t hold more than
the glass at one time, yet, owing to the hole in his throat, it took
many a filling.

'That was no bad whisky neither,' says Maurice, handing back the empty
bottle.

'By the holy frost, then!' says Paddy, ''tis but _cold_ comfort there's
in that bottle now; and 'tis your word we must take for the strength of
the whisky, for you've left us no sample to judge by'; and to be sure
Maurice had not.

Now I need not tell any gentleman or lady that if he or she was to drink
an honest bottle of whisky at one pull, it is not at all the same thing
as drinking a bottle of water; and in the whole course of my life I
never knew more than five men who could do so without being the worse.
Of these Maurice Connor was not one, though he had a stiff head enough
of his own. Don't think I blame him for it; but true is the word that
says, 'When liquor's in sense is out'; and puff, at a breath, out he
blasted his wonderful tune.

'Twas really then beyond all belief or telling the dancing. Maurice
himself could not keep quiet; staggering now on one leg, now on the
other, and rolling about like a ship in a cross sea, trying to humour
the tune. There was his mother, too, moving her old bones as light as
the youngest girl of them all; but her dancing, no, nor the dancing of
all the rest, is not worthy the speaking about to the work that was
going on down upon the strand. Every inch of it covered with all manner
of fish jumping and plunging about to the music, and every moment more
and more would tumble in out of the water, charmed by the wonderful
tune. Crabs of monstrous size spun round and round on one claw with the
nimbleness of a dancing master, and twirled and tossed their other claws
about like limbs that did not belong to them. It was a sight surprising
to behold. But perhaps you may have heard of Father Florence Conry, as
pleasant a man as one would wish to drink with of a hot summer's day;
and he had rhymed out all about the dancing fishes so neatly that it
would be a thousand pities not to give you his verses; so here they are
in English:

The big seals in motion,
Like waves of the ocean,
Or gouty feet prancing,
Came heading the gay fish,
Crabs, lobsters, and cray-fish,
Determined on dancing.

The sweet sounds they followed,
The gasping cod swallow'd--
'Twas wonderful, really;
And turbot and flounder,
'Mid fish that were rounder,
Just caper'd as gaily