English sense, of which we
hear so much in Germany? You want a Bismarck to make short work of
these Popish preachers of sedition. You want a Bismarck to rid your
country of the Irish vermin that torment her. The best Irishmen are
the most brilliant, polite, scholarly men I ever met. None of them are
Home Rulers. That should be enough for England without further
argument. Your House of Lords has sense. That will be your salvation
against Gladstone and Rome."

At the _Imperial_ was a warm discussion anent the propriety of keeping
alive the memory of the Battle of the Boyne, which the Orangemen
celebrate with great pomp on July 12. "The counthry's heart-sick of
Orange William an' his black-mouths," said a dark-visaged farmer. By
black-mouths he meant Protestants.

"The blayguards are not allowed to shout To Hell wid the Pope
now-a-days. In Belfast they'd be fined forty shillin's. An' they know
that, and they daren't shout To Hell wid the Pope, so they roar To
Hell wid the Forty Shillin's. That's what I call a colourable evasion.
But the law favours them."

A man of mighty beard looked on the speaker with contempt. "Sure, 'tis
as raisonable to celebrate King William, who _did_ live as a Saint
like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At
laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of
half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of
him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves
as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye
ever hear the pome about Saint Patrick's birthday?"

I regretfully admitted that the masterpiece in question had escaped my
research, but pleaded in extenuation that I came from England, where
the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of Oirish litherature
have not yet permeated the barbarian population. Barbatus then recited
as follows:--

"On the eighth day iv March, as sum people say,
St. Patrick at midnight he furst saw the day.
While others declare on the ninth he was born,
Sure, 'tis all a mistake between midnight and morn!
Now, the furst faction fight in Oireland, they say,
Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday.
Some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die--
Who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye.
At length both the parties so positive grew,
They each kept a birthday, so Patrick got two.
Till Father Mulcahy