of all,” says Tom; “open the gate.”

It wasn’t long till the gate was thrune open, and the Ould Boy received Tom with bows and scrapes, and axed his business. “My business isn’t much,” says Tom. “I only came for the loan of that flail that I see hanging on the collar-beam for the King of Dublin to give a thrashing to the Danes.” “Well,” says the other, “the Danes is much better customers to me; but, since you walked so far, I won’t refuse. Hand that flail,” says he to a young imp; and he winked the far-off eye at the same time. So, while some were barring the gates, the young devil climbed up and took down the iron flail that had the handstaff and booltheen both made out of red-hot iron. The little vagabond was grinning to think how it would burn the hands off of Tom, but the dickens a burn it made on him, no more nor if it was a good oak sapling. “Thankee,” says Tom; “now, would you open the gate for a body and I’ll give you no more trouble.” “Oh, tramp!” says Ould Nick, “is that the way? It is easier getting inside them gates than getting out again. Take that tool from him, and give him a dose of the oil of stirrup.” So one fellow put out his claws to seize on the flail, but Tom gave him such a welt of it on the side of his head that he broke off one of his horns, and made him roar like a divil as he was. Well, they rushed at Tom, but he gave them, little and big, such a thrashing as they didn’t forget for a while. At last says the ould thief of all, rubbing his elbows, “Let the fool out; and woe to whoever lets him in again, great or small.”

So out marched Tom and away with him without minding the shouting and cursing they kept up at him from the tops of the walls. And when he got home to the big bawn of the palace, there never was such running and racing as to see himself and the flail. When he had his story told, he laid down the flail on the stone steps, and bid no one for their lives to touch it. If the King and Queen and princess made much of him before they made ten times as much of him now; but Redhead, the mean scruff-hound, stole over, and thought to catch hold of the flail to make an end of him. His fingers hardly touched it, when he let a roar out of him as if heaven and earth were coming together, and kept flinging his arms about and dancing that it was pitiful to look at him. Tom run at him as soon as he could rise, caught his hands in his own two, and rubbed them this way and that, and the burning pain left them before you could reckon one. Well, the poor fellow, between the pain that was only just gone, and the comfort he was in, had the comicalest face that ever you see; it was such a mixerumgatherum of laughing and crying. Everyone burst out a-laughing—the princess could not stop no more than the rest—and then says Gilla, or Tom, “Now, ma’am, if there were fifty halves of you I hope you will give me them all.” Well, the princess had no mock modesty about her. She looked at her father, and, by my word, she came over to Gilla, and put her two delicate hands into his two rough ones, and I wish it was myself was in his shoes that day!

Tom would not bring the flail into the palace. You may be sure no other body went near it; and when the early risers were passing next morning they found two long clefts in the stone where it was, after burning itself an opening downwards, nobody could tell how far.

But a messenger came in at noon and said that the Danes were so frightened when they heard of the flail coming into Dublin that they got into their ships and sailed away.

Well, I suppose before they were married Gilla got some man like Pat Mara of Tomenine to larn him the “principles of politeness,” fluxions, gunnery, and fortifications, decimal fractions, practice, and the rule-of-three direct, the way he’d be able to keep up a conversation with the royal family. Whether he ever lost his time larning them sciences, I’m not sure, but it’s as sure as fate that his mother never more saw any want till the end of her days.

The Little Weaver of Duleek Gate.

From “Legends and Stories of Ireland.”

By Samuel Lover (1791-1868.)

There was a waiver lived, wanst upon a time, in Duleek here, hard by the gate, and a very honest, industherous man he was. He had a wife, an’ av coorse, they had childre, and small blame to them, so that the poor little waiver was obleeged to work his fingers to the bone a’most to get them the bit and the sup, and the loom never standin’ still.

Well, it was one mornin’ that his wife called to him, “Come here,” says she, “jewel, and ate your brekquest, now that it’s ready.” But he never minded her, but wint an workin’. “Arrah, lave off slavin’ yourself, my darlin’, and ate your bit o’ brekquest while it is hot.”

“Lave me alone,” says he, “I’m busy with a pattern here that is brakin’ my heart,” says the waiver; “and antil I complate it and masther it intirely I won’t quit.”

“You’re as cross as two sticks this blessed morning, Thady,” says the poor wife; “and it’s a heavy handful I have of you when you are cruked in your temper; but, stay there if you like, and let your stirabout grow cowld, and not a one o’ me ‘ill ax you agin;” and with that off she wint, and the waiver, sure enough, was mighty crabbed, and the more the wife spoke to him the worse he got, which, you know, is only nath’ral. Well, he left the loom at last, and wint over to the stirabout and what would you think, but whin he looked at it, it was as black as a crow—for, you see, it was in the heighth o’ summer, and the flies lit upon it to that degree that the stirabout was fairly covered with them.

“Why, thin,” says the waiver, “would no place sarve you but that? and is it spyling my brekquest yiz are, you dirty bastes?” And with that, he lifted his hand, and he made one great slam at the dish o’ stirabout, and killed no less than three score and tin flies at the one blow, for he counted the carcases one by one, and laid them out an a clane plate for to view them.

Well, he felt a powerful sperit risin’ in him, when he seen the slaughter he done, at one blow; and not a sthroke more work he’d do that day, but out he wint and was fractious and impident to every one he met, and was squarin’ up into their faces and sayin’, “Look at that fist! that’s the fist that killed three score and tin at one blow—Whoo!”

With that all the neighbours thought he was crack’d, and the poor wife herself thought the same when he kem home in the evenin’, afther spendin’ every rap he had in dhrink, and swaggerin’ about the place, and lookin’ at his hand every minit.

“Indeed, an’ your hand is very dirty, sure enough, Thady, jewel,” says the poor wife. “You had betther wash it, darlin’.”

“How dar’ you say dirty to the greatest hand in Ireland?” says he, going to bate her.

“Well, it’s nat dirty,” says she.

“It is throwin away my time I have been all my life,” says he, “livin’ with you at all, and stuck at a loom, nothin’ but a poor waiver, when it is Saint George or the Dhraggin I ought to be, which is two of the siven champions of Christendom.”

“Well, suppose they christened him twice as much,” says the wife, “sure, what’s that to uz?”

“Don’t put in your prate,” says he, “you ignorant sthrap,” says he. “You’re vulgar, woman—you’re vulgar—mighty vulgar; but I’ll have nothin’ more to say to any dirty, snakin’ thrade again—sorra more waivin’ I’ll do.”

“Oh, Thady, dear, and what’ll the children do then?”

“Let them go play marvels,” says he.

“That would be but poor feedin’ for them, Thady.”

“They shan’t want feedin’?” says he, “for it’s a rich man I’ll be soon, and a great man, too.”

“Usha, but I’m glad to hear it, darlin’—though I dunno how it’s to be, but I think you had betther go to bed, Thady.”

“Don’t talk to me of any bed, but the bed o’ glory, woman,” says he, lookin’ mortial grand. “I’ll sleep with the brave yit,” says he.

“Indeed, an’ a brave sleep will do you a power o’ good, my darlin,” says she.

“And it’s I that will be a knight!” says he.

“All night, if you plaze, Thady,” says she.

“None o’ your coaxin’,” says he. “I’m detarmined on it, and I’ll set off immediately, and be a knight arriant.”

“A what?” says she.

“A knight arriant, woman.”

“What’s that?” says she.

“A knight arriant is a rale gintleman,” says he; “going round the world for sport, with a soord by his side, takin’ whatever he plazes for himself; and that’s a knight arriant,” says he.

Well, sure enough he wint about among his neighbours the next day, and he got an owld kittle from one, and a saucepan from another, and he took them to the tailor, and he sewed him up a shuit o’ tin clothes like any knight arriant, and he borrowed a pot lid, and that he was very particular about, bekase it was his shield, and he went to a friend o’ his, a painter and glazier, and made him paint an his shield in big letthers:—

“I’M THE MAN OF ALL MIN,
THAT KILL’D THREE SCORE AND TIN
AT A BLOW.”

“When the people sees that,” says the waiver to himself, “the sorra one will dar for to come near me.”

And with that he towld the wife to scour out the small iron pot for him, “for,” says he, “it will make an illegent helmet;” and when it was done, he put it an his head, and his wife said, “Oh, murther, Thady, jewel; is it puttin’ a great, heavy, iron pot an your head you are, by way iv a hat?”

“Sartinly,” says he, “for a knight arriant should always have a weight on his brain.”

“But, Thady, dear,” says the wife, “there’s a hole in it, and it can’t keep out the weather.”

“It will be the cooler,” says he, puttin’ it an him; “besides, if I don’t like it, it is aisy to stop it with a wisp o’ sthraw, or the like o’ that.”

“The three legs of it look mighty quare, stickin’ up,” says she.

“Every helmet has a spike stickin’ out o’ the top of it,” says the waiver, “and if mine has three, it’s only the grandher it is.”

“Well,” says the wife, getting bitter at last, “all I can say is, it isn’t the first sheep’s head was dhress’d in it.”

“Your sarvint, ma’am,” says he; and off he set.

Well, he was in want of a horse, and so he wint to a field hard by, where the miller’s horse was grazin’, that used to carry the ground corn round the counthry. “This is the identical horse for me,” says the waiver; “he’s used to carryin’ flour and male, and what am I but the flower o’ shovelry in a coat o’ mail; so that the horse won’t be put out iv his way in the laste.”

So away galloped the waiver, and took the road to Dublin, for he thought the best thing he could do was to go to the King o’ Dublin (for Dublin was a great place thin, and had a King iv its own). When he got to the palace courtyard he let his horse graze about the place, for the grass was growin’ out betune the stones; everything was flourishin’ thin in Dublin, you see. Well, the King was lookin’ out of his dhrawin’-room windy, for divarshin, whin the waiver kem in; but the waiver pretended not to see him, and he wint over to the stone sate, undher the windy—for, you see, there was stone sates all round about the place, for the accommodation o’ the people—for the King was a dacent obleeging man; well, as I said, the waiver wint over and lay down an one o’ the seats, just undher the King’s windy, and purtended to go asleep; but he took care to turn out the front of his shield that had the letthers an it. Well, my dear, with that the King calls out to one of the lords of his coort that was standin’ behind him, howldin’ up the skirt of his coat, accordin’ to rayson, and, says he: “Look here,” says he, “what do you think of a vagabone like that, comin’ undher my very nose to sleep? It is thrue I’m a good king,” says he, “and I ‘commodate the people by havin’ sates for them to sit down and enjoy the raycreation and contimplation of seein’ me here, lookin’ out a’ my dhrawin’-room windy, for divarsion; but that is no rayson they are to make a hotel o’ the place, and come and sleep here. Who is it, at all?” says the King.

“Not a one o’ me knows, plaze your majesty.”

“I think he must be a furriner,” says the King, “because his dhress is outlandish.”

“And doesn’t know manners, more betoken,” says the lord.

“I’ll go down and circumspect him myself,” says the King; “folly me,” says he to the lord, wavin’ his hand at the same time in the most dignacious manner.

Down he wint accordingly, followed by the lord; and when he wint over to where the waiver was lying, sure the first thing he seen was his shield with the big letthers an it, and with that, says he to the lord, “This is the very man I want.”

“For what, plaze your majesty?” says the lord.

“To kill the vagabone dhraggin’, to be sure,” says the King.

“Sure, do you think he could kill him,” says the lord, “when all the stoutest knights in the land wasn’t aiquil to it, but never kem back, and was ate up alive by the cruel desaiver?”

“Sure, don’t you see there,” says the king, pointin’ at the shield, “that he killed three score and tin at one blow; and the man that done that, I think, is a match for anything.”

So, with that, he wint over to the waiver and shuck him by the shouldher for to wake him, and the waiver rubbed his eyes as if just wakened, and the King says to him, “God save you,” said he.

“God save you kindly,” says the waiver, purtendin’ he was quite unknownst who he was spakin’ to.

“Do you know who I am,” says the king, “that you make so free, good man?”

“No, indeed,” says the waiver, “you have the advantage o’ me.”

“To be sure, I have,” says the king, moighty high; “sure, ain’t I the King o’ Dublin?” says he.

The waiver dhropped down on his two knees forninst the King, and, says he, “I beg your pardon for the liberty I tuk; plaze your holiness, I hope you’ll excuse it.”

“No offince,” says the King; “get up, good man. And what brings you here?” says he.

“I’m in want of work, plaze your riverence,” says the waiver.

“Well, suppose I give you work?” says the king.

“I’ll be proud to sarve you, my lord,” says the waiver.

“Very well,” says the King. “You killed three score and tin at one blow, I understan’,” says the King.

“Yis,” says the waiver; “that was the last thrifle o’ work I done, and I’m afraid my hand ‘ill go out o’ practice if I don’t get some job to do at wanst.”

“You shall have a job immediately,” says the King. “It is not three score and tin or any fine thing like that; it is only a blaguard dhraggin that is disturbin’ the counthry and ruinatin’ my tinanthry wid aitin’ their powlthry, and I’m lost for want of eggs,” said the King.

“Och, thin, plaze your worship,” says the waiver, “you look as yellow as if you swallowed twelve yolks this minit.”

“Well, I want this dhraggin to be killed,” says the King. “It will be no trouble in life to you; and I am sorry that it isn’t betther worth your while, for he isn’t worth fearin’ at all; only I must tell you that he lives in the County Galway, in the middle of a bog, and he has an advantage in that.”

“Oh, I don’t value it in the laste,” says the waiver, “for the last three score and tin I killed was in a soft place.”

“When will you undhertake the job, thin?” says the King.

“Let me at him at wanst,” says the waiver.

“That’s what I like,” says the King, “you’re the very man for my money,” says he.

“Talkin’ of money,” says the waiver, “by the same token, I’ll want a thrifle o’ change from you for my thravellin’ charges.”

“As much as you plaze,” says the King; and with the word he brought him into his closet, where there was an owld stockin’ in an oak chest, bursting wid goolden guineas.

“Take as many as you plaze,” says the King; and sure enough, my dear, the little waiver stuffed his tin clothes as full as they could howld with them.

“Now I’m ready for the road,” says the waiver.

“Very well,” says the King; “but you must have a fresh horse,” says he.

“With all my heart,” says the waiver, who thought he might as well exchange the miller’s owld garron for a betther.

And maybe it’s wondherin’ you are that the waiver would think of goin’ to fight the dhraggin afther what he heerd about him, when he was purtendin’ to be asleep, but he had no sich notion, all he intended was—to fob the goold, and ride back again to Duleek with his gains and a good horse. But, you see, cute as the waiver was, the King was cuter still, for these high quality, you see, is great desaivers; and so the horse the waiver was an was learned on purpose; and sure, the minit he was mounted, away powdhered the horse, and the sorra toe he’d go but right down to Galway. Well, for four days he was goin’ evermore, until at last the waiver seen a crowd o’ people runnin’ as if owld Nick was at their heels, and they shoutin’ a thousand murdhers, and cryin’—“The dhraggin, the dhraggin!” and he couldn’t stop the horse nor make him turn back, but away he pelted right forninst the terrible baste that was comin’ up to him; and there was the most nefaarious smell o’ sulphur, savin’ your presence, enough to knock you down; and, faith, the waiver seen he had no time to lose; and so threwn himself off the horse and made to a three that was growin’ nigh-hand, and away he clambered up into it as nimble as a cat; and not a minit had he to spare, for the dhraggin kem up in a powerful rage, and he devoured the horse body and bones, in less than no time; and then began to sniffle and scent about for the waiver, and at last he clapt his eye on him, where he was, up in the three, and, says he, “You might as well come down out o’ that,” says he, “for I’ll have you as sure as eggs is mate.”

“Sorra fut I’ll go down,” says the waiver.

“Sorra care I care,” says the dhraggin; “for you’re as good as ready money in my pocket this minit, for I’ll lie undher this three,” says he, “and sooner or later you must fall to my share;” and sure enough he sot down, and began to pick his teeth with his tail afther a heavy brekquest he made that mornin’ (for he ate a whole village, let alone the horse), and he got dhrowsy at last, and fell asleep; but before he wint to sleep he wound himself all round about the three, all as one as a lady windin’ ribbon round her finger, so that the waiver could not escape.

Well, as soon as the waiver knew he was dead asleep, by the snorin’ of him—and every snore he let out of him was like a clap o’ thunder—that minit the waiver began to creep down the three, as cautious as a fox; and he was very nigh hand the bottom when a thievin’ branch he was dipindin’ an bruck, and down he fell right a top o’ the dhraggin; but, if he did, good luck was an his side, for where should he fall but with his two legs right acrass the dhraggin’s neck, and my jew’l, he laid howlt o’ the baste’s ears, and there he kept his grip, for the dhraggin wakened and endayvoured for to bite him, but, you see, by rayson the waiver was behind his ears he could not come at him, and, with that, he endayvoured for to shake him off; but not a stir could he stir the waiver; and though he shuk all the scales an his body, he could not turn the scale agin the waiver.

“Och, this is too bad, intirely,” says the dhraggin; “but if you won’t let go,” says he, “by the powers o’ wildfire, I’ll give you a ride that’ll astonish your siven small senses, my boy”; and, with that, away he flew like mad; and where do you think he did fly?—he flew sthraight for Dublin. But the waiver, bein’ an his neck, was a great disthress to him, and he would rather have had him an inside passenger; but, anyway, he flew till he kem slap up agin the palace o’ the king; for, bein’ blind with the rage, he never seen it, and he knocked his brains out—that is, the small trifle he had, and down he fell spacheless. An’ you see, good luck would have it, that the King o’ Dublin was looking out iv his dhrawin’-room windy, for divarshin, that day also, and whin he seen the waiver ridin’ an the fiery dhraggin (for he was blazin’ like a tar barrel) he called out to his coortyers to come and see the show.

“Here comes the knight arriant,” says the King, “ridin’ the dhraggin that’s all a-fire, and if he gets into the palace, yiz must be ready wid the fire ingines,” says he, “for to put him out.”

But when they seen the dhraggin fall outside, they all run downstairs and scampered into the palace yard for to circumspect the curiosity; and by the time they got down, the waiver had got off o’ the dhraggin’s neck; and runnin’ up to the King, says he—

“Plaze, your holiness, I did not think myself worthy of killin’ this facetious baste, so I brought him to yourself for to do him the honour of decripitation by your own royal five fingers. But I tamed him first, before I allowed him the liberty for to dar’ to appear in your royal prisince, and you’ll oblige me if you’ll just make your mark with your own hand upon the onruly baste’s neck.” And with that, the King, sure enough, dhrew out his swoord and took the head aff the dirty brute, as clane as a new pin.

Well, there was great rejoicin’ in the coort that the dhraggin was killed; and says the King to the little waiver, says he—

“You are a knight arriant as it is, and so it would be no use for to knight you over agin; but I will make you a lord,” says he “and as you are the first man I ever heer’d tell of that rode a dhraggin, you shall be called Lord Mount Dhraggin’,” says he.

“And where’s my estates, plaze your holiness?” says the waiver, who always had a sharp look-out afther the main chance.

“Oh, I didn’t forget that,” says the King. “It is my royal pleasure to provide well for you, and for that rayson I make you a present of all the dhraggins in the world, and give you power over them from this out,” says he.

“Is that all?” says the waiver.

“All!” says the king. “Why, you ongrateful little vagabone, was the like ever given to any man before?”

“I believe not, indeed,” says the waiver; “many thanks to your majesty.”

“But that is not all I’ll do for you,” says the king, “I’ll give you my daughter, too, in marriage,” says he.

Now, you see, that was nothin’ more than what was promised the waiver in his first promise; for, by all accounts, the King’s daughter was the greatest dhraggin ever was seen.

Fionn MacCumhail and the Princess.

From “The Shamrock.”

By Patrick J. McCall (1861—).

(In Wexford Folk Speech.)

Wance upon a time, when things was a great’le betther in Ireland than they are at present, when a rale king ruled over the counthry wid four others undher him to look afther the craps an’ other indhustries, there lived a young chief called Fan MaCool.

Now, this was long afore we gev up bowin’ and scrapin’ to the sun an’ moon an’ sich like raumash (nonsense); an’ signs an it, there was a powerful lot ov witches an’ Druids, an’ enchanted min an’ wimen goin’ about, that med things quare enough betimes for iverywan.

Well, Fan, as I sed afore, was a young man when he kem to the command, an’ a purty likely lookin’ boy, too—there was nothin’ too hot or too heavy for him; an’ so ye needn’t be a bit surprised if I tell ye he was the mischief entirely wid the colleens. Nothin’ delighted him more than to disguise himself wid an ould coatamore (overcoat) threwn over his showlder, a lump ov a kippeen (stick) in his fist and he mayanderin’ about unknownst, rings around the counthry, lookin’ for fun an’ foosther (diversion) ov all kinds.

Well, one fine mornin’, whin he was on the shaughraun, he was waumasin’ (strolling) about through Leinster, an’ near the royal palace ov Glendalough he seen a mighty throng ov grand lords and ladies, an’, my dear, they all dressed up to the nines, wid their jewels shinin’ like dewdrops ov a May mornin’, and laughin’ like the tinkle ov a deeshy (small) mountain strame over the white rocks. So he cocked his beaver, an’ stole over to see what was the matther.

Lo an’ behould ye, what were they at but houldin’ a race-meetin’ or faysh (festival)—somethin’ like what the quality calls ataleticks now! There they were, jumpin’, and runnin’, and coorsin’, an’ all soorts ov fun, enough to make the trouts—an’ they’re mighty fine leppers enough—die wid envy in the river benaith them.

The fun wint on fast an’ furious, an’ Fan, consaled betune the trumauns an’ brushna (elder bushes and furze) could hardly keep himself quiet, seein’ the thricks they wor at. Peepin’ out, he seen, jist forninst him on the other bank, the prencess herself, betune the high-up ladies ov the coort. She was a fine, bouncin’ geersha (girl) with gold hair like the furze an’ cheeks like an apple blossom, an’ she brakin’ her heart laughin’ an’ clappin’ her hands an’ turnin her head this a-way an’ that a-way, jokin’ wid this wan an’ that wan, an’ commiseratin’, moryah! (forsooth) the poor gossoons that failed in their leps. Fan liked the looks ov her well, an’ whin the boys had run in undher a bame up to their knees an’ jumped up over another wan as high as their chins, the great trial ov all kem on. Maybe you’d guess what that was? But I’m afeerd you won’t if I gev you a hundhred guesses! It was to lep the strame, forty foot wide!

List’nin’ to them whisperin’ to wan another, Fan heerd them tellin’ that whichever ov them could manage it wud be med a great man intirely ov; he wud get the Prencess Maynish in marriage, an’ ov coorse, would be med king ov Leinster when the ould king, Garry, her father, cocked his toes an’ looked up through the butts ov the daisies at the shky. Well, whin Fan h’ard this, he was put to a nonplush to know what to do! With his ould duds on him, he was ashamed ov his life to go out into the open, to have the eyes ov the whole wurruld on him, an’ his heart wint down to his big toe as he watched the boys makin’ their offers at the lep. But no one of them was soople enough for the job, an’ they kep on tumblin’, wan afther the other, into the strame; so that the poor prencess began to look sorryful whin her favourite, a big hayro wid a colyeen (curls) a yard long—an’ more betoken he was a boy o’ the Byrnes from Imayle—jist tipped the bank forninst her wid his right fut, an’ then twistin’, like a crow in the air scratchin’ her head with her claw, he spraddled wide open in the wather, and splashed about like a hake in a mudbank! Well, me dear, Fan forgot himself, an’ gev a screech like an aigle; an’ wid that, the ould king started, the ladies all screamed, an’ Fan was surrounded. In less than a minnit an’ a half they dragged me bould Fan be the collar ov his coat right straight around to the king himself.

“What ould geochagh (beggar) have we now?” sez the king, lookin’ very hard at Fan.

“I’m Fan MaCool!” sez the thief ov the wurruld, as cool as a frog.

“Well, Fan MaCool or not,” sez the king, mockin’ him, “ye’ll have to jump the sthrame yander for freckenin’ the lives clane out ov me ladies,” sez he, “an’ for disturbin’ our spoort ginerally,” sez he.

“An’ what’ll I get for that same?” sez Fan, lettin’ on (pretending) he was afeered.

“Me daughter, Maynish,” sez the king, wid a laugh; for he thought, ye see, Fan would be drowned.

“Me hand on the bargain,” sez Fan; but the owld chap gev him a rap on the knuckles wid his specktre (sceptre) an’ towld him to hurry up, or he’d get the ollaves (judges) to put him in the Black Dog pres’n or the Marshals—I forgets which—it’s so long gone by!

Well, Fan peeled off his coatamore, an’ threw away his bottheen ov a stick, an’ the prencess seein’ his big body an’ his long arums an’ legs like an oak tree, couldn’t help remarkin’ to her comrade, the craythur—

“Bedad, Cauth (Kate),” sez she, “but this beggarman is a fine bit of a bouchal (boy),” sez she; “it’s in the arumy (army) he ought to be,” sez she, lookin’ at him agen, an’ admirin’ him, like.

So, Fan, purtendin’ to be fixin’ his shoes be the bank, jist pulled two lusmores (fox-gloves) an’ put them anunder his heels; for thim wor the fairies’ own flowers that works all soort ov inchantment, an’ he, ov coorse, knew all about it; for he got the wrinkle from an ould lenaun (fairy guardian) named Cleena, that nursed him when he was a little stand-a-loney.

Well, me dear, ye’d think it was on’y over a little creepie (three-legged) stool he was leppin’ whin he landed like a thrish jist at the fut ov the prencess; an’ his father’s son he was, that put his two arums around her, an’ gev her a kiss—haith, ye’d hear the smack ov it at the Castle o’ Dublin. The ould king groaned like a corncrake, an’ pulled out his hair in hatfuls, an’ at last he ordhered the bowld beggarman off to be kilt; but, begorrah, when they tuck off weskit an’ seen the collar ov goold around Fan’s neck the ould chap became delighted, for he knew thin he had the commandher ov Airyun (Erin) for a son-in-law.

“Hello!” sez the king, “who have we now?” sez he, seein’ the collar. “Begonny’s,” sez he, “you’re no boccagh (beggar) anyways!”

“I’m Fan MaCool,” sez the other, as impident as a cocksparra’; “have you anything to say agen me?” for his name wasn’t up, at that time, like afther.

“Ay lots to say agen you. How dar’ you be comin’ round this a-way, dressed like a playacthor, takin’ us in?” sez the king, lettin’ on to be vexed; “an’ now,” sez he, “to annoy you, you’ll have to go an’ jump back agen afore you gets me daughter for puttin’ on (deceiving) us in such a manner.”

“Your will is my pleasure,” sez Fan; “but I must have a word or two with the girl first,” sez he, an’ up he goes an’ commences talkin’ soft to her, an’ the king got as mad as a hatther at the way the two were croosheenin’ an’ colloguin’ (whispering and talking), an’ not mindin’ him no more than if he was the man in the moon, when who comes up but the Prence of Imayle, afther dryin’ himself, to put his pike in the hay too.

“Well, avochal (my boy),” sez Fan, “are you dry yet?” an’ the Prencess laughed like a bell round a cat’s neck.

“You think yourself a smart lad, I suppose,” sez the other; “but there’s one thing you can’t do wid all your prate!”

“What’s that?” sez Fan. “Maybe not” sez he.

“You couldn’t whistle and chaw oatenmale,” sez the Prence ov Imayle, in a pucker. “Are you any good at throwin’ a stone?” sez he, then.

“The best!” sez Fan, an’ all the coort gother round like to a cock-fight. “Where’ll we throw to?” sez he.

“In to’ards Dublin,” sez the Prence ov Imayle; an’ be all accounts he was a great hand at cruistin (throwing).

“Here goes pink,” sez he, an’ he ups with a stone, as big as a castle, an’ sends it flyin’ in the air like a cannon ball, and it never stopped till it landed on top ov the Three Rock Mountain.

“I’m your masther!” sez Fan, pickin’ up another clochaun (stone) an’ sendin’ it a few perch beyant the first.

“That you’re not,” sez the Prence ov Imayle, an’ he done his best, an’ managed to send another finger stone beyant Fan’s throw; an’ sure, the three stones are to be seen, be all the world, to this very day.

“Well, me lad,” says Fan, stoopin’ for another as big as a hill, “I’m sorry I have to bate you; but I can’t help it,” sez he, lookin’ over at the Prencess Maynish, an’ she as mute as a mouse watchin’ the two big men, an’ the ould king showin’ fair play, as delighted as a child. “Watch this,” sez he, whirlin’ his arm like a windmill, “and now put on your spectacles,” sez he; and away he sends the stone, buzzin’ through the air like a peggin’-top, over the other three clochauns, and then across Dublin Bay, an’ scrapin’ the nose off ov Howth, it landed with a swish in the say beyant it. That’s the rock they calls Ireland’s Eye now!

“Be the so an’ so!” sez the king, “I don’t know where that went to, at all, at all! what direct did you send it?” sez he to Fan. “I had it in view, till it went over the say,” sez he.

“I’m bet!” sez the Prence ov Imayle. “I couldn’t pass that, for I can’t see where you put it, even—good-bye to yous,” sez he, turnin’ on his heel an’ makin’ off; “an’ may yous two be as happy as I can wish you!” An’ back he went to the butt ov Lugnaquilla, an’ took to fret, an I understand shortly afther he died ov a broken heart; an’ they put a turtle-dove on his tombstone to signify that he died for love; but I think he overstrained himself, throwin’, though that’s nayther here nor there with me story!

“Are you goin’ to lep back agen?” sez ould King Garry, wantin’ to see more sport; for he tuk as much delight in seein’ the like as if he was a lad ov twenty.

“To be shure I will!” sez Fan, ready enough, “but I’ll have to take the girl over with me this time!” sez he.

“Oh, no, Fan!” sez Maynish, afeered ov her life he might stumble an’ that he’d fall in with her; an’ then she’d have to fall out with him—“take me father with you,” sez she; an’ egonnys, the ould king thought more about himself than any ov them, an’ sed he’d take the will for the deed, like the lawyers. So the weddin’ went on; an’ maybe that wasn’t the grand blow-out. But I can’t stay to tell yous all the fun they had for a fortnit; on’y, me dear, they all went into kinks ov laughin’, when the ould king, who tuk more than was good for him, stood up to drink Fan’s health, an’ forgot himself.

“Here’s to’ards your good health, Fan MaCool!” sez he, as grand as you like—“an’ a long life to you, an’ a happy wife to you—an’ a great many ov them!” sez he, like he’d forgot somethin’.

Well, me dear, every one was splittin’ their sides like the p’yates, unless the prencess, an’ she got as red in the face as if she was churnin’ in the winther an’ the frost keepin’ the crame from crackin’; but she got over it like the maisles.

But I suppose you can guess the remainder, an’ as the evenin’s gettin’ forrard I’ll stop; so put down the kittle an’ make tay, an’ if Fan and the Prencess Maynish didn’t live happy together—that we may!

The Kildare Pooka.

From “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts.”

By Patrick Kennedy.

Mr. H—— H——, when he was alive, used to live a good deal in Dublin, and he was once a great while out of the country on account of the “ninety-eight” business. But the servants kept on in the big house at Rath—all the same as if the family was at home. Well, they used to be frightened out of their lives, after going to their beds, with the banging of the kitchen door and the clattering of fire-irons and the pots and plates and dishes. One evening they sat up ever so long keeping one another in heart with stories about ghosts and that, when—what would have it?—the little scullery boy that used to be sleeping over the horses, and could not get room at the fire, crept into the hot hearth, and when he got tired listening to the stories, sorra fear him, but he fell dead asleep.

Well and good. After they were all gone, and the kitchen raked up, he was woke with the noise of the kitchen door opening, and the tramping of an ass in the kitchen floor. He peeped out, and what should he see but a big ass, sure enough, sitting on his curabingo and yawning before the fire. After a little he looked about him, and began scratching his ears as if he was quite tired, an’, says he, “I may as well begin first as last.” The poor boy’s teeth began to chatter in his head, for, says he, “Now he’s going to ate me”; but the fellow with the long ears and tail on him had something else to do. He stirred the fire, and then brought in a pail of water from the pump, and filled a big pot that he put on the fire before he went out. He then put in his hand—foot, I mean—into the hot hearth, and pulled out the little boy. He let a roar out of him with fright. But the pooka only looked at him, and thrust out his lower lip to show how little he valued him, and then he pitched him into his pew again.

Well, he then lay down before the fire till he heard the boil coming on the water, and maybe there wasn’t a plate, or a dish, or a spoon on the dresser, that he didn’t fetch and put into the pot, and wash and dry the whole bilin’ of ‘em as well as e’er a kitchen maid from that to Dublin town. He then put all of them up on their places on the shelves; and if he didn’t give a good sweepin’ to the kitchen, leave it till again. Then he comes and sits fornent the boy, let down one of his ears, and cocked up the other, and gave a grin. The poor fellow strove to roar out, but not a dheeg (sound) ud come out of his throat. The last thing the pooka done was to rake up the fire and walk out, giving such a slap o’ the door, that the boy thought the house couldn’t help tumbling down.

Well, to be sure, if there wasn’t a hullabuloo next morning when the poor fellow told his story! They could talk of nothing else the whole day. One said one thing, another said another, but a fat, lazy scullery girl said the wittiest thing of all. “Musha,” says she, “if the pooka does be cleaning up everything that way when we are asleep, what should we be slaving ourselves for doing his work?” “Sha gu dheine” (yes, indeed), says another, “them’s the wisest words you ever said, Kauth; it’s meeself won’t contradict you.”

So said, so done, not a bit of a plate or dish saw a drop of water that evening, and not a besom was laid on the floor, and everyone went to bed after sundown. Next morning everything was as fine as fine in the kitchen, and the Lord Mayor might eat his dinner off the flags. It was great ease to the lazy servants, you may depend, and everything went on well till a foolhardy gag of a boy said he would stay up one night and have a chat with the pooka. He was a little daunted when the door was thrown open and the ass marched up to the fire.

“And then, sir,” says he, at last, picking up courage, “if it isn’t taking a liberty, might I ax you who you are, and why you are so kind as to do a half a day’s work for the girls every night?” “No liberty at all,” says the pooka, says he: “I’ll tell you and welcome. I was a servant in the time of Squire H——‘s father, and was the laziest rogue that was ever clothed and fed, and done nothing for it. When my time came for the other world, this is the punishment was laid on me to come here and do all this labour every night, and then go out in the cold. It isn’t so bad in the fine weather; but if you only knew what it was to stand with your head between your legs, facing the storm from midnight to sunrise on a bleak winter night.” “And could we do anything for your comfort, my poor fellow?” says the boy. “Musha, I don’t know,” says the pooka: “but I think a good quilted frieze coat would help me to keep the life in me them long nights.” “Why, then, in truth, we’d be the ungratefullest of people if we didn’t feel for you.”

To make a long story short, the next night the boy was there again; and if he didn’t delight the poor pooka, holding a fine, warm coat before him, it’s no matther! Betune the pooka and the man, his legs was got into the four arms of it, and it was buttoned down the breast and belly, and he was so pleased he walked up to the glass to see how he looked. “Well,” says he, “it’s a long lane that has no turning. I am much obliged to you and your fellow servants. You have made me happy at last. Good night to you.”

So he was walking out, but the other cried, “Och! sure you’re going too soon. What about the washing and sweeping?” “Ah, you may tell the girls that they must now get their turn. My punishment was to last till I was thought worthy of a reward for the way I done my duty. You’ll see me no more.” And no more they did, and right sorry they were for having been in such a hurry to reward the ungrateful pooka.

The Piper and the Puca.

From “An Sgeuluidhe Gaodhalach.”

By Douglas Hyde (1860—).

In the old times there was a half-fool living in Dunmore, in the County Galway, and though he was excessively fond of music, he was unable to learn more than one tune, and that was the “Black Rogue.” He used to get a deal of money from the gentlemen, for they used to get sport out of him. One night the Piper was coming home from a house where there had been a dance, and he half-drunk. When he came up to a little bridge that was by his mother’s house, he squeezed the pipes on, and began playing the “Black Rogue.” The Puca came behind him, and flung him on his own back. There were long horns on the Puca, and the Piper got a good grip of them, and then he said:—

“Destruction on you, you nasty beast; let me home I have a tenpenny piece in my pocket for my mother, and she wants snuff.”

“Never mind your mother,” said the puca, “but keep your hold. If you fall you will break your neck and your pipes.” Then the Puca said to him, “Play up for me the ‘Shan Van Vocht.’”

“I don’t know it,” said the Piper.

“Never mind whether you do or you don’t,” said the Puca. “Play up, and I’ll make you know.”

The Piper put wind in his bag, and he played such music as made himself wonder.

“Upon my word, you’re a fine music-master,” says the Piper, then; “but tell me where you’re bringing me.”

“There’s a great feast in the house of the Banshee, on the top of Croagh Patric to-night,” says the Puca, “and I’m for bringing you there to play music, and, take my word, you’ll get the price of your trouble.”

“By my word, you’ll save me a journey, then,” says the Piper, “for Father William put a journey to Croagh Patric on me because I stole the white gander from him last Martinmas.”

The Puca rushed him across hills and bog and rough places, till he brought him to the top of Croagh Patric.

Then the Puca struck three blows with his foot, and a great door opened, and they passed in together into a fine room.

The Piper saw a golden table in the middle of the room, and hundreds of old women sitting round about it.

The old woman rose up and said, “A hundred thousand welcomes to you, you Puca of November. Who is this you have with you?”

“The best Piper in Ireland,” says the Puca.

One of the old women struck a blow on the ground, and a door opened in the side of the wall, and what should the Piper see coming out but the white gander which he had stolen from Father William.

“By my conscience, then,” says the Piper, “myself and my mother ate every taste of that gander, only one wing, and I gave that to Red Mary, and it’s she told the priest I stole his gander.”

The gander cleaned the table, and carried it away, and the Puca said, “Play up music for these ladies.”

The Piper played up, and the old women began dancing, and they danced till they tired. Then the Puca said to pay the Piper, and every old woman drew out a gold piece and gave it to him.

“By the tooth of Patric,” says he, “I’m as rich as the son of a lord.”

“Come with me,” says the Puca, “and I’ll bring you home.”

They went out then, and just as he was going to ride on the Puca, the gander came up to him and gave him a new set of pipes.

The Puca was not long until he brought him to Dunmore, and he threw the Piper off at the little bridge, and then he told him to go home, and says to him, “You have two things now that you never had before—you have sense and music.” The Piper went home, and he knocked at his mother’s door, saying, “Let me in, I’m as rich as a lord, and I’m the best Piper in Ireland.”

“You’re drunk,” says the mother.

“No, indeed,” says the Piper, “I haven’t drunk a drop.”

The mother let him in, and he gave her the gold pieces, and, “Wait, now,” says he, “till you hear the music I play.”

He buckled on the pipes, but instead of music there came a sound as if all the geese and ganders in Ireland were screeching together. He wakened all the neighbours, and they were all mocking him, until he put on the old pipes, and then he played melodious music for them; and after that he told them all he had gone through that night.

The next morning, when his mother went to look at the gold pieces, there was nothing there but the leaves of a plant.

The Piper went to the priest and told him his story, but the priest would not believe a word from him, until he put the pipes on him, and then the screeching of the ganders and the geese began.

“Leave my sight, you thief,” says the priest.

But nothing would do the Piper till he put the old pipes on him to show the priest that his story was true.

He buckled on his old pipes, and played melodious music, and from that day till the day of his death there was never a Piper in the County Galway was as good as he was.

M‘Carthy of Connacht.

From “Folk Tales of Breffny.”

By B. Hunt.

There was a fine young gentleman the name of M‘Carthy. He had a most beautiful countenance, and for strength and prowess there was none to equal him in the baronies of Connacht. But he began to dwine away, and no person knew what ailed him. He used no food at all and he became greatly reduced, the way he was not able to rise from his bed and he letting horrid groans and lamentations out of him. His father sent for three skilled doctors to come and find out what sort of disease it might be, and a big reward was promised for the cure.

Three noted doctors came on the one day and they searched every vein in young M‘Carthy’s body, but they could put no name on the sickness nor think of a remedy to relieve it. They came down from the room and reported that the disease had them baffled entirely.

“Am I to be at the loss of a son who is the finest boy in all Ireland?” says the father.

Now one of the doctors had a man with him who was a very soft-spoken person, and he up and says:

“Maybe your honours would be giving me permission to visit the young gentleman. I have a tongue on me is that sweet I do be drawing the secrets of the world out of men and women and little children.”

Well, they brought him up to the room and they left him alone with M‘Carthy. He sat down beside the bed and began for to flatter him. The like of such conversation was never heard before.

At long last he says, “Let your Lordship’s honour be telling—What is it ails you at all?”

“You will never let on to a living soul?” asks M‘Carthy.

“Is it that I’d be lodging an information against a noble person like yourself?” says the man.

With that, the young gentleman began telling the secrets of his heart.

“It is no disease is on me,” says he, “but a terrible misfortune.”

“’Tis heart scalded I am that you have either a sorrow or a sickness, and you grand to look on and better to listen to,” says the other.

“It is in love I am,” says M‘Carthy.

“And how would that be a misfortune to a fine lad like yourself?” asks the man.

“Let you never let on!” says M‘Carthy. “The way of it is this: I am lamenting for no lady who is walking the world, nor for one who is dead that I could be following to the grave. I have a little statue which has the most beautiful countenance on it that was ever seen, and it is destroyed with grief I am that it will never be speaking to me at all.”

With that he brought the image out from under his pillow, and the loveliness of it made the man lep off the chair.

“I’d be stealing the wee statue from your honour if I stopped in this place,” says he. “But let you take valour into your heart, for that is the likeness of a lady who is living in the world, and you will be finding her surely.”

With that he went down to the three doctors and the old man who were waiting below. For all his promises to young M‘Carthy, he told the lot of them all he was after hearing. The doctors allowed that if the gentleman’s life was to be saved he must be got out of his bed and sent away on his travels.

“For a time he will be hopeful of finding her,” says the oldest doctor. “Then the whole notion will pass off him, and he seeing strange lands and great wonders to divert him.”

The father was that anxious for the son’s recovery that he agreed to sell the place and give him a big handful of money for the journey.

“It is little I’ll be needing for myself from this out, and I an old man near ripe for the grave,” says he.

So they all went up to the room and told young M‘Carthy to rise from his bed and eat a good dinner, for the grandest arrangements out were made for his future and he’d surely meet the lady. When he seen that no person was mocking him he got into the best of humour, and he came down and feasted with them.

Not a long time afterwards he took the big handful of money and set out on his travels, bringing the statue with him. He went over the provinces of Ireland, then he took sea to England, and wandered it entirely, away to France with him next, and from that to every art and part of the world. He had the strangest adventures, and he seen more wonders than could ever be told or remembered. At the latter end he came back to the old country again, with no more nor a coin or two left of the whole great fortune of money. The whole time he never seen a lady who was the least like the wee statue; and the words of the old doctor were only a deceit for he didn’t quit thinking of her at all. M‘Carthy was a handsome young gentleman, and if it was small heed he had for any person he met it was great notice was taken of him. Sure it was a queen, no less, and five or six princesses were thinking long thoughts on himself.

The hope was near dead in his heart, and the sickness of grief was on him again when he came home to Ireland. Soon after he landed from the ship he chanced to come on a gentleman’s place, and it a fine, big house he never had seen before. He went up and inquired of the servants if he would get leave to rest there. He was given a most honourable reception, and the master of the house was well pleased to be entertaining such an agreeable guest. Now himself happened to be a Jew, and that is the why he did not ask M‘Carthy to eat at his table, but had his dinner set out for him in a separate room. The servants remarked on the small share of food he was using, it was scarcely what would keep the life in a young child; but he asked them not to make any observation of the sort. At first they obeyed him, yet when he used no meat at all on the third day, didn’t they speak with their master.

“What is the cause of it at all?” he says to M‘Carthy. “Is the food in this place not to your liking? Let you name any dish you have a craving for, and the cook will prepare it.”

“There was never better refreshment set before an emperor,” says M‘Carthy.

“It is civility makes you that flattering,” answers the Jew. “How would you be satisfied with the meat which is set before you when you are not able to use any portion of it at all?”

“I doubt I have a sickness on me will be the means of my death,” says M‘Carthy. “I had best be moving on from this place, the way I’ll not be rewarding your kindness with the botheration of a corpse.”

With that the master of the house began for to speak in praise of a doctor who was in those parts.

“I see I must be telling you what is in it,” says M‘Carthy. “Doctors have no relief for the sort of tribulation is destroying me.”

He brought out the statue, and he went over the whole story from start to finish. How he set off on his travels and was hopeful for a while; and how despair got hold of him again.

“Let you be rejoicing now,” says the Jew, “for it is near that lady you are this day. She comes down to a stream which is convenient to this place, and six waiting maids along with her, bringing a rod and line for to fish. And it is always at the one hour she is in it.”

Well, M‘Carthy was lepping wild with delight to hear tell of the lady.

“Let you do all I’m saying,” the Jew advises him. “I’ll provide you with the best of fishing tackle, and do you go down to the stream for to fish in it, too. Whatever comes to your line let you give to the lady. But say nothing which might scare her at all, and don’t follow after her if she turns to go home.”

The next day M‘Carthy went out for to fish; not a long time was he at the stream before the lady came down and the six waiting maids along with her. Sure enough she was the picture of the statue, and she had the loveliest golden hair ever seen.

M‘Carthy had the luck to catch a noble trout, and he took it off the hook, rolled it in leaves, and brought it to the lady, according to the advice of the Jew. She was pleased to accept the gift of it, but didn’t she turn home at once and the six waiting maids along with her. When she went into her own house she took the fish to her father.

“There was a noble person at the stream this day,” she says, “and he made me a present of the trout.”

Next morning M‘Carthy went to fish again, and he seen the lady coming and her six waiting maids walking behind her. He caught a splendid fine trout and brought it over to her; with that she turned home at once.

“Father,” says she, when she went in, “the gentleman is after giving me a fish which is bigger and better nor the one I brought back yesterday. If the like happens at the next time I go to the stream I will be inviting the noble person to partake of refreshment in this place.”

“Let you do as best pleases yourself,” says her father.

Well, sure enough, M‘Carthy got the biggest trout of all the third time. The lady was in the height of humour, and she asked would he go up to the house with her that day. She walked with M‘Carthy beside her, and the six waiting maids behind them. They conversed very pleasantly together, and at last he found courage for to tell her of how he travelled the world to seek no person less than herself.

“I’m fearing you’ll need to set out on a second journey, the way you will be coming in with some other one,” says she. “I have an old father who is after refusing two score of suitors who were asking me off him. I do be thinking I’ll not be joining the world at all, unless a king would be persuading himself of the advancement there is in having a son-in-law wearing a golden crown upon his head. The whole time it is great freedom I have, and I walking where it pleases me with six waiting maids along with me. The old man has a notion they’d inform him if I was up to any diversion, but that is not the way of it at all.”

“It is funning you are, surely,” says M‘Carthy. “If himself is that uneasy about you how would it be possible you’d bring me to the house to be speaking with him?”

“He is a kindly man and reasonable,” says she, “and it is a good reception you’ll be getting. Only let you not be speaking of marriage with me, for he cannot endure to hear tell of the like.”

Well, the old man made M‘Carthy welcome, and he had no suspicion the two were in notion of each other. But didn’t they arrange all unbeknownt to him, and plan out an elopement.

M‘Carthy went back to the Jew, and he told him all. “But,” says he, “I am after spending my whole great fortune of money travelling the territory of the world. I must be finding a good situation the way I’ll make suitable provision for herself.”

“Don’t be in the least distress,” says the Jew. “I did not befriend you this far to be leaving you in a bad case at the latter end. I’ll oblige you with the loan of what money will start you in a fine place. You will be making repayment at the end of three years when you have made your profit on the business.”

The young gentleman accepted the offer, and he fair wild with delight. Moreover, the Jew gave himself and the lady grand assistance at the elopement, the way they got safe out of it and escaped from her father, who was raging in pursuit.

M‘Carthy was rejoicing surely, and he married to a wife who was the picture of the statue. Herself was in the best of humour, too, for it was small delight she had in her own place, roaming the fields or stopping within and six waiting maids along with her. A fine, handsome husband was the right company for her like. They bought a lovely house and farm of land with the money which was lent by the Jew; and they fixed all the grandest ever was seen. After a while M‘Carthy got a good commission to be an officer, the way nothing more in the world was needful to their happiness.

M‘Carthy and his lady had a fine life of it, they lacking for no comfort or splendour at all. The officer’s commission he had brought himself over to England from time to time, and the lady M‘Carthy would mind all until he was home. He saved up what money was superfluous, and all was gathered to repay the loan to the Jew only for a few pounds.

Well, it happened that M‘Carthy went to England, and there he fell in with a droll sort of a man, who was the best company. They played cards together and they drank a great power of wine. In the latter end a dispute came about between them, for they both claimed to have the best woman.

“I have a lady beyond in Ireland,” says M‘Carthy, “and she is an ornament to the roads when she is passing alone. But no person gets seeing her these times, and that is a big misfortune to the world.”

“What’s the cause?” asks the Englishman.

“I’d have a grief on me to think another man might be looking on her and I not standing by,” says M‘Carthy. “So she gives me that satisfaction on her promised word: all the time I do be away she never quits the house, and no man body is allowed within.”

The Englishman let a great laugh out of him at the words.

“You are simple enough!” says he. “Don’t you know rightly when you are not in it, herself will be feasting and entertaining and going on with every diversion?”

M‘Carthy was raging at the impertinence of him, and he offered for to fight.

“What would that be proving?” says the Englishman. “Let you make a powerful big bet with myself that I will not be able for to bring you a token from your lady and a full description of her appearance.”

“I’ll be winning the money off you, surely!” says M‘Carthy.

“Not at all,” says the Englishman. “I’m not in the least uneasy about it, for I’m full sure it’s the truth I’m after speaking of how she does be playing herself in your absence.”

“You’ll find me in this place and you coming back.” says M‘Carthy. “Let you be prepared with the money to have along with you.”

The Englishman took ship to Ireland, and he came to the house of the lady M‘Carthy. Herself was in the kitchen making a cake, and she seen the man walking up to the door. Away she run to the parlour, and in the hurry she forgot the lovely pearl ring she took off her finger when she began at the cooking. Well, he found the door standing open, and he seen the ring on the kitchen table. It was easy knowing it was no common article would be in the possession of any one but the mistress of the house. What did the lad do, only slip in and put it in his pocket. With that the waiting maid came and asked his business, the lady M‘Carthy was after sending her down.

“Oh, no business at all,” says he. “But I am weary travelling and I thought I might rest at this place.”

He began for to flatter the girl and to offer her bribes, and in the latter end he got her to speak. She told him all what the mistress of the house was like; how she had a mole under her right arm, and one on her left knee. Moreover she gave him a few long golden hairs she got out of the lady’s comb.

The Englishman went back to M‘Carthy, brought him the tokens, and demanded the payment of the bet. And that is the way the poor gentleman spent the money he had saved up for the Jew.

M‘Carthy sent word to his wife that he was coming home, and for her to meet him on the ship. She put her grandest raiment upon her and started away at once. She went out to the ship and got up on the deck where she seen her husband standing. When she went over to him he never said a word at all, but he swept her aside with his arm the way she fell into the water. Then he went on shore full sure he had her drowned.

But there was another ship coming in, and a miller that was on her seen the lady struggling in the sea. He was an aged man, yet he ventured in after her and he saved the poor creature’s life.

Well, the miller was a good sort of a man and he had great compassion for herself when she told him her story. She had no knowledge of the cause of her husband being vexed with her, and she thought it hard to believe the evidence of her senses that he was after striving to make away with her. The miller advised the lady M‘Carthy to go on with the ship, which was sailing to another port, for maybe if she went home after the man he would be destroying her.

When the ship came into the harbour the news was going of a great lawsuit.

The miller heard all, and he brought word to the lady that M‘Carthy was in danger of death.

“There are three charges against him,” says the miller. “Your father has him impeached for stealing you away, and you not wishful to be with him: that is the first crime.”

“That is a false charge,” says she, “for I helped for to plan the whole elopement. My father is surely saying all in good faith, but it is a lie the whole time.”

“A Jew has him accused for a sum of money he borrowed, and it was due for repayment: that is the second crime,” says the miller.

“The money was all gathered up for to pay the debt,” says the lady. “Where can it be if M‘Carthy will not produce it?”

“The law has him committed for the murder of yourself: and that is the third crime,” says the miller.

“And a false charge, too, seeing you saved me in that ill hour. I am thinking I’d do well to be giving evidence in a court of law, for it’s maybe an inglorious death they’ll be giving him,” says she.

“Isn’t that what he laid out for yourself?” asks the miller.

“It is surely, whatever madness came on him. But I have a good wish for him the whole time.”

“If that is the way of it we had best be setting out,” says he.

The lady and the miller travelled overland, it being a shorter journey nor the one they were after coming by sea. When they got to the court of law wasn’t the judge after condemning M‘Carthy; and it was little the poor gentleman cared for the sentence of death was passed on him.

“My life is bitter and poisoned on me,” says he; “maybe the grave is the best place.”

With that the lady M‘Carthy stood up in the court and gave out that she had not been destroyed at all, for the miller saved her from the sea.

They began the whole trial over again, and herself told how she planned the elopement, and her father had no case at all. She could not tell why M‘Carthy was wishful to destroy her, and he had kept all to himself at the first trial. But by degrees all was brought to light: the villainy of the Englishman and the deceit was practised on them by him and the servant girl.

It was decreed that the money was to be restored by that villain, and the Jew was to get his payment out of it.

The lady M‘Carthy’s father was in such rejoicement to see his daughter, and she alive, that he forgave herself and the husband for the elopement. Didn’t the three of them go away home together and they the happiest people who were ever heard tell of in the world.

The Mad Pudding of Ballyboulteen.

By William Carleton (1794-1869).

“Moll Roe Rafferty, the daughter of ould Jack Rafferty, was a fine, young bouncin’ girl, large an’ lavish, wid a purty head of hair on her—scarlet—that bein’ one of the raisons why she was called Roe, or red; her arms and cheeks were much the colour of her hair, an’ her saddle nose was the purtiest thing of its kind that ever was on a face.

“Well, anyhow, it was Moll Rafferty that was the dilsy. It happened that there was a nate vagabone in the neighbourhood, just as much overburdened wid beauty as herself, and he was named Gusty Gillespie. Gusty was what they call a black-mouth Prosbytarian, and wouldn’t keep Christmas Day, except what they call ‘ould style.’ Gusty was rather good-lookin’, when seen in the dark, as well as Moll herself; anyhow, they got attached to each other, and in the end everything was arranged for their marriage.

“Now this was the first marriage that had happened for a long time in the neighbourhood between a Prodestant and a Catholic, and faix, there was of the bride’s uncles, ould Harry Connolly, a fairyman, who could cure all complaints wid a secret he had, and as he didn’t wish to see his niece married to sich a fellow, he fought bitterly against the match. All Moll’s friends, however, stood up for the marriage, barrin’ him, and, of coorse, the Sunday was appointed, as I said, that they were to be dove-tailed together.

“Well, the day arrived, and Moll, as became her, went to Mass, and Gusty to meeting, afther which they were to join one another in Jack Rafferty’s, where the priest, Father McSorley was to slip up afther Mass to take his dinner wid them, and to keep Mister McShuttle, who was to marry them, company. Nobody remained at home but ould Jack Rafferty an’ his wife, who stopped to dress for dinner, for, to tell the truth, it was to be a great let-out entirely. Maybe if all was known, too, Father McSorley was to give them a cast of his office over and above the ministher, in regard that Moll’s friends were not altogether satisfied at the kind of marriage which McShuttle could give them. The sorrow may care about that—splice here, splice there—all I can say is that when Mrs. Rafferty was goin’ to tie up a big bag pudden, in walks Harry Connolly, the fairyman, in a rage, and shouts, ‘Blood and blunder-bushes, what are yez here for?’

“‘Arrah, why, Harry? Why, avick?’

“‘Why, the sun’s in the suds, and the moon in the high Horricks; there’s a clip-stick comin’ on, and there you’re both as unconsarned as if it was about to rain mether. Go out an’ cross yourselves three times in the name o’ the four Mandromarvins, for, as the prophecy says:—‘Fill the pot, Eddy, supernaculum—a blazin’ star’s a rare spectaculum.’ Go out, both of you, an’ look at the sun, I say, an’ ye’ll see the condition he’s in—off!’

“Begad, sure enough, Jack gave a bounce to the door, and his wife leaped like a two-year-ould, till they were both got on a stile beside the house to see what was wrong in the sky.

“‘Arrah, what is it, Jack?’ says she, ‘can you see anything?’

“‘No,’ says he, ‘sorra the full of my eye of anything I can spy, barrin’ the sun himself, that’s not visible, in regard of the clouds. God guard us! I doubt there’s something to happen.’

“‘If there wasn’t, Jack, what’d put Harry, that knows so much, in that state he’s in?’

“‘I doubt it’s this marriage,’ says Jack. ‘Betune ourselves, it’s not over an’ above religious of Moll to marry a black-mouth, an’ only for—; but, it can’t be helped now, though you see it’s not a taste o’ the sun is willing to show his face upon it.’

“‘As to that,’ says his wife, winkin’ with both eyes, ‘if Gusty’s satisfied with Moll, it’s enough. I know who’ll carry the whip hand, anyhow; but in the manetime let us ax Harry within what ails the sun?’

“Well, they accordingly went in, and put this question to him, ‘Harry, what’s wrong, ahagur? What is it now, for if anybody alive knows ’tis yourself?’

“‘Ah,’ said Harry, screwin’ his mouth wid a kind of a dry smile, ‘The sun has a hard twist o’ the colic; but never mind that, I tell you, you’ll have a merrier weddin’ than you think, that’s all’; and havin’ said this, he put on his hat and left the house.

“Now, Harry’s answer relieved them very much, and so, afther callin’ to him to be back for dinner, Jack sat down to take a shough o’ the pipe, and the wife lost no time in tying up the pudden, and puttin’ it in the pot to be boiled.

“In this way things went on well enough for a while, Jack smokin’ away an’ the wife cookin’ an’ dressin’ at the rate of a hunt. At last, Jack, while sittin’, I said, contently at the fire, thought he could persave an odd dancin’ kind of motion in the pot that puzzled him a good deal.

“‘Katty,’ says he, ‘what in the dickens is in this pot on the fire?’

“‘Nerra a thing but the big pudden. Why do you ax?’ says she.

“‘Why,’ says he, ‘if ever a pot tuk it into its head to dance a jig, this did. Thunder and sparbles, look at it!’

“Begad, and it was thrue enough; there was the pot bobbin’ up an’ down, and from side to side, jiggin’ it away as merry as a grig; an’ it was quite aisy to see that it wasn’t the pot itself, but what was inside it, that brought about the hornpipe.

“‘Be the hole o’ my coat,’ shouted Jack, ‘there’s somethin’ alive in it, or it would niver cut sich capers!’

“‘Begorra, there is, Jack; something sthrange entirely has got into it. Wirra, man alive, what’s to be done?’

“Jist as she spoke the pot seemed to cut the buckle in prime style, and afther a spring that’d shame a dancin’ masther, off flew the lid, and out bounced the pudden itself, hoppin’ as nimble as a pea on a drum-head about the floor. Jack blessed himself, and Katty crossed herself. Jack shouted and Katty screamed. ‘In the name of goodness, keep your distance; no one here injured you!’

“The pudden, however, made a set at him, and Jack lepped first on a chair, and then on the kitchen table, to avoid it. It then danced towards Katty, who was repatin’ her prayers at the top of her voice, while the cunnin’ thief of a pudden was hoppin’ an’ jiggin’ it around her as if it was amused at her distress.

“‘If I could get a pitchfork,’ says Jack, ‘I’d dale wid it—by goxty, I’d thry its mettle.’

“‘No, no,’ shouted Katty, thinkin’ there was a fairy in it; ‘let us spake it fair. Who knows what harm it might do? Aisy, now,’ says she to the pudden; ‘aisy, dear; don’t harm honest people that never meant to offend you. It wasn’t us—no, in troth, it was ould Harry Connolly that bewitched you; pursue him, if you wish, but spare a woman like me!’

“The pudden, bedad, seemed to take her at her word, and danced away from her towards Jack, who, like the wife, believin’ there was a fairy in it, an’ that spakin’ it fair was the best plan, thought he would give it a soft word as well as her.

“‘Plase your honour,’ said Jack, ‘she only spakes the truth, an’ upon my voracity, we both feels much obliged to you for your quietness. Faith, it’s quite clear that if you weren’t a gentleman pudden, all out, you’d act otherwise. Ould Harry, the rogue, is your mark; he’s jist down the road there, and if you go fast you’ll overtake him. Be my song, your dancin’-masther did his duty, anyway. Thank your honour! God speed you, and may you niver meet wid a parson or alderman in your thravels.’

“Jist as Jack spoke, the pudden appeared to take the hint, for it quietly hopped out, and as the house was directly on the roadside, turned down towards the bridge, the very way that ould Harry went. It was very natural, of coorse, that Jack and Katty should go and see how it intended to thravel, and as the day was Sunday, it was but natural too, that a greater number of people than usual were passin’ the road. This was a fact; and when Jack and his wife were seen followin’ the pudden, the whole neighbourhood was soon up and after it.

“‘Jack Rafferty, what is it? Katty, ahagur, will you tell us what it manes?’

“‘Why,’ replied Katty, ‘it’s my big pudden that’s bewitched, an’ it’s out hot pursuin’—here she stopped, not wishin’ to mention her brother’s name—‘someone or other that surely put pishrogues (a fairy spell) an it.’

“This was enough; Jack, now seein’ he had assistance, found his courage comin’ back to him; so says he to Katty, ‘Go home,’ says he, ‘an’ lose no time in makin’ another pudden as good, an’ here’s Paddy Scanlan’s wife Bridget says she’ll let you boil it on her fire, as you’ll want our own to dress for dinner; and Paddy himself will lend me a pitchfork, for pursuin’ to the morsel of that same pudden will escape, till I let the wind out of it, now that I’ve the neighbours to back an’ support me,’ says Jack.

“This was agreed to, an’ Katty went back to prepare a fresh pudden, while Jack an’ half the townland pursued the other wid spades, graips, pitchforks, scythes, flails, and all possible description of instruments. On the pudden went, however, at the rate of about six Irish miles an hour, an’ sich a chase was never seen. Catholics, Prodestants, and Prosbytarians were all afther it, armed, as I said, an’ bad end to the thing but its own activity could save it. Here it made a hop, there a prod was made at it, but off it went, and someone, as eager to get a slice at it on the other side, got the prod instead of the pudden. Big Frank Farrell, the miller, of Ballyboulteen, got a prod backwards that brought a hullabulloo out of him that you might hear at the other end of the parish. One got a slice of the scythe, another a whack of a flail, a third a rap of the spade, that made him look nine ways at wanst.

“‘Where is it goin’?’ asked one. ‘My life for you, it’s on its way to meeting. Three cheers for it, if it turns to Carntaul!’ ‘Prod the sowl out of it if it’s a Prodestan,’ shouted the others; ‘if it turns to the left, slice it into pancakes. We’ll have no Prodestan’ puddens here.’

“Begad, by this time the people were on the point of begginnin’ to have a regular fight about it, when, very fortunately, it took a short turn down a little by-lane that led towards the Methodist praychin’-house, an’ in an instant all parties were in an uproar against it as a Methodist pudden. ‘It’s a Wesleyan,’ shouted several voices; ‘an’ by this an’ by that, into a Methodist chapel it won’t put a foot to-day, or we’ll lose a fall. Let the wind out of it. Come, boys, where’s your pitchforks?’

“The divil pursuin’ to the one of them, however, ever could touch the pudden, and jist when they thought they had it up against the gravel of the Methodist chapel, begad, it gave them the slip, and hops over to the left, clane into the river, and sails away before their eyes as light as an egg-shell.

“Now, it so happened that a little below this place the demesne wall of Colonel Bragshaw was built up to the very edge of the river on each side of its banks; and so, findin’ there was a stop put to their pursuit of it, they went home again, every man, woman, and child of them, puzzled to think what the pudden was at all, what it meant, or where it was goin’. Had Jack Rafferty an’ his wife been willin’ to let out the opinion they held about Harry Connolly bewitchin’ it, there is no doubt of it but poor Harry might be badly trated by the crowd, when their blood was up. They had sense enough, howaniver, to keep that to themselves, for Harry, bein’ an ould bachelor, was a kind friend to the Raffertys. So, of coorse, there was all kinds of talk about it—some guessin’ this, an’ some guessin’ that—one party sayin’ the pudden was of their side, and another denyin’ it, an’ insisting it belonged to them, an’ so on.

“In the meantime, Katty Rafferty for ‘fraid the dinner might come short, went home and made another pudden much about the same size as the one that had escaped, an’ bringing it over to their next neighbour, Paddy Scanlan’s, it was put into a pot, and placed on the fire to boil, hopin’ that it might be done in time, espishilly as they were to have the ministher, who loved a warm slice of a good pudden as well as e’er a gentleman in Europe.

“Anyhow, the day passed; Moll and Gusty were made man an’ wife, an’ no two could be more lovin’. Their friends that had been asked to the weddin’ were saunterin’ about in the pleasant little groups till dinner-time, chattin’ an’ laughin’; but, above all things, sthrivin’ to account for the figaries of the pudden; for, to tell the truth, its adventures had now gone through the whole parish.

“Well, at any rate, dinner-time was drawin’ near, and Paddy Scanlan was sittin’ comfortably wid his wife at the fire, the pudden boilin’ before their eyes when in walks Harry Connolly in a flutter, shoutin’ ‘Blood and blunder-bushes, what are yez here for?’

“‘Arrah, why, Harry—why, avick?’ said Mrs. Scanlan.

“‘Why,’ said Harry, ‘the sun’s in the suds, an’ the moon in the high Horricks! Here’s a clipstick comin’ on, an’ there you sit as unconsarned as if it was about to rain mether! Go out, both of you, an’ look at the sun, I say, an’ ye’ll see the condition he’s in—off!’

“‘Ay, but, Harry, what’s that rowled up in the tail of your cothamore (big coat)?’

“‘Out wid yez,’ says Harry, ‘an’ pray against the clipstick—the sky’s fallin’!’

“Begad, it was hard to say whether Paddy or the wife got out first, they were so much alarmed by Harry’s wild, thin face and piercin’ eyes; so out they went to see what was wonderful in the sky, an’ kep lookin’ in every direction, but not a thing was to be seen, barrin’ the sun shinin’ down wid great good-humour, an’ not a single cloud in the sky.

“Paddy an’ the wife now came in laughin’ to scould Harry, who, no doubt, was a great wag in his way when he wished. ‘Musha, bad scran to you, Harry—’ and they had time to say no more, howandiver, for, as they were goin’ into the door, they met him comin’ out of it, wid a reek of smoke out of his tail like a limekiln.

“‘Harry,’ shouted Bridget, ‘my sowl to glory, but the tail of your cothamore’s afire—you’ll be burned. Don’t you see the smoke that’s out of it?’

“‘Cross yourselves three times,’ said Harry, without stoppin’ or even lookin’ behind him, ‘for as the prophecy says, Fill the pot, Eddy—’ They could hear no more, for Harry appeared to feel like a man that carried something a great deal hotter than he wished, as anyone might see by the liveliness of his motions, and the quare faces he was forced to make as he went along.

“‘What the dickens is he carryin’ in the skirts of his big coat?’ asked Paddy.

“‘My sowl to happiness, but maybe he has stolen the pudden,’ said Bridget, ‘for it’s known that many a sthrange thing he does.’

“They immediately examined the pot, but found that the pudden was there, as safe as tuppence, an’ this puzzled them the more to think what it was he could be carryin’ about with him in the manner he did. But little they knew what he had done while they were sky-gazin’!

“Well, anyhow, the day passed, and the dinner was ready an’ no doubt but a fine gatherin’ there was to partake of it. The Prosbytarian ministher met the Methodist praycher—a divilish stretcher of an appetite he had, in throth—on his way to Jack Rafferty’s, an’ as he knew he could take the liberty, why, he insisted on his dining wid him; for, afther all, in thim days the clergy of all descriptions lived upon the best footin’ among one another not all at one as now—but no matther. Well, they had nearly finished their dinner, when Jack Rafferty himself axed Katty for the pudden; but jist as he spoke, in it came, as big as a mess-pot.

“‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I hope none of you will refuse tastin’ a bit of Katty’s pudden; I don’t mane the dancin’ one that took to its thravels to-day, but a good, solid fellow that she med since.’

“‘To be sure we won’t,’ replied the priest. ‘So, Jack, put a thrifle on them three plates at your right hand, and send them over here to the clargy, an’ maybe,’ he said, laughin’—for he was a droll, good-humoured man—‘maybe, Jack, we won’t set you a proper example.’

“‘Wid a heart an’ a half, your riverence an’ gintlemen; in throth, it’s not a bad example ever any of you set us at the likes, or ever will set us, I’ll go bail. An’ sure, I only wish it was betther fare I had for you; but we’re humble people, gintlemen, an’ so you can’t expect to meet here what you would in higher places.’

“‘Betther a male of herbs,’ said the Methodist praycher, ‘where pace is—’ He had time to go no further, however; for, much to his amazement, the priest an’ the ministher started up from the table, jist as he was going to swallow the first mouthful of the pudden, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, started away at a lively jig down the floor.

“At this moment a neighbour’s son came runnin’ in, and tould them that the parson was comin’ to see the new-married couple, an’ wish them all happiness; an’ the words were scarcely out of his mouth when he made his appearance. What to think he knew not, when he saw the ministher footin’ it away at the rate of a weddin’. He had very little time, however, to think; for, before he could sit down, up starts the Methodist praycher, an’, clappin’ his fists in his sides, chimes in in great style along wid him.

“‘Jack Rafferty,’ says he, and, by the way, Jack was his tenant, ‘what the dickens does all this mane?’ says he; ‘I’m amazed!’

“‘Then not a particle o’ me can tell you,’ says Jack; ‘but will your reverence jist taste a morsel o’ pudden, merely that the young couple may boast that you ait at their weddin’; ‘for sure, if you wouldn’t, who would?’

“‘Well,’ says he, to gratify them, I will; so, just a morsel. But, Jack, this bates Banagher,’ says he again, puttin’ the spoonful of pudden into his mouth; ‘has there been drink here?’

“‘Oh, the divil a spudh,’ says Jack, ‘for although there’s plenty in the house, faith, it appears the gentlemen wouldn’t wait for it. Unless they tuck it elsewhere, I can make nothin’ o’ this.’

“He had scarcely spoken when the parson, who was an active man, cut a caper a yard high, an’ before you could bless yourself, the three clargy were hard at work dancin’, as if for a wager. Begad, it would be unpossible for me to tell you the state the whole meetin’ was in when they see this. Some were hoarse wid laughin’; some turned up their eyes wid wondher; many thought them mad; and others thought they had turned up their little fingers a thrifle too often.

“‘Be Goxty, it’s a burnin’ shame,’ said one, ‘to see three black-mouth clargy in sich a state at this early hour!’” ‘Thunder an’ ounze, what’s over them all?’ says others; ‘why, one would think they were bewitched. Holy Moses, look at the caper the Methodist cuts! An’ as for the Recthor, who would think he could handle his feet at sich a rate! Be this, an’ be that, he cuts the buckle, an’ does the threblin’ step aiquil to Paddy Horaghan, the dancin’-masther himself! An’ see! Bad cess to the morsel of the parson that’s not too hard at “Pease upon a Trancher,” and it upon a Sunday, too! Whirroo, gintlemen, the fun’s in yez, afther all—whish! more power to yez!’

“The sorra’s own fun they had, an’ no wondher; but judge of what they felt when all at once they saw ould Jack Rafferty himself bouncin’ in among them, an’ footin’ it away like the best of them. Bedad, no play could come up to it, an’ nothin’ could be heard but laughin’, shouts of encouragement, an’ clappin’ of hands like mad. Now, the minute Jack Rafferty left the chair, where he had been carvin’ the pudden, ould Harry Connolly come over and claps himself down in his place, in ordher to send it round, of coorse; an’ he was scarcely sated when who should make his appearance but Barney Hartigan, the piper. Barney, by the way, had been sent for early in the day, but, bein’ from home when the message for him came, he couldn’t come any sooner.

“‘Begorra’ says Barney, ‘you’re airly at the work, gintlemen! But what does this mane? But divel may care, yez shan’t want the music, while there’s a blast in the pipes, anyhow!’ So sayin’ he gave them “Jig Polthogue,” and afther that, “Kiss my Lady” in his best style.

“In the manetime the fun went on thick and threefold, for it must be remembered that Harry, the ould knave, was at the pudden; an’ maybe, he didn’t sarve it about in double-quick time, too! The first he helped was the bride, and before you could say chopstick she was at it hard and fast, before the Methodist praycher, who gave a jolly spring before her that threw them all into convulsions. Harry liked this, and made up his mind soon to find partners for the rest; an’, to make a long story short, barrin’ the piper an’ himself, there wasn’t a pair of heels in the house but was busy at the dancin’ as if their lives depended on it.

“‘Barney,’ says Harry, ‘jist taste a morsel o’ this pudden; divil the sich a bully of a pudden ever you ett. Here, your sowl! thry a snig of it—it’s beautiful!’

“‘To be sure I will,’ says Barney. ‘I’m not the boy to refuse a good thing. But, Harry, be quick, for you know my hands is engaged, an’ it would be a thousand pities not to keep them in music, an’ they so well inclined. Thank you, Harry. Begad, that is a fine pudden. But, blood an’ turnips! what’s this for?’

“The words was scarcely out of his mouth when he bounced up, pipes an’ all, and dashed into the middle of the party. ‘Hurroo! your sowls, let us make a night of it! The Ballyboulteen boys for ever! Go it, your reverence!—turn your partner—heel and toe, ministher. Good! Well done, again! Whish! Hurroo! Here’s for Ballyboulteen, an’ the sky over it!’

“Bad luck to sich a set ever was seen together in this world, or will again, I suppose. The worst, however, wasn’t come yet, for jist as they were in the very heat’ an’ fury of the dance, what do you think comes hoppin’ in among them but another pudden, as nimble an’ merry as the first! That was enough; they had all heard of it—the ministhers among the rest—an’ most of them had seen the other pudden, an’ knew that there must be a fairy in it, sure enough. Well, as I said, in it comes, to the thick o’ them; but the very appearance of it was enough. Off the three clergymen danced, and off the whole weddiners danced, afther them, everyone makin’ the best of their way home, but not a sowl of them able to break out of the step, if they were to be hanged for it. Troth, it wouldn’t lave a laff in you to see the parson dancin’ down the road on his way home, and the ministher and Methodist praycher cuttin’ the buckle as they went along in the opposite direction. To make short work of it, they all danced home at last wid scarce a puff of wind in them; and the bride an’ bridegroom danced away to bed.”

Frank Webber’s Wager.

From “Charles O’Malley.”

By Charles Lever (1806-1872).

I was sitting at breakfast with Webber, when Power came in hastily.

“Ha, the very man!” said he. “I say, O’Malley, here’s an invitation for you from Sir George to dine on Friday. He desired me to say a thousand civil things about his not having made you out, regrets that he was not at home when you called yesterday, and all that.”

“By the way,” said Webber, “wasn’t Sir George Dashwood down in the West lately? Do you know what took him there?”

“Oh,” said Power, “I can enlighten you. He got his wife west of the Shannon—a vulgar woman. She is now dead, and the only vestige of his unfortunate matrimonial connexion is a correspondence kept up with him by a maiden sister of his late wife’s. She insists upon claiming the ties of kindred upon about twenty family eras during the year, when she regularly writes a most loving and ill-spelled epistle, containing the latest information from Mayo, with all particulars of the Macan family, of which she is a worthy member. To her constant hints of the acceptable nature of certain small remittances the poor General is never inattentive; but to the pleasing prospects of a visit in the flesh from Miss Judy Macan, the good man is dead.”

“Then, he has never yet seen her?”

“Never, and he hopes to leave Ireland without that blessing?”

“I say, Power, and has your worthy General sent me a card for his ball?”

“Not through me, Master Frank. Sir George must really be excused in this matter. He has a most attractive, lovely daughter, just at that budding, unsuspecting age when the heart is most susceptible of impressions; and where, let me ask, could she run such a risk as in the chance of a casual meeting with the redoubted lady-killer, Master Frank Webber?”

“A very strong case, certainly,” said Frank; “but still, had he confided his critical position to my honour and secrecy, he might have depended on me; now, having taken the other line, he must abide the consequences. I’ll make fierce love to Lucy.”

“But how, may I ask, and when?”

“I’ll begin at the ball, man.”

“Why, I thought you said you were not going?”

“There you mistake seriously. I merely said that I had not been invited.”

“Then, of course,” said I, “Webber, you can’t think of going, in any case, on my account.”

“My very dear friend, I go entirely upon my own. I not only shall go, but I intend to have most particular notice and attention paid me. I shall be prime favourite with Sir George—kiss Lucy—”

“Come, come! this is too strong.”

“What do you bet I don’t? There, now, I’ll give you a pony a-piece, I do. Do you say done?”

“That you kiss Miss Dashwood, and are not kicked downstairs for your pains; are those the terms of your wager?” inquired Power.

“With all my heart. That I kiss Miss Dashwood, and am not kicked downstairs for my pains.”

“Then I say, done!”

“And with you, too, O’Malley?”

“I thank you,” said I, coldly; “I’m not disposed to make such a return for Sir George Dashwood’s hospitality as to make an insult to his family the subject of a bet.”

“Why, man, what are you dreaming of? Miss Dashwood will not refuse my chaste salute. Come, Power, I will give you the other pony.”

“Agreed,” said he. “At the same time, understand me distinctly—that I hold myself perfectly eligible to winning the wager by my own interference; for, if you do kiss her, I’ll perform the remainder of the compact.”

“So I understand the agreement,” said Webber, and off he went.

I have often dressed for a storming party with less of trepidation than I felt on the evening of Sir George Dashwood’s ball. It was long since I had seen Miss Dashwood; therefore, as to what precise position I might occupy in her favour was a matter of great doubt in my mind, and great import to my happiness.

Our quadrille over, I was about to conduct her to a seat, when Sir George came hurriedly up, his face greatly flushed, and betraying every semblance of high excitement.

“Read this,” said he, presenting a very dirty-looking note.

Miss Dashwood unfolded the billet, and after a moment’s silence, burst out a-laughing, while she said, “Why, really, papa, I do not see why this should put you out much, after all. Aunt may be somewhat of a character, as her note evinces; but after a few days——’,

“Nonsense, child; there’s nothing in this world I have such a dread of as this—and to come at such a time! O’Malley, my boy, read this note, and you will not feel surprised if I appear in the humour you see me.”

I read as follows:—

“Dear brother,—When this reaches your hand I’ll not be far off. I’m on my way up to town, to be under Dr. Dease for the ould complaint. Expect me to tea; and, with love to Lucy, believe me, yours in haste,

“Judith Macan.

“Let the sheets be well aired in my room; and if you have a spare bed, perhaps you could prevail upon Father Magrath to stop, too.”

I scarcely could contain my laughter till I got to the end of this very free-and-easy epistle, when at last I burst forth in a hearty fit, in which I was joined by Miss Dashwood.

“I say, Lucy,” said Sir George, “there’s only one thing to be done. If this horrid woman does arrive, let her be shown to her room, and for the few days of her stay in town, we’ll neither see nor be seen by anyone.”

Without waiting for a reply he was turning away, when the servant announced, in his loudest voice, “Miss Macan.”

No sooner had the servant pronounced the magical name than all the company present seemed to stand still. About two steps in advance of the servant was a tall, elderly lady, dressed in an antique brocade silk, with enormous flowers gaudily embroidered upon it. Her hair was powdered and turned back, in the fashion of fifty years before. Her short, skinny arms were bare, while on her hands she wore black silk mittens; a pair of green spectacles scarcely dimmed the lustre of a most piercing pair of eyes, to whose effect a very palpable touch of rouge on the cheeks certainly added brilliancy. There she stood, holding before her a fan about the size of a modern tea-tray, while at each repetition of her name by the servant she curtseyed deeply.

Sir George, armed with the courage of despair, forced his way through the crowd, and taking her hand affectionately, bid her welcome to Dublin. The fair Judy, at this, threw her arms about his neck, and saluted him with a hearty smack, that was heard all over the room.

“Where’s Lucy, brother? Let me see my little darling,” said the lady, in a decided accent. “There she is, I’m sure; kiss me, my honey.”

This office Miss Dashwood performed with an effort at courtesy really admirable; while, taking her aunt’s arm, she led her to a sofa.

Power made his way towards Miss Dashwood, and succeeded in obtaining a formal introduction to Miss Macan.

“I hope you will do me the favour to dance next set with me, Miss Macan?”

“Really, Captain, it’s very polite of you, but you must excuse me. I was never anything great in quadrilles: but if a reel or a jig——”

“Oh, dear aunt, don’t think of it, I beg of you!”

“Or even Sir Roger de Coverley,” resumed Miss Macan.

“I assure you, quite equally impossible.”

“Then I’m certain you waltz,” said Power.

“What do you take me for, young man? I hope I know better. I wish Father Magrath heard you ask me that question; and for all your laced jacket——”

“Dearest aunt, Captain Power didn’t mean to offend you; I’m certain he——”

“Well, why did he dare to—(sob, sob)—did he see anything light about me, that he—(sob, sob, sob)—oh, dear! oh, dear! is it for this I came up from my little peaceful place in the West?—(sob, sob, sob)—General, George, dear; Lucy, my love, I’m taken bad. Oh, dear! oh, dear! is there any whiskey negus?”

After a time she was comforted.

At supper later on in the evening, I was deep in thought when a dialogue quite near me aroused me from my reverie.

“Don’t, now! don’t, I tell ye; it’s little ye know Galway, or ye wouldn’t think to make up to me, squeezing my foot.”

“You’re an angel, a regular angel. I never saw a woman suit my fancy before.”

“Oh, behave now. Father Magrath says——”

“Who’s he?”

“The priest; no less.”

“Oh! bother him.”

“Bother Father Magrath, young man?”

“Well, then, Judy, don’t be angry; I only means that a dragoon knows rather more of these matters than a priest.”

“Well, then, I’m not so sure of that. But, anyhow, I’d have you to remember it ain’t a Widow Malone you have beside you.”

“Never heard of the lady,” said Power.

“Sure, it’s a song—poor creature—it’s a song they made about her in the North Cork when they were quartered down in our county.”

“I wish you’d sing it.”

“What will you give me, then, if I do?”

“Anything—everything—my heart—my life.”

“I wouldn’t give a trauneen for all of them. Give me that old green ring on your finger, then.”

“It’s yours,” said Power, placing it gracefully upon Miss Macan’s finger; “and now for your promise.”

“Well, mind you get up a good chorus, for the song has one, and here it is.”

“Miss Macan’s song!” said Power, tapping the table with his knife.

“Miss Macan’s song!” was re-echoed on all sides; and before the luckless General could interfere, she had begun:—

Never did song create such a sensation as Miss Macan’s.

“I insist upon a copy of ‘The Widow,’ Miss Macan,” said Power.

“To be sure; give me a call to-morrow—let me see—about two. Father Magrath won’t be at home,” said she, with a coquettish look.

“Where pray, may I pay my respects?”

Power produced a card and pencil, while Miss Macan wrote a few lines, saying, as she handed it—

“There, now, don’t read it here before all the people; they’ll think it mighty indelicate in me to make an appointment.”

Power pocketed the card, and the next minute Miss Macan’s carriage was announced.

When she had taken her departure, “Doubt it who will,” said Power, “she has invited me to call on her to-morrow—written her address on my card—told me the hour she is certain of being alone. See here!” At these words he pulled forth the card, and handed it to a friend.

Scarcely were the eyes of the latter thrown upon the writing, when he said, “So, this isn’t it, Power!”

“To be sure it is, man. Read it out. Proclaim aloud my victory.”

Thus urged, his friend read:—

“Dear P.,—Please pay to my credit—and soon, mark ye—the two ponies lost this evening. I have done myself the pleasure of enjoying your ball, kissed the lady, quizzed the papa and walked into the cunning Fred Power.—Yours,

“Frank Webber.

“‘The Widow Malone, Ohone!’ is at your service.”

Sam Wham and the Sawmont.

By Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886).

“Knieving trouts” (they call it tickling in England) is good sport. You go to a stony shallow at night, a companion bearing a torch; then, stripping to the thighs and shoulders, wade in, grope with your hands under the stones, sods, and other harbourage, till you find your game, then grip him in your “knieve” and toss him ashore.

I remember, when a boy, carrying the splits for a servant of the family, called Sam Wham. Now, Sam was an able young fellow, well-boned and willing, a hard headed cudgel player, and a marvellous tough wrestler, for he had a backbone like a sea serpent—this gained him the name of the Twister and Twiner. He had got into the river, and with his back to me was stooping over a broad stone, when something bolted from under the bank on which I stood, right through his legs. Sam fell with a great splash on his face, but in falling jammed whatever it was against the stone. “Let go, Twister!” shouted I; “’Tis an otter, he will nip a finger off you.” “Whist!” sputtered he, as he slid his hand under the water. “May I never read a text again if he isna a sawmont wi’ a shoulther like a hog!” “Grip him by the gills, Twister,” cried I. “Saul will I!” cried the Twiner; but just then there was a heave, a roll, a splash, a slap like a pistol-shot: down went Sam, and up went the salmon, spun like a shilling at a pitch-and-toss, six feet into the air. I leaped in just as he came to the water, but my foot caught between two stones, and the more I pulled the firmer it stuck. The fish fell into the spot shallower than that from which he had leaped. Sam saw the chance, and tackled to again; while I, sitting down in the stream as best I might, held up my torch, and cried, “Fair play!” as, shoulder to shoulder, through, out, and about, up and down, roll and tumble, to it they went, Sam and the salmon. The Twister was never so twined before. Yet, through cross-buttocks and capsizes innumerable, he still held on; now haled through a pool; now haling up a bank; now heels over head; now head over heels; now, head over heels together, doubled up in a corner; but at last stretched fairly on his back, and foaming for rage and disappointment; while the victorious salmon, slapping the stones with its tail, and whirling the spray from its shoulders at every roll, came boring and snoring up the ford. I tugged and strained to no purpose; he flashed by me with a snort, and slid into deep water. Sam now staggered forward with battered bones and pilled elbows, blowing like a grampus, and cursing like nothing but himself. He extricated me, and we limped home. Neither rose for a week; for I had a dislocated ankle, and the Twister was troubled with a broken rib. Poor Sam! He had his brains discovered at last by a poker in a row, and was worm’s meat within three months; yet, ere he died, he had the satisfaction of feasting on his old antagonist, who was man’s meat next morning. They caught him in a net. Sam knew him by the twist in his tail.

Darby Doyle’s Voyage to Quebec.

From “The Dublin Penny Journal,” 1832.

By Thomas Ettingsall (17——1850).

I tuck the road one fine morning in May, from Inchegelagh, an’ got up to the Cove safe an’ sound. There I saw many ships with big broad boords fastened to ropes, every one ov them saying “The first vessel for Quebec.” Siz I to myself, those are about to run for a wager; this one siz she’ll be first, and that one siz she’ll be first. I pitched on one that was finely painted. When I wint on boord to ax the fare, who shou’d come up out ov a hole but Ned Flinn, an ould townsman ov my own.

“Och, is it yoorself that’s there, Ned?” siz I; “are ye goin’ to Amerrykey?”

“Why, an’ to be shure,” sez he; “I’m mate ov the ship.”

“Meat! that’s yer sort, Ned,” siz I; “then we’ll only want bread. Hadn’t I betther go and pay my way?”

“You’re time enough,” siz Ned; “I’ll tell you when we’re ready for sea—leave the rest to me, Darby.”

“Och, tip us your fist,” siz I; “you were always the broath of a boy; for the sake ov ould times, Ned, we must have a dhrop ov drink, and a bite to ate.”

Many’s the squeeze Ned gave my fist, telling me to leave it all to him, and how comfortable he’d make me on the voyage. Day afther day we spint together, waitin’ for the wind, till I found my pockets begin to grow very light. At last, siz he to me, one day afther dinner:—

“Darby, the ship will be ready for sea on the morrow—you’d betther go on boord an’ pay your way.”

“Is it jokin’ you are, Ned?” siz I; “shure you tould me to leave it all to you.”

“Ah! Darby,” siz he, “you’re for takin’ a rise out o’ me. But I’ll stick to my promise; only, Darby, you must pay your way.”

“O, Ned,” says I, “is this the way you’re goin’ to threat me after all? I’m a rooin’d man; all I cou’d scrape together I spint on you. If you don’t do something for me, I’m lost. Is there no place where you cou’d hide me from the captin?”

“Not a place,” siz Ned.

“An’ where, Ned, is the place I saw you comin’ up out ov?”

“O, Darby, that was the hould where the cargo’s stow’d.”

“An’ is there no other place?” siz I.

“Oh, yes,” siz he, “where we keep the wather casks.”

“An’ Ned,” siz I, “does anyone live down there?”

“Not a mother’s soul,” siz he.

“An’ Ned,” siz I, “can’t you cram me down there, and give me a lock ov straw an’ a bit?”

“Why, Darby,” siz he (an’ he look’d mighty pittyfull), “I must thry. But mind, Darby, you’ll have to hide all day in an empty barrel, and when it comes to my watch, I’ll bring you down some prog; but if you’re diskiver’d, it’s all over with me, an’ you’ll be put on a dissilute island to starve.”

“O Ned,” siz I, “leave it all to me.”

When night cum on I got down into the dark cellar, among the barrels; and poor Ned every night brought me down hard black cakes an’ salt meat. There I lay snug for a whole month. At last, one night, siz he to me:—

“Now, Darby, what’s to be done? we’re within three days’ sail ov Quebec; the ship will be overhauled, and all the passengers’ names call’d over.”

“An’ is that all that frets you, my jewel,” siz I; “just get me an empty meal-bag, a bottle, an’ a bare ham bone, and that’s all I’ll ax.”

So Ned got them for me, anyhow.

“Well, Ned,” siz I, “you know I’m a great shwimmer; your watch will be early in the morning; I’ll just slip down into the sea; do you cry out ‘There’s a man in the wather,’ as loud as you can, and leave all the rest to me.”

Well, to be sure, down into the sea I dropt without as much as a splash. Ned roared out with the hoarseness of a brayin’ ass—

“A man in the sea, a man in the sea!”

Every man, woman, and child came running up out of the holes, and the captain among the rest, who put a long red barrel, like a gun, to his eye—I thought he was for shootin’ me! Down I dived. When I got my head over the wather agen, what shou’d I see but a boat rowin’ to me. When it came up close, I roared out—

“Did ye hear me at last?”

The boat now run ‘pon the top ov me; I was gript by the scruff ov the neck, and dragg’d into it.

“What hard look I had to follow yees, at all at all—which ov ye is the masther?” says I.

“There he is,” siz they, pointin’ to a little yellow man in a corner of the boat.

“You yallow-lookin’ monkey, but it’s a’most time for you to think ov lettin’ me into your ship—I’m here plowin’ and plungin’ this month afther you; shure I didn’t care a thrawneen was it not that you have my best Sunday clothes in your ship, and my name in your books.”

“An’ pray, what is your name, my lad?” siz the captain.

“What’s my name! What i’d you give to know?” siz I, “ye unmannerly spalpeen, it might be what’s your name, Darby Doyle, out ov your mouth—ay, Darby Doyle, that was never afraid or ashamed to own it at home or abroad!”

“An’, Mr. Darby Doyle,” siz he, “do you mean to persuade us that you swam from Cork to this afther us?”

“This is more ov your ignorance,” siz I—“ay, an’ if you sted three days longer and not take me up, I’d be in Quebec before ye, only my purvisions were out, and the few rags of bank notes I had all melted into paste in my pocket, for I hadn’t time to get them changed. But stay, wait till I get my foot on shore; there’s ne’er a cottoner in Cork iv you don’t pay for leavin’ me to the marcy ov the waves.”

At last we came close to the ship. Everyone on board saw me at Cove but didn’t see me on the voyage; to be sure, everyone’s mouth was wide open, crying out, “Darby Doyle!”

“It’s now you call me loud enough,” siz I, “ye wouldn’t shout that way when ye saw me rowlin’ like a tub in a mill-race the other day fornenst your faces.” When they heard me say that, some of them grew pale as a sheet. Nothin’ was tawked ov for the other three days but Darby Doyle’s great shwim from Cove to Quebec.

At last we got to Ammerykey. I was now in a quare way; the captain wouldn’t let me go till a friend of his would see me. By this time, my jewel, not only his friends came, but swarms upon swarms, starin’ at poor Darby. At last I called Ned.

“Ned, avic,” siz I, “what’s the meanin’ ov the boords acrass the stick the people walk on, and the big white boord up there?”

“Why, come over and read,” siz Ned. I saw in great big black letters:—

THE GREATEST WONDHER IN THE WORLD!!!
TO BE SEEN HERE,

A Man that beats out Nicholas the Diver!
He has swum from Cork to Amerrykey!!
Proved on oath by ten of the crew and twenty passengers.
Admittance Half a Dollar.

“Ned,” siz I, “does this mean your humble sarvint?”

“Not another,” siz he.

So I makes no more ado, than with a hop, skip, and jump, gets over to the captain, who was now talkin’ to a yallow fellow that was afther starin’ me out ov countenance.

“Ye are doin’ it well,” said I. “How much money have ye gother for my shwimmin’?”

“Be quiet, Darby,” siz the captain, and he looked very much frickened. “I have plenty, an’ I’ll have more for ye iv ye do what I want ye to do.”

“An’ what is it, avic?” siz I.

“Why, Darby,” siz he, “I’m afther houldin a wager last night with this gintleman for all the worth ov my ship, that you’ll shwim against any shwimmer in the world; an’, Darby, if ye don’t do that, I’m a gone man.”

“Augh, give us your fist,” siz I; “did ye ever hear ov Paddies dishaving any man in the European world yet—barrin’ themselves?”

“Well, Darby,” siz he, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars; but, Darby, you must be to your word, and you shall have another hundred.”

So sayin’, he brought me down to the cellar.

“Now, Darby,” siz he, “here’s the dollars for ye.”

But it was only a bit of paper he was handin’ me.

“Arrah, none ov yer tricks upon thravellers,” siz I; “I had betther nor that, and many more ov them, melted in the sea; give me what won’t wash out of my pocket.”

“Well, Darby,” siz he, “you must have the real thing.”

So he reckoned me out a hundred dollars in goold. I never saw the like since the stockin’ fell out ov the chimly on my aunt and cut her forred.

“Now, Darby,” siz he, “ye are a rich man, and ye are worthy of it all.”

At last the day came that I was to stand the tug. I saw the captain lookin’ very often at me. At last—

“Darby,” siz he, “are you any way cow’d? The fellow you have to shwim agenst can shwim down watherfalls an’ catharacts.”

“Can he, avic?” siz I; “but can he shwim up agenst them?”

An’ who shou’d come up while I was tawkin’ to the captain but the chap I was to shwim with, and heard all I sed. He was so tall that he could eat bread an’ butther over my head—with a face as yallow as a kite’s foot.

“Tip us the mitten,” siz I, “mabouchal,” siz I; “Where are we going to shwim to? What id ye think if we swum to Keep Cleer or the Keep ov Good Hope?”

“I reckon neither,” siz he.

Off we set through the crowds ov ladies an’ gintlemen to the shwimmin’ place. And as I was goin’ I was thript up by a big loomp ov iron struck fast in the ground with a big ring to it.

“What d’ye call that?” siz I to the captain, who was at my elbow.

“Why, Darby,” siz he, “that’s half an anchor.”

“Have ye any use for it?” siz I.

“Not in the least,” siz he; “it’s only to fasten boats to.”

“Maybee you’d give it to a body,” siz I.

“An’ welkim, Darby,” siz he; “it’s yours.”

“God bless your honour, sir,” siz I, “it’s my poor father that will pray for you. When I left home the creather hadn’t as much as an anvil but what was sthreeled away by the agint—bad end to them. This will be jist the thing that’ll match him; he can tie the horse to the ring while he forges on the other part. Now, will ye obleege me by gettin’ a couple ov chaps to lay it on my shoulder when I get into the wather, and I won’t have to be comin’ back for it afther I shake hands with this fellow.”

Oh, the chap turned from yallow to white when he heard me say this. An’ siz he to the gintleman that was walkin’ by his side—

“I reckon I’m not fit for the shwimmin’ to-day—I don’t feel myself.”

“An’, murdher an’ Irish, if you’re yer brother, can’t you send him for yerself, an’ I’ll wait here till he comes. An’ when will ye be able for the shwim, avic?” siz I, mighty complisant.

“I reckon in another week,” siz he.

So we shook hands and parted. The poor fellow went home, took the fever, then began to rave. “Shwim up catharacts!—shwim to the Keep ov Good Hope!—shwim to St. Helena!—shwim to Keep Clear!—shwim with an anchor on his back!—oh! oh! oh!”

I now thought it best to be on the move; so I gother up my winners; and here I sit undher my own hickory threes, as independent as anny Yankee.

Bob Burke’s Duel.

From “Tales from Blackwood.”

By Dr. Maginn.

How Bob Burke, after Consultation with Wooden-Leg Waddy, Fought the Duel with Ensign Brady for the sake of Miss Theodosia MacNamara, Supposed Heiress to her Old Bachelor Uncle, Mick MacNamara of Kawleash.

“At night I had fallen asleep fierce in the determination of exterminating Brady; but with the morrow, cool reflection came—made probably cooler by the aspersion I had suffered. How could I fight him, when he had never given me the slightest affront? To be sure, picking a quarrel is not hard, thank God, in any part of Ireland; but unless I was quick about it, he might get so deep into the good graces of Dosy, who was as flammable as tinder, that even my shooting him might not be of any practical advantage to myself. Then, besides, he might shoot me; and, in fact, I was not by any means so determined in the affair at seven o’clock in the morning as I was at twelve o’clock at night. I got home, however, dressed, shaved, etc., and turned out. ‘I think,’ said I to myself, ‘the best thing I can do, is to go and consult Wooden-Leg Waddy; and, as he is an early man, I shall catch him now.’ The thought was no sooner formed than executed; and in less than five minutes I was walking with Wooden-Leg Waddy in his garden, at the back of his house, by the banks of the Blackwater.

“Waddy had been in the Hundred-and-First, and had seen much service in that distinguished corps.

“Waddy had served a good deal, and lost his leg somehow, for which he had a pension besides his half-pay, and he lived in ease and affluence among the Bucks of Mallow. He was a great hand at settling and arranging duels, being what we generally call in Ireland a judgmatical sort of man—a word which, I think, might be introduced with advantage into the English vocabulary. When I called on him, he was smoking his meerschaum, as he walked up and down his garden in an old undressed coat, and a fur cap on his head. I bade him good morning; to which salutation he answered by a nod, and a more prolonged whiff.

“‘I want to speak to you, Wooden-Leg,’ said I, ‘on a matter which nearly concerns me,’ to which I received another nod, and another whiff in reply.

“‘The fact is,’ said I, ‘that there is an Ensign Brady of the 48th Quartered here, with whom I have some reason to be angry, and I am thinking of calling him out. I have come to ask your advice whether I should do so or not. He has deeply injured me, by interfering between me and the girl of my affection. What ought I to do in such a case?’

“‘Fight him, by all means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘But the difficulty is this—he has offered me no affront, direct or indirect—we have no quarrel whatever—and he has not paid any addresses to the lady. He and I have scarcely been in contact at all. I do not see how I can manage it immediately with any propriety. What then can I do now?’

“‘Do not fight him, by any means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘Still, these are the facts of the case. He, whether intentionally or not, is coming between me and my mistress, which is doing me an injury perfectly equal to the grossest insult. How should I act?’

“‘Fight him by all means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘But then, I fear if I were to call him out on a groundless quarrel, or one which would appear to be such, that I should lose the good graces of the lady, and be laughed at by my friends, or set down as a dangerous and quarrelsome companion.’

“‘Do not fight him, by any means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘Yet, as he is a military man, he must know enough of the etiquette of these affairs to feel perfectly confident that he has affronted me; and the opinion of the military man, standing, as of course, he does, in the rank and position of a gentleman, could not, I think, be overlooked without disgrace.’

“‘Fight him, by all means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘But then, talking of gentlemen, I own he is an officer of the 48th, but his father is a fish-tackle seller in John Street, Kilkenny, who keeps a three-halfpenny shop, where you may buy everything from a cheese to a cheese-toaster, from a felt hat to a pair of brogues, from a pound of brown soap to a yard of huckaback towels. He got his commission by his father’s retiring from the Ormonde Interest, and acting as whipper-in to the sham freeholders from Castlecomer; and I am, as you know, of the best blood of the Burkes—straight from the De Burgos themselves—and when I think of that I really do not like to meet this Mr. Brady.’

“‘Do not fight him, by all means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.

“‘Why,’ said I, ‘Wooden-Leg, my friend, this is like playing battledore and shuttlecock; what is knocked forward with one hand is knocked back with the other. Come, tell me what I ought to do.’

“‘Well,’ said Wooden-Leg, taking the meerschaum out of his mouth, ‘in dubiis auspice, etc. Let us decide by tossing a halfpenny. If it comes down ‘head,’ you fight—if ‘harp’ you do not. Nothing can be fairer.’

“I assented.

“‘Which,’ said he, ‘is it to be—two out of three, as at Newmarket, or the first toss to decide?’

“‘Sudden death,’ said I, ‘and there will soon be an end of it.’

“Up went the halfpenny, and we looked with anxious eyes for its descent, when, unluckily, it stuck in a gooseberry bush.

“‘I don’t like that,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy, ‘for it’s a token of bad luck. But here goes again.’

“Again the copper soared to the sky, and down it came—Head.

“‘I wish you joy, my friend’ said Waddy; ‘you are to fight. That was my opinion all along; though I did not like to commit myself. I can lend you a pair of the most beautiful duelling-pistols ever put into a man’s hand—Wogden’s, I swear. The last time they were out, they shot Joe Brown, of Mount Badger, as dead as Harry the Eight.’

“‘Will you be my second?’ said I.

“‘Why, no,’ replied Wooden-leg, ‘I cannot; for I am bound over by a rascally magistrate to keep the peace, because I nearly broke the head of a blackguard bailiff, who came here to serve a writ on a friend of mine, with one of my spare legs. But I can get you a second at once. My nephew, Major Mug, has just come to me on a few days’ visit, and, as he is quite idle it will give him some amusement to be your second. Look up at his bedroom—you see he is shaving himself.’

“In a short time the Major made his appearance, dressed with a most military accuracy of costume. There was not a speck of dust on his well-brushed blue surtout—not a vestige of hair, except the regulation whiskers, on his closely-shaven countenance. His hat was brushed to the most glossy perfection—his boots shone in the jetty glow of Day and Martin. There was scarcely an ounce of flesh on his hard and weather-beaten face, and as he stood rigidly upright, you would have sworn that every sinew and muscle of his body was as stiff as whipcord. He saluted us in military style, and was soon put in possession of the case. Wooden-Leg Waddy insinuated that there were hardly, as yet, grounds for a duel.

“‘I differ,’ said Major Mug, ‘decidedly—the grounds are ample. I never saw a clearer case in my life, and I have been principal or second in seven-and-twenty. If I collect your story rightly, Mr. Burke, he gave you an abrupt answer in the field, which was highly derogatory to the lady in question, and impertinently rude to yourself?’

“‘He certainly,’ said I, ‘gave me what we call a short answer; but I did not notice it at the time, and he has since made friends with the young lady.’

“‘It matters nothing,’ observed Major Mug, ‘what you may think, or she may think. The business is now in my hands, and I must see you through it. The first thing to be done is to write him a letter. Send out for paper—let it be gilt-edged, Waddy,—that we may do the thing genteelly. I’ll dictate, Mr. Burke, if you please.’

“And so he did. As well as I can recollect, the note was as follows:—

“‘Spa-Walk, Mallow, June 3, 18—

“‘Eight o’clock in the morning.

“‘Sir,—A desire for harmony and peace, which has at all times actuated my conduct, prevented me, yesterday, from asking you the meaning of the short and contemptuous message which you commissioned me to deliver to a certain young lady of our acquaintance whose name I do not choose to drag into a correspondence. But, now that there is no danger of its disturbing anyone, I must say that in your desiring me to tell that young lady she might consider herself as d——d, when she asked you to tea after inadvertently riding over you in the hunting field, you were guilty of conduct highly unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman, and subversive of the discipline of the hunt. I have the honour to be, sir,

“‘Your most obedient humble servant,
“‘Robert Burke.

“‘P.S.—This note will be delivered to you by my friend, Major Mug, of the 3rd West Indian; and you will, I trust, see the propriety of referring him to another gentleman without further delay.’

“‘That, I think, is neat,’ said the Major. ‘Now, seal it with wax, Mr. Burke, with wax—and let the seal be your arms. That’s right. Now direct it.’

“‘Ensign Brady?’

“‘No—no—the right thing would be, ‘Mr. Brady, Ensign, 48th Foot,’ but custom allows ‘Esquire,’ that will do.—‘Thady Brady, Esquire, Ensign, 48th Foot, Barracks, Mallow.’ He shall have it in less than a quarter of an hour.’

“The Major was as good as his word, and in about half-an-hour he brought back the result of his mission. The Ensign, he told us, was extremely reluctant to fight, and wanted to be off on the ground that he meant no offence, did not even remember having used the expression, and offered to ask the lady if she conceived for a moment he had any idea of saying anything but what was complimentary to her.

“‘In fact,’ said the Major, ‘he at first plumply refused to fight; but I soon brought him to reason. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you either consent to fight or refuse to fight. In the first case, the thing is settled to hand, and we are not called upon to inquire if there was an affront or not—in the second case, your refusal to comply with a gentleman’s request is, of itself, an offence for which he has a right to call you out. Put it, then, on the grounds, you must fight him, it is perfectly indifferent to me what the grounds may be; and I have only to request the name of your friend, as I too much respect the coat you wear to think that there can be any other alternative.’ This brought the chap to his senses, and he referred me to Captain Codd, of his own regiment, at which I felt much pleased, because Codd is an intimate friend of my own, he and I having fought a duel three years ago in Falmouth, in which I lost the top of this little finger, and he his left whisker. It was a near touch, he is as honourable a man as ever paced a ground; and I am sure that he will no more let his man off the field until business is done than I would myself.’

“I own,” continued Burke, “I did not half relish this announcement of the firm purpose to our seconds; but I was in for it, and could not get back. I sometimes thought Dosy a dear purchase at such an expense; but it was no use to grumble. Major Mug was sorry to say that there was a review to take place immediately at which the Ensign must attend, and it was impossible for him to meet me until the evening; ‘but,’ he added, ‘at this time of the year it can be of no great consequence. There will be plenty of light till nine, but I have fixed seven. In the meantime you may as well divert yourself with a little pistol practice, but do it on the sly, as, if they were shabby enough to have a trial it would not tell well before the jury.’

“Promising to take a quiet chop with me at five, the Major retired, leaving me not quite contented with the state of affairs. I sat down and wrote a letter to my cousin, Phil Burdon, of Kanturk, telling him what I was about and giving directions what was to be done in the case of any fatal event. I communicated to him the whole story—deplored my unhappy fate in being thus cut off in the flower of my youth—left him three pairs of buckskin breeches—and repented my sins. This letter I immediately packed off by a special messenger, and then began a half-a-dozen others, of various styles of tenderness and sentimentality, to be delivered after my melancholy decease. The day went off fast enough, I assure you; and at five the Major, and Wooden-Leg Waddy, arrived in high spirits.

“‘Here, my boy,’ said Waddy, handing me the pistols, ‘here are the flutes; and pretty music, I can tell you, they make.’

“‘As for dinner,’ said Major Mug, ‘I do not much care; but, Mr. Burke, I hope it is ready, as I am rather hungry. We must dine lightly, however, and drink not much. If we come off with flying colours, we may crack a bottle together by-and-by; in case you shoot Brady, I have everything arranged for our keeping out of the way until the thing blows over—if he shoots you, I’ll see you buried. Of course, you would not recommend anything so ungenteel as a prosecution? No. I’ll take care it shall appear in the papers, and announced that Robert Burke, Esq., met his death with becoming fortitude, assuring the unhappy survivor that he heartily forgave him, and wished him health and happiness.’

“‘I must tell you,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy, ‘it’s all over Mallow and the whole town will be on the ground to see it. Miss Dosy knows of it, and she is quite delighted—she says she will certainly marry the survivor. I spoke to the magistrate to keep out of the way, and he promised that, though it deprived him of a great pleasure he would go and dine five miles off—and know nothing about it. But here comes dinner, let us be jolly.’

“I cannot say that I played on that day as brilliant a part with the knife and fork as I usually do, and did not sympathise much in the speculations of my guests, who pushed the bottle about with great energy, recommending me, however, to refrain. At last the Major looked at his watch, which he had kept lying on the table before him from the beginning of dinner—started up—clapped me on the shoulder, and declaring it only wanted six minutes and thirty-five seconds of the time, hurried me off to the scene of action—a field close by the castle.

“There certainly was a miscellaneous assemblage of the inhabitants of Mallow, all anxious to see the duel. They had pitted us like game-cocks, and bets were freely taken as to the chances of our killing one another, and the particular spots. One betted on my being hit in the jaw, another was so kind as to lay the odds on my knee. The tolerably general opinion appeared to prevail that one or other of us was to be killed; and much good-humoured joking took place among them while they were deciding which. As I was double the thickness of my antagonist, I was clearly the favourite for being shot, and I heard one fellow near me say, ‘Three to two on Burke, that he’s shot first—I bet in tenpennies.’

“Brady and Codd soon appeared, and the preliminaries were arranged with much punctilio between our seconds, who mutually and loudly extolled each other’s gentleman-like mood of doing business. Brady could scarcely stand with fright, and I confess that I did not feel quite as Hector of Troy, or the Seven Champions of Christendom are reported to have done on similar occasions. At last the ground was measured—the pistols handed to the principals—the handkerchief dropped—whiz! went the bullet within an inch of my ear—and crack! went mine exactly on Ensign Brady’s waistcoat pocket. By an unaccountable accident, there was a five shilling piece in that very pocket, and the ball glanced away, while Brady doubled himself down, uttering a loud howl that might be heard half-a-mile off. The crowd was so attentive as to give a huzza for my success.

“Codd ran up to his principal, who was writhing as if he had ten thousand colics, and soon ascertained that no harm was done.

“‘What do you propose,’ said he to my second—‘What do you propose to do, Major?’

“‘As there is neither blood drawn nor bone broken,’ said the Major, ‘I think that shot goes for nothing.’

“‘I agree with you,’ said Captain Codd.

“‘If your party will apologise,’ said Major Mug, ‘I’ll take my man off the ground.’

“‘Certainly,’ said Captain Codd, ‘you are quite right, Major, in asking the apology, but you know that it is my duty to refuse it.’

“‘You are correct, Captain,’ said the Major; ‘I then formally require that Ensign Brady apologise to Mr. Burke.’

“‘I, as formally, refuse it,’ said Captain Codd.

“‘We must have another shot then,’ said the Major.

“‘Another shot, by all means,’ said the Captain.

“‘Captain Codd,’ said the Major, ‘you have shown yourself in this, as in every transaction of your life, a perfect gentleman.’

“‘He who would dare to say,’ replied the Captain, ‘that Major Mug is not among the most gentleman-like men in the service, would speak what is untrue.’

“Our seconds bowed, took a pinch of snuff together, and proceeded to load the pistols. Neither Brady nor I were particularly pleased at these complimentary speeches of the gentlemen, and, I am sure, had we been left to ourselves, would have declined the second shot. As it was, it appeared inevitable.

“Just, however, as the process of loading was completing, there appeared on the ground my cousin Phil Purdon, rattling in on his black mare as hard as he could lick—

“‘I want to speak to the plaintiff in this action—I mean, to one of the parties in this duel. I want to speak to you, Bob Burke.’

“‘The thing is impossible, sir,’ said Major Mug.

“‘Perfectly impossible, sir,’ said Codd.

“‘Possible or impossible is nothing to the question,’ shouted Purdon; ‘Bob, I must speak to you.’

“‘It is contrary to all regulation,’ said the Major.

“‘Quite contrary,’ said the Captain.

“Phil, however, persisted, and approached me: ‘Are you fighting about Dosy Mac?’ said he to me, in a whisper.

“‘Yes,’ I replied.

“‘And she is to marry the survivor, I understand?’

“‘So I am told,’ said I.

“‘Back out, Bob, then; back out, at the rate of a hunt. Old Mick MacNamara is married.’

“‘Married!’ I exclaimed.

“‘Poz,’ said he. ‘I drew the articles myself. He married his housemaid, a girl of eighteen; and,’ here he whispered.

“‘What,’ I cried, ‘six months!’

“‘Six months,’ said he, ‘an’ no mistake.’

“‘Ensign Brady,’ said I, immediately coming forward, ‘there has been a strange misconception in this business. I here declare, in presence of this honourable company, that you have acted throughout like a man of honour, and a gentleman; and you leave the ground without a stain on your character.’

“Brady hopped three feet off the ground with joy at the unexpected deliverance. He forgot all etiquette, and came forward to shake me by the hand.

“‘My dear Burke,’ said he, ‘it must have been a mistake: let us swear eternal friendship.’

“‘For ever,’ said I. ‘I resign you Miss Theodosia.’

“‘You are too generous,’ he said, ‘but I cannot abuse your generosity.’

“‘It is unprecedented conduct,’ growled Major Mug. ‘I’ll never be second to a Pekin again.’

“‘My principal leaves the ground with honour,’ said Captain Codd, looking melancholy, nevertheless.

“‘Humph!’ grunted Wooden-Leg Waddy, lighting his meerschaum.

“The crowd dispersed much displeased, and I fear my reputation for valour did not rise among them. I went off with Purdon to finish a jug at Carmichael’s, and Brady swaggered off to Miss Dosy’s. His renown for valour won her heart. It cannot be denied that I sunk deeply in her opinion. On that very evening Brady broke his love, and was accepted. Mrs. Mac. opposed, but the red-coat prevailed.

“‘He may rise to be a general,’ said Dosy, ‘and be a knight, and then I will be Lady Brady.’

“‘Or, if my father should be made an earl, angelic Theodosia, you would be Lady Thady Brady,’ said the Ensign.

“‘Beautiful prospect!’ cried Dosy, ‘Lady Thady Brady! What a harmonious sound!’

“But why dally over the detail of my unfortunate loves? Dosy and the Ensign were married before the accident which had befallen her uncle was discovered; and if they were not happy, why, then, you and I may. They have had eleven children, and, I understand, he now keeps a comfortable eating-house close by Cumberland Basin, in Bristol. Such was my duel with Ensign Brady of the 48th.”

Billy Malowney’s Taste of Love and Glory.

From “The Purcell Papers.”

By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873).

Let the reader fancy a soft summer evening, the fresh dews falling on bush and flower. The sun has just gone down, and the thrilling vespers of thrushes and blackbirds ring with a wild joy through the saddened air; the west is piled with fantastic clouds, and clothed in tints of crimson and amber, melting away into a wan green, and so eastward into the deepest blue, through which soon the stars will begin to peep.

Let him fancy himself seated upon the low mossy wall of an ancient churchyard, where hundreds of grey stones rise above the sward, under the fantastic branches of two or three half-withered ash-trees, spreading their arms in everlasting love and sorrow over the dead.

The narrow road upon which I and my companion await the tax-cart that is to carry me and my basket, with its rich fruitage of speckled trout, away, lies at his feet, and far below spreads an undulating plain, rising westward into soft hills, and traversed (every here and there visibly) by a winding stream which, even through the mists of evening, catches and returns the funeral glories of the skies.

As the eye traces its wayward wanderings, it loses them for a moment in the heaving verdure of white-thorns and ash, from among which floats from some dozen rude chimneys, mostly unseen, the transparent blue film of turf smoke. There we know, although we cannot see it, the steep old bridge of Carrickdrum spans the river; and stretching away far to the right the valley of Lisnamoe; its steeps and hollows, its straggling hedges, its fair-green, its tall scattered trees, and old grey tower, are disappearing fast among the discoloured tints and blaze of evening.

Those landmarks, as we sit listlessly expecting the arrival of our modest conveyance, suggest to our companion—a bare-legged Celtic brother of the gentle craft, somewhat at the wrong side of forty, with a turf-coloured caubeen, patched frieze, a clear brown complexion, dark-grey eyes and a right pleasant dash of roguery in his features—the tale, which, if the reader pleases, he is welcome to hear along with me just as it falls from the lips of our humble comrade.

His words I can give, but your own fancy must supply the advantages of an intelligent, expressive countenance, and what is, perhaps, harder still, the harmony of his glorious brogue, that, like the melodies of our own dear country, will leave a burden of mirth or of sorrow with nearly equal propriety, tickling the diaphragm as easily as it plays with the heart-strings, and is in itself a national music that, I trust, may never, never—scouted and despised though it be—never cease, like the lost tones of our harp, to be heard in the fields of my country, in welcome or endearment, in fun or in sorrow, stirring the hearts of Irishmen and Irish women.

My friend of the caubeen and naked shanks, then, commenced, and continued his relation, as nearly as possible, in the following words:—

Av coorse ye often heerd talk of Billy Malowney, that lived by the bridge of Carrickadrum. “Leumarinka” was the name they put on him, he was sich a beautiful dancer. An’ faix, it’s he was the rale sportin’ boy, every way—killin’ the hares, and gaffin’ the salmons, an’ fightin’ the men, an’ funnin’ the women, and coortin’ the girls; an’, be the same token, there was not a colleen inside iv his jurisdiction but was breakin’ her heart wid the fair love iv him.

Well, this was all pleasand enough, to be sure, while it lasted; but inhuman beings is born to misfortune, an’ Bill’s divarshin was not to last always. A young boy can’t be continually coortin’ and kissin’ the girls (an’ more’s the pity) without exposin’ himself to the most eminent parril; an’ so signs an’ what should happen Billy Malowney himself, but to fall in love at last wid little Molly Donovan, in Coolamoe.

I never could ondherstand why in the world it was Bill fell in love wid her, above all the girls in the country. She was not within four stone weight iv being as fat as Peg Brallaghan; and as for redness in the face, she could not hould a candle to Judy Flaherty. (Poor Judy! she was my sweetheart, the darlin’, an’ coorted me constant, ever entil she married a boy of the Butlers; an’ it’s twenty years now since she was buried under the ould white-thorn in Garbally. But that’s no matther!).

Well, at any rate, Molly Donovan tuck his fancy an’ that’s everything! She had smooth brown hair—as smooth as silk—an’ a pair iv soft coaxin’ eyes—an’ the whitest little teeth you ever seen; an’, bedad, she was every taste as much in love wid himself as he was.

Well, now, he was raly stupid wid love: there was not a bit of fun left in him. He was good for nothin’ an airth bud sittin’ under bushes, smokin’ tobacky, and sighin’ till you’d wonder how in the world he got wind for it all.

An’, bedad, he was an illigant scholar, moreover an’, so signs by, it’s many’s the song he made about her; an’ if you’d be walkin’ in the evening, a mile away from Carrickadrum, begorra you’d hear him singing out like a bull, all across the country, in her praises.

Well, ye may be sure, ould Tim Donovan and the wife was not a bit too well plased to see Bill Malowney coortin’ their daughter Molly; for, do ye mind, she was the only child they had, and her fortune was thirty-five pounds, two cows, and five illigant pigs, three iron pots, a skillet, an’ a trifle iv poultry in hand; and no one knew how much besides, whenever the Lord id be plased to call the ould people out of the way into glory!

So, it was not likely ould Tim Donovan id be fallin’ in love wid poor Bill Malowney as aisy as the girls did; for, barrin’ his beauty, an’ his gun, an’ his dhudheen, an’ his janious, the divil a taste of property iv any sort or description he had in the wide world!

Well, as bad as that was, Billy would not give in that her father and mother had the smallest taste iv a right to intherfare, good or bad.

“An’ you’re welcome to rafuse me,” says he, “whin’ I ax your lave,” says he; “an’ I’ll ax your lave,” says he, “whenever I want to coort yourselves,” says he; “but it’s your daughter I’m coortin’ at the present,” says he, “an’ that’s all I’ll say,” says he; “for I’d a soon take a doase of salts as be discoursin’ ye,” says he.

So it was a rale blazin’ battle betune himself and the ould people; an’, begorra, there was no soart iv blaguardin’ that did not pass betune them; an’ they put a solemn injection on Molly again seein’ him or meetin’ him for the future.

But it was all iv no use. You might as well be pursuadin’ the birds agin flying, or sthrivin’ to coax the stars out of the sky into your hat, as be talking common sinse to them that’s fairly bothered and burstin’ wid love. There’s nothin’ like it. The toothache and colic together id compose you betther for an argyment than itself. It leaves you fit for nothin’ bud nansinse.

It’s stronger than whisky, for one good drop iv it will make you drunk for one year, and sick, begorra, for a dozen.

It’s stronger than the say, for it’ll carry you round the world an’ never let you sink, in sunshine or storm; an’, begorra, it’s stronger than Death himself, for it is not afeard iv him, bedad, but dares him in every shape.

Bud lovers has quarrels sometimes, and, begorra, when they do, you’d a’most imagine they hated one another like man and wife. An’ so, signs an’, Billy Malowney and Molly Donovan fell out one evening at ould Tom Dundon’s wake; an’ whatever came betune them, she made no more about it but just draws her cloak round her, and away wid herself and the sarvant-girl home again, as if there was not a corpse, or a fiddle, or a taste of divarsion in it.

Well, Billy Malowney follied her down the boreen, to try could he deludher her back again; but, if she was bitther before, she gave it to him in airnest when she got him alone to herself, and to that degree that he wished her safe home, short and sulky enough, an’ walked back again, as mad as the devil himself, to the wake, to pay respect to poor Tom Dundon.

Well, my dear, it was aisy seen there was something wrong wid Billy Malowney, for he paid no attintion for the rest of the evening to any soart of divarsion but the whisky alone; an’ every glass he’d drink it’s what he’d be wishing the divil had the woman, an’ the worst iv bad luck to all soarts iv courting, until, at last, wid the goodness iv the sperits, an’ the badness iv his temper, an’ the constant flusthration iv cursin’, he grew all as one as you might say almost, saving your presince, bastely drunk!

Well, who should he fall in wid, in that childish condition, as he was deploying along the road almost as straight as the letter S, an’ cursin’ the girls, an’ roarin’ for more whisky, but the recruiting-sargent iv the Welsh Confusileers.

So, cute enough, the sargent begins to convarse him, an’ it was not long until he had him sitting in Murphy’s public-house, wid an elegant dandy iv punch before him, an’ the king’s money safe an’ snug in the lowest wrinkle of his breeches pocket.

So away wid him, and the dhrums and fifes playing, an’ a dozen more unforthunate bliggards just listed along with him, an’ he shakin’ hands wid the sargent, and swearin’ agin the women every minute, until, be the time he kem to himself, begorra, he was a good ten miles on the road to Dublin, an’ Molly and all behind him.

It id be no good tellin’ you iv the letters he wrote to her from the barracks there, nor how she was breaking her heart to go and see him just wanst before he’d go; but the father and mother would not allow iv it be no manes.

An’ so in less time than you’d be thinkin’ about it, the colonel had him polished off into a rale elegant soger, wid his gun exercise, and his bagnet exercise, and his small sword, and broad sword, and pistol and dagger, an’ all the rest, an’ then away wid him on board a man-a-war to furrin parts, to fight for King George agin Bonypart, that was great in them times.

Well, it was very soon in everyone’s mouth how Billy Malowney was batin’ all before him, astonishin’ the ginerals, and frightenin’ the inimy to that degree, there was not a Frinchman dare say parley voo outside of the rounds iv his camp.

You may be sure Molly was proud iv that same, though she never spoke a word about it; until at last news kem home that Billy Malowney was surrounded an’ murdered be the Frinch army, under Napoleon Bonypart himself. The news was brought by Jack Bryan Dhas, the pedlar, that said he met the corporal iv the regiment on the quay iv Limerick, an’ how he brought him into a public-house and thrated him to a naggin, and got all the news about poor Billy Malowney out iv him while they war dhrinkin’ it; an’ a sorrowful story it was.

The way it happened, accordin’ as the corporal tould him, was jist how the Dook iv Wellington detarmined to fight a rale tarin’ battle wid the Frinch, and Bonypart at the same time was aiqually detarmined to fight the divil’s own scrimmidge wid the British foorces.

Well, as soon as the business was pretty near ready at both sides, Bonypart and the general next undher himself gets up behind a bush, to look at their inimies through spy-glasses, and thry would they know any iv them at the distance.

“Bedad!” says the gineral, afther a divil iv a long spy, “I’d bet half a pint,” says he, “that’s Billy Malowney himself,” says he, “down there,” says he.

“Och!” says Bonypart, “do you tell me so?” says he—“I’m fairly heart-scalded with that same Billy Malowney,” says he; “an’ I think if I wanst got shut iv him, I’d bate the rest of them aisy,” says he.

“I’m thinking so myself,” says the general, says he; “but he’s a tough bye,” says he.

“Tough!” says Bonypart, “he’s the divil,” says he.

“Begorra, I’d be better plased,” says the gineral, says he, “to take himself than the Duke iv Willinton,” says he, “an’ Sir Edward Blakeney into the bargain,” says he.

“The Duke of Wellinton and Gineral Blakeney,” says Bonypart, “is great for planning, no doubt,” says he; “but Billy Malowney’s the boy for action,” says he—“an’ action’s everything, just now,” says he.

So with that Bonypart pushes up his cocked hat, and begins scratching his head, and thinking and considherin’ for the bare life, and at last says he to the gineral:

“Gineral Commandher iv all the Foorces,” says he, “I’ve hot it,” says he: “ordher out the forlorn hope,” says he, “an’ give them as much powdher, both glazed and blasting,” says he, “an’ as much bullets, do ye mind, an’ swan-dhrops an’ chainshot,” says he, “an’ all soorts iv waipons an’ combustables as they can carry; an’ let them surround Bill Malowney,” says he, “an’ if they can get any soort iv an advantage,” says he, “let them knock him to smithereens,” says he, “an’ then take him presner,” says he; “an’ tell all the bandmen iv the Frinch army,” says he, “to play up ‘Garryowen,’ to keep up their sperits,” says he, “all the time they’re advancin’. And you may promise them anything you like in my name,” says he; “for, by my sowl, I don’t think it’s many iv them ‘ill come back to throuble us,” says he, winkin’ at him.

So away with the gineral, an’ he ordhers out the forlorn hope, an’ tells the band to play, an’ everything else, just as Bonypart desired him. An’ sure enough whin Billy Malowney heerd the music where he was standin’ taking a blast of the dhudheen to compose his mind for murdherin’ the Frinchmen as usual, being mighty partial to that tune intirely, he cocks his ear a one side, an’ down he stoops to listen to the music; but, begorra, who should be in his rare all the time but a Frinch grannideer behind a bush, and seeing him stooped in a convenient forum, bedad he let flies at him straight, and fired him right forward between the legs an’ the small iv the back, glory be to God! with what they call (saving your presence) a bum-shell.

Well, Bill Malowney let one roar out iv him, an’ away he rolled over the field iv battle like a slitther (as Bonypart and the Duke iv Wellington, that was watching the manoeuvres from a distance, both consayved) into glory.

An’ sure enough the Frinch was overjoyed beyant all bounds, an’ small blame to them—an’ the Duke of Wellington, I’m toult, was never all out the same man sinst.

At any rate, the news kem home how Billy Malowney was murdhered by the Frinch in furrin parts.

Well, all this time, you may be sure, there was no want iv boys comin’ to coort purty Molly Donovan; but one way ar another, she always kept puttin’ them off constant. An’ though her father and mother was nathurally anxious to get rid of her respickably, they did not like to marry her off in spite iv her teeth.

An’ this way, promising one while and puttin’ it off another, she conthrived to get on from one Shrove to another, until near seven years was over and gone from the time when Billy Malowney listed for furrin sarvice.

It was nigh hand a year from the time whin the news iv Leum-a-rinka bein’ killed by the Frinch came home, an’ in place iv forgettin’ him, as the saisins wint over, it’s what Molly was growin’ paler and more lonesome every day, antil the neighbours thought she was fallin’ into a decline; and this is the way it was with her whin the fair of Lisnamoe kem round.

It was a beautiful evenin’, just at the time iv the reapin’ iv the oats, and the sun was shinin’ through the red clouds far away over the hills iv Cahirmore.

Her father an’ mother, an’ the biys an’ girls, was all away down in the fair, and Molly sittin’ all alone on the step of the stile, listenin’ to the foolish little birds whistlin’ among the leaves—and the sound of the mountain-river flowin’ through the stones an’ bushes—an’ the crows flyin’ home high overhead to the woods iv Glinvarlogh—an’ down in the glen, far away, she could see the fair-green iv Lisnamoe in the mist, an’ sunshine among the grey rocks and threes—an’ the cows an’ horses, an’ the blue frieze, an’ the red cloaks, an’ the tents, an’ the smoke, an’ the ould round tower—all as soft an’ as sorrowful as a dhrame iv ould times.

An’ while she was looking this way, an’ thinking iv Leum-a-rinka—poor Bill iv the dance, that was sleepin’ in his lonesome glory in the fields of Spain—she began to sing the song he used to like so well in the ould times:

“Shule, shule, shule a-roon;”

an’ when she ended the verse, what do you think but she heard a manly voice just at the other side iv the hedge, singing the last words over again!

Well she knew it; her heart fluttered up like a little bird that id be wounded, and then dhropped still in her breast. It was himself. In a minute he was through the hedge and standing before her.

“Leum!” says she.

“Mavourneen cuishla machree!” says he; and without another word they were locked in one another’s arms.

Well, it id only be nansinse for me thryin’ to tell ye all the foolish things they said, and how they looked in one another’s faces, an’ laughed, an’ cried, an’ laughed again; and how, when they came to themselves’ and she was able at last to believe it was raly Billy himself that was there, actially holdin’ her hand, and lookin’ in her eyes the same way as ever, barrin’ he was browner and boulder, an’ did not, maybe, look quite as merry in himself as he used to do in former times—an’ fondher for all, an’ more lovin’ than ever—how he tould her all about the wars wid the Frinchmen—an’ how he was wounded, and left for dead in the field of battle, bein’ shot through the breast, and how he was discharged, an’ got a pinsion iv a full shillin’ a day—and how he was come back to live the rest iv his days in the sweet glen iv Lisnamoe, an’ (if only she’d consint) to marry herself in spite iv them all.

Well, ye may aisily think they had plinty to talk about, afther seven years without seeing one another; and so signs on, the time flew by as swift an’ as pleasant as a bird on the wing, an’ the sun wint down, an’ the moon shone sweet, yet they didn’t mind a ha’port about it, but kept talkin an’ whisperin’, an’ whisperin’ an’ talkin’; for it’s wondherful how often a tinder-hearted girl will bear to hear a purty boy tellin’ her the same story constant over an’ over; ontil at last, sure enough, they heerd the ould man himself comin’ up the boreen, singin’ the “Colleen Rue”—a thing he never done barrin’ whin he had a dhrop in; an’ the misthress walkin’ in front iv him an’ two illigant Kerry cows he just bought in the fair, an’ the sarvint biys dhriving them behind.

“Oh, blessed hour!” says Molly, “here’s my father.”

“I’ll spake to him this minute,” says Bill.

“Oh, not for the world,” says she; “he’s singin’ the ‘Colleen Rue,’” says she, “and no one dar raison with him,” says she.

“An’ where’ll I go?” says he, “for they’re into the haggard an top iv us,” says he, “an’ they’ll see me iv I lep through the hedge,” says he.

“Thry the pig-sty,” says she, “mavourneen,” says she, “in the name iv God,” says she.

“Well, darlint,” says he, “for your sake,” says he, “I’ll condescend to them animals,” says he.

An’ wid that he makes a dart to get in; bud, begorra, it was too late—the pigs was all gone home, and the pig-sty was as full as the Birr coach wid six inside.

“Och! blur-an’-agers,” says he, “there is not room for a suckin’-pig,” says he, “let alone a Christian,” says he.

“Well, run into the house, Billy,” says she, “this minute,” says she, “an’ hide yourself antil they’re quiet,” says she, “an’ thin you can steal out,” says she, “anknownst to them all,” says she.

“I’ll do your biddin’,” says he, “Molly asthore,” says he.

“Run in thin,” says she, “an’ I’ll go an’ meet them,” says she.

So wid that away wid her, and in wint Billy, an’ where did he hide himself bud in a little closet that was off iv the room where the ould man and woman slep’. So he closed the doore, and sot down in an ould chair he found there convanient.

Well, he was not well in it when all the rest iv them comes into the kitchen, an’ ould Tim Donovan singin’ the “Colleen Rue” for the bare life, an’ the rest i’ them sthrivin’ to humour him, an doin’ exactly everything he bid them, because they seen he was foolish be the manes of the liquor.

Well, to be sure all this kep’ them long enough, you may be sure, from goin’ to bed, so that Billy could get no manner iv an advantage to get out iv the house, and so he sted sittin’ in the dark closet in state, cursin’ the “Colleen Rue,” and wondhering to the divil whin they’d get the ould man into his bed. An’, as if that was not delay enough, who should come in to stop for the night but Father O’Flaherty, of Cahirmore, that was buyin’ a horse at the fair! An’ av course, there was a bed to be med down for his Raverance, an’ some other attintions; an’ a long discoorse himself an’ ould Mrs. Donovan had about the slaughter iv Billy Malowney, an’ how he was buried on the field of battle; an’ his Raverance hoped he got a dacent funeral, an’ all the other convaniences iv religion. An’ so you may suppose it was pretty late in the night before all iv them got to their beds.

Well, Tim Donovan could not settle to sleep at all at all, an’ he kep’ discoorsin’ the wife about the new cows he bought, an’ the strippers he sould, an’ so on for better than an hour, ontil from one thing to another he kem to talk about the pigs, an’ the poulthry, and at last, having nothing betther to discoorse about, he begun at his daughter Molly, an’ all the heartscald she was to him be raisin iv refusin’ the men. An’ at last says he:

“I onderstand,” says he, “very well how it is,” says he. “It’s how she was in love,” says he, “wid that bliggard, Billy Malowney,” says he, “bad luck to him!” says he; for by this time he was coming to his raison.

“Ah!” says the wife, says she, “Tim darlint, don’t be cursin’ them that’s dead an’ buried,” says she.

“An’ why would not I,” says he, “if they desarve it?” says he.

“Whisht,” says she, “an’ listen to that,” says she. “In the name of the Blessed Vargin,” says she, “what is it?” says she.

An’ sure enough what was it bud Bill Malowney that was dhroppin’ asleep in the closet, an’ snorin’ like a church organ.

“Is it a pig,” says he, “or is it a Christian?”

“Arra! listen to the tune iv it,” says she; “sure a pig never done the like iv that,” says she.

“Whatever it is,” says he, “it’s in the room wid us,” says he. “The Lord be marciful to us!” says he.

“I tould you not to be cursin’,” says she; “bad luck to you,” says she, “for an ommadhaun!” for she was a very religious woman in herself.

“Sure, he’s buried in Spain,” says he; “an’ it is not for one little innocent expression,” says he, “he’d be comin’ all that way to annoy the house,” says he.

Well, while they war talkin,’ Bill turns in the way he was sleepin’ into an aisier imposture; and as soon as he stopped snorin’ ould Tim Donovan’s courage riz agin, and says he.

“I’ll go to the kitchen,” says he, “an’ light a rish,” says he.

An’ with that away wid him, an’ the wife kep’ workin’ the beads all the time, an’ before they kem back Bill was snorin’ as loud as ever.

“Oh! bloody wars—I mane the blessed saints above us!—that deadly sound,” says he; “it’s going on as lively as ever,” says he.

“I’m as wake as a rag,” says his wife, says she, “wid the fair anasiness,” says she. “It’s out iv the little closet it’s comin’,” says she.

“Say your prayers,” says he, “an’ hould your tongue,” says he, “while I discoorse it,” says he. “An’ who are ye,” says he, “in the name iv all the holy saints?” says he, givin’ the door a dab iv a crusheen that wakened Bill inside.

“I ax,” says he, “who you are?” says he.

Well, Bill did not rightly remember where in the world he was, but he pushed open the door, an’ says he:

“Billy Malowney’s my name,” says he, “an’ I’ll thank ye to tell me a betther,” says he.

Well, whin Tim Donovan heard that, an’ actially seen that it was Bill himself that was in it, he had not strength enough to let a bawl out iv him, but he dhropt the candle out iv his hand, an’ down wid himself on his back in the dark.

Well, the wife let a screech you’d hear at the mill iv Killraghlin, an’—

“Oh,” says she, “the spirit has him, body an’ bones!” says she. “Oh, holy St. Bridget—oh Mother iv Marcy—oh, Father O’Flaherty!” says she, screechin’ murdher from out iv her bed.

Well, Bill Malowney was not a minute rememberin’ himself, an’ so out wid him quite an’ aisy, an’ through the kitchen; bud in place iv the door iv the house, it’s what he kem to the door iv Father O’Flaherty’s little room, where he was jist wakenin’ wid the noise iv the screechin’ an’ battherin’; an’, bedad, Bill makes no more about it, but he jumps, wid one boult, clever an’ clane into his Raverance’s bed.

“What do ye mane, you uncivilised bliggard?” says his Raverance. “Is that a venerable way,” says he, “to approach your clargy?” says he.

“Hould your tongue,” says Bill, “an’ I’ll do ye no harum,” says he.

“Who are you, ye schoundhrel iv the world?” says his Raverance.

“Whisht!” says he, “I’m Bill Malowney,” says he.

“You lie!” says his Raverance—for he was frightened beyont all bearin’—an’ he makes bud one jump out iv the bed at the wrong side, where there was only jist a little place in the wall for a press, an’ his Raverance could not as much as turn in it for the wealth iv kingdoms. “You lie,” says he; “but for fear it’s the thruth you’re tellin’,” says he, “here’s at ye in the name iv all the blessed saints together!” says he.

An’ wid that, my dear, he blazes away at him wid a Latin prayer iv the strongest description, an’, as he said to himself afterwards, that was iv a nature that id dhrive the divil himself up the chimley like a puff iv tobacky smoke, wid his tail betune his legs.

“Arra, what are ye sthrivin’ to say,” says Bill, says he; “if ye don’t hould your tongue,” says he, “wid your parly voo,” says he, “it’s what I’ll put my thumb on your windpipe,” says he, “an’ Billy Malowney never wint back iv his word yet,” says he.

“Thunder-an-owns,” says his Raverance, says he—seein’ the Latin took no infect on him, at all at all, an’ screechin’ that you’d think he’d rise the thatch up iv the house wid the fair fright—“an’ thundher and blazes, boys, will none of yes come here wid a candle, but lave your clargy to be choked by a spirit in the dark?” says he.

Well, be this time the sarvint boys and the rest iv them wor up an’ half dressed, an’ in they all run, one on top iv another, wid pitchforks and spades, thinkin’ it was only what his Raverance slep’ a dhrame iv the like, by means of the punch he was afther takin’ just before he rowl’d himself into the bed. But, begorra, whin they seen it was raly Billy Malowney himself that was in it, it was only who’d be foremost out agin, tumblin’ backways, one over another, and his Raverance roarin’ an’ cursin’ them like mad for not waitin’ for him.

Well, my dear, it was betther than half an hour before Billy Malowney could explain to them all how it raly was himself, for begorra they were all iv them persuadin’ him that he was a spirit to that degree it’s a wondher he did not give in to it, if it was only to put a stop to the argiment.

Well, his Raverance tould the ould people then there was no use in sthrivin’ agin the will iv Providence an’ the vagaries iv love united; an’ whin they kem to undherstand to a sartinty how Billy had a shillin’ a day for the rest iv his days, begorra they took rather a likin’ to him, and considhered at wanst how he must hav riz out of all his nansinse entirely, or His gracious Majesty id never have condescinded to show him his countenance every day of his life on a silver shillin’.

An’ so, begorra, they never stopt till it was all settled—an’ there was not sich a weddin’ as that in the counthry sinst. It’s more than forty years ago, an’ though I was no more nor a gossoon meself, I remimber it like yesterday. Molly never looked so purty before, an’ Billy Malowney was plisant beyont all hearin’, to that degree that half the girls in it was fairly tarin’ mad—only they would not let on—they had not him to themselves in place iv her. An’ begorra, I’d be afeared to tell ye, because you would not believe me, since that blessid man Father Mathew put an ent to all soorts of sociality, the Lord reward him, how many gallons iv pottieen whisky was dhrank upon that most solemn and tindher occaison.

Pat Hanlon, the piper, had a faver out iv it; an’ Neddy Shawn Heigue, mountin’ his horse the wrong way, broke his collar-bone, by the manes iv fallin’ over his tail while he was feelin’ for his head; an’ Payther Brian, the horse-docther, I am tould, was never quite right in the head ever afther; an’ ould Tim Donovan was singin’ the “Colleen Rue” night and day for a full week; an’, begorra the weddin’ was only the foundation iv fun, and the beginning iv divarsion, for there was not a year for ten years afther, an’ more, but brought round a christenin’ as regular as the sasins revarted.

A Pleasant Journey.

From the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer.

By Charles Lever.

I, Harry Lorrequer, was awaiting the mail coach anxiously in the Inn at Naas, when at last there was the sound of wheels, and the driver came into the room, a spectacle of condensed moisture.

“Going on to-night, sir,” said he, addressing me; “severe weather, and no chance of its clearing—but, of course, you’re inside.”

“Why, there is very little doubt of that,” said I. “Are you nearly full inside?”

“Only one, sir; but he seems a real queer chap; made fifty inquiries at the office if he could not have the whole inside for himself, and when he heard that one place had been taken—yours, I believe, sir,—he seemed like a scalded bear.”

“You don’t know his name, then?”

“No, sir, he never gave a name at the office, and his only luggage is two brown paper parcels, without any ticket, and he has them inside: indeed, he never lets them from him, even for a second.”

Here the guard’s horn sounded.

As I passed from the inn-door to the coach, I congratulated myself that I was about to be housed from the terrific storm of wind and rain that raged without.

“Here’s the step, sir,” said the guard; “get in, sir, two minutes late already.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said I, as I half fell over the legs of my unseen companion. “May I request leave to pass you?” While he made way for me for this purpose, I perceived that he stooped down and said something to the guard, who, from his answer, had evidently been questioned as to who I was.

“And how did he get here if he took his place in Dublin?” asked the unknown.

“Came half an hour since, sir, in a chaise-and-four,” said the guard, as he banged the door behind him, and closed the interview.

“A severe night, sir,” said I.

“Mighty severe,” briefly and half-crustily replied the unknown, in a strong Cork accent.

“And a bad road, too, sir,” said I.

“That’s the reason I always go armed,” said the unknown, clinking at the same moment something like the barrel of a pistol.

Wondering somewhat at his readiness to mistake my meaning, I felt disposed to drop any further effort to draw him out, and was about to address myself to sleep as comfortably as I could.

“I’ll just trouble ye to lean off that little parcel there, sir,” said he, as he displaced from its position beneath my elbow one of the paper packages the guard had already alluded to.

In complying with this rather gruff demand one of my pocket pistols, which I carried in my breast-pocket, fell out upon his knee, upon which he immediately started, and asked, hurriedly: “And are you armed, too?”

“Why yes,” said I laughingly; “men of my trade seldom go without something of this kind.”

“I was just thinking that same,” said the traveller with a half sigh to himself.

I was just settling myself in my corner when I was startled by a very melancholy groan.

“Are you ill, sir?” said I, in a voice of some anxiety.

“You may say that,” replied he, “if you knew who you were talking to; although, maybe, you’ve heard enough of me, though you never saw me till now.”

“Without having that pleasure even yet,” said I, “it would grieve me to think you should be ill in the coach.”

“Maybe it might. Did ye ever hear tell of Barney Doyle?” said he.

“Not to my recollection.”

“Then I’m Barney,” said he, “that’s in all the newspapers in the metropolis. I’m seventeen weeks in Jervis Street Hospital, and four in the Lunatic, and the sorra bit better, after all. You must be a stranger, I’m thinking, or you’d know me now.”

“Why, I do confess I’ve only been a few hours in Ireland for the last six months.”

“Aye, that’s the reason; I knew you would not be fond of travelling with me if you knew who it was.”

“Why, really, I did not anticipate the pleasure of meeting you.”

“It’s pleasure ye call it; then there’s no accountin’ for tastes, as Dr. Colles said, when he saw me bite Cusack Rooney’s thumb off.”

“Bite a man’s thumb off!”

“Aye,” said he, with a kind of fiendish animation, “in one chop, I wish you’d see how I scattered the consultation;—they didn’t wait to ax for a fee.”

“A very pleasant vicinity,” thought I. “And may I ask, sir,” said I, in a very mild and soothing tone of voice—“may I ask the reason for this singular propensity of yours?”

“There it is now, my dear,” said he, laying his hand upon my knee familiarly, “that’s just the very thing they can’t make out. Colles says it’s all the cerebellum, ye see, that’s inflamed and combusted, and some of the others think it’s the spine; and more the muscles; but my real impression is, not a bit they know about it at all.”

“And have they no name for the malady?” said I.

“Oh, sure enough they have a name for it.”

“And may I ask——”

“Why, I think you’d better not, because, ye see, maybe I might be troublesome to ye in the night, though I’ll not, if I can help it; and it might be uncomfortable to you to be here if I was to get one of the fits.”

“One of the fits! Why, it’s not possible, sir,” said I, “you would travel in a public conveyance in the state you mention; your friends surely would not permit it?”

“Why, if they knew, perhaps,” slily responded the interesting invalid—“if they knew, they might not exactly like it; but ye see, I escaped only last night, and there’ll be a fine hubbub in the morning when they find I’m off; though I’m thinking Rooney’s barking away by this time.”