The Emigrants Of Ahadarra. William Carleton

      “Ted,” said the female, “I lost my knife since I came out, or they'd be quiet enough before this; lend me one a minute, you blissed babe.”

      “Shiss, to be sure, Kate,” he replied, handing her a large clasp knife with a frightful blade; “an', Kate, whisper, woman alive—you're bought up, I see.”

      “How is that, you red rascal?”

      “Bekaise, don't I see dat de purchaser has set his mark upon ye?—hee! hee! hee!” and he pointed to her eye* as he spoke.

      * A black eye is said to be the devil's mark.

      “No,” she replied, nodding towards her husband, “that's his handy work; an' ye divil's clip!” she added, turning to Teddy, “who has a betther right?”

      She then bled the geese, and, looking about her, asked—

      “Have you any wet hay or straw in the place?”

      “Ay, plenty of bote,” replied Teddy; “an' here's de greeshavigh ready.”

      She then wrapped the geese, feathers and all, separately in a covering of wet hay, which she bound round them with thumb-ropes of the same material, and clearing away a space among the burning ashes, placed each of them in it, and covered them up closely.

      “Now,” said she, “put down a pot o' praities, and we won't go to bed fastin'.”

      The different groups had now melted into one party, much upon the same principle that the various little streamlets on the mountains around them all run, when swollen by a sudden storm, into some larger torrent equally precipitous and turbulent. Keenan, who was one of those pertinacious fellows that are equally quarrelsome and hospitable when in liquor, now resumed the debate with a characteristic impression of the pugilistic superiority of his family:—

      “I am right, I say: I remember it well, for although I wasn't there myself, my father was, an' I often h'ard him say—God rest his sowl!”—here he reverently took off his hat and looked upwards—“I often h'ard him say that Paddy Keenan gave Mullin the first knock-down blow, an' Pether—I mane no disrespect, but far from it—give us your hand, man alive—you're going to be married upon my shisther to-morrow, plaise God!—masther, you'll come, remimber? you'll be as welcome as the flowers o' May, masther—so, Pether, as I was sayin'—I mane no offince nor disrespect to you or yours, for you are, an' ever was, a daisent family, an' well able to fight your corner when it came upon you—but still, Pether—an' for all that—I say it—an' I'll stand to it—I'll stand it—that's the chat!—that, man for man, there never was one o' your seed, breed, or generation able to fight a Keenan—that's the chat!—here's luck!

      “'Oh, 'twas in the month of May,

       When the lambkins sport and play,

       As I walked out to gain raycrayation,

       I espied a comely maid.

       Sequestrin' in the shade—

       On her beauty I gazed wid admiraytion,'

      No, Pether, you never could; the Mullins is good men—right good men, but they couldn't do it.”

      “Barney,” said the brother of the bridegroom, “you may thank God that Pether is going to be married to your sisther to-morrow as you say, or we'd larn you another lesson—eh, masther? That's the chat too—ha! ha! ha! To the divil wid sich impedence!”

      “Gintlemen,” said Finigan, now staggering down towards the parties, “I am a man of pacific principles, acquainted wid the larned languages, wid mathematics, wid philosophy, the science of morality according to Fluxions—I grant you, I'm not college-bred; but, gintlemen, I never invied the oysther in its shell—for, gintlemen, I'm not ashamed of it, but I acquired—I absorbed my laming, I may say, upon locomotive principles.”

      “Bravo, masther!” said Keenan; “that's what some o' them couldn't say—”

      “Upon locomotive principles. I admit Munster, gintlemen—glorious Kerry!—yes, and I say I am not ashamed of it. I do plead guilty to the peripatetic system: like a comet I travelled during my juvenile days—as I may truly assert wid a slight modicum of latitude” (here he lurched considerably to the one side)—“from star to star, until I was able to exhibit all their brilliancy united simply, I can safely assert, in my own humble person. Gintlemen, I have the honor of being able to write 'Philomath' after my name—which is O'Finigan, not Finigan, by any means—and where is the oyster in his shell could do that? Yes, and although they refused me a sizarship in Trinity College—for what will not fear and envy do?

      “'Tantaene animis celesiibus irae'

      Yet I have the consolation to know that my name is seldom mentioned among the literati of classical Kerry—nudis cruribus as they are—except as the Great O'Finigan! In the mane time—”

      “Bravo, Masther!” exclaimed Keenan, interrupting him. “Here, Ted! another bottle, till the Great O'Finigan gets a glass of whiskey.”

      “Yes, gintlemen,” proceeded O'Finigan, “the alcohol shall be accepted, puris naturalibus—which means, in its native—or more properly—but which comes to the same thing—in its naked state; and, in the mane time, I propose the health of one of my best benefactors—Gerald Cavanagh, whose hospitable roof is a home—a domicilium to erudition and respectability, when they happen, as they ought, to be legitimately concatenated in the same person—as they are in your humble servant; and I also beg leave to add the pride of the barony, his fair and virtuous daughter, Kathleen, in conjunction wid the I accomplished son of another benefactor of mine—honest James Burke—in conjunction, I say, wid his son, Mr. Hyacinth. Ah, gintlemen—Billy Clinton, you thievin' villain! you don't pay attention; I say, gintlemen, if I myself could deduct a score of years from the period of my life, I should endeavor to run through the conjugations of amo in society wid that pearl of beauty. In the mane time—”

      “Here's her health, masther,” returned Keenan, “an' her father's too, an' Hycy Burke's into the bargain—is there any more o' them? Well, no matter.” Then turning to his antagonist, he added, “I say agin, thin, that a Mullin's not a match for a Keenan, nor never was—no, nor never will be! That's the chat! and who's afeard to say it? eh, masther?”

      “It's a lie!” shouted one of the opposite party; “I'm able to lick e'er a Keenan that ever went on nate's leather—an' that's my chat.”

      A blow from Keenan in reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that might be injured, stood enjoying the conflict with most ferocious glee, the schoolmaster having already withdrawn himself to his chair. Even Barney Broghan, the fool, could not keep quiet, but on the contrary, thrust himself into the quarrel, and began to strike indiscriminately at all who came in his way, until an unlucky blow on the nose happening, to draw his claret very copiously, he made a bound up behind the sill, uttering a series of howlings, as from time to time he looked at his own blood, that were amusing in the extreme. As it happened, however, the influence of liquor was too strong upon both parties to enable them to inflict on each other any serious injury. Such, however, was the midnight pastime of the still-house when our friend Hycy entered.

      “What in the devil's name—or the guager's—which is worse—” he asked, addressing himself to Batt and Teddy, “is the meaning of all this?”

      “Faith, you know a'most as much about it,” replied Hogan, laughing, “as we do; they got drunk, an' that accounts for it.”

      “Mr. Burke,” said Finigan, who was now quite tipsy; “I am delighted to be able to—to—yes, it is he,” he added, speaking to himself—“to see you well.”

      “I have my doubts as to that, Mr. Finigan,” replied Hycy.

      “Fame, Mr. Burke,” continued the other,