oo infirm for this, and never left his own
cabin; but now, from some strange cause, he had come up to "the house,"
and was sitting by the fire as I found him.

They who know Ireland will acknowledge the strange impulse which, at the
approach of death, seems to excite the people to congregate about the
house of mourning. The passion for deep and powerful excitement--the
most remarkable feature in their complex nature--seems to revel in
the details of sorrow and suffering. Not content even with the tragedy
before them, they call in the aid of superstition to heighten the
awfulness of the scene; and every story of ghost and banshee' is conned
over in tones that need not the occasion to make them thrill upon the
heart. At such a time the deepest workings of their wild spirits are
revealed. Their grief is low and sorrow-struck, or it is loud and
passionate; now breaking into some plaintive wail over the virtues
of the departed, now bursting into a frenzied appeal to the Father of
Mercies as to the justice of recalling those from earth who were its
blessing: while, stranger than all, a dash of reckless merriment will
break in upon the gloom; but it is like the red lightning through the
storm, that as it rends the cloud only displays the havoc and desolation
around, and at its parting leaves even a blacker darkness behind it.

From my infancy I had been familiar with scenes of this kind; and my
habit of stealing away unobserved from home to witness a country wake
had endeared me much to the country-people, who felt this no small
kindness from "the master's son." Somehow the ready welcome and
attention I always met with had worked on my young heart, and I learned
to feel all the interest of these scenes fully as much as those about
me. It was, then, with a sense of desolation that I looked upon the one
solitary mourner who now sat at the hearth,--that poor old idiot man
who gazed on vacancy, or muttered with parched lip some few words to
himself. That he alone should be found to join his sorrows to ours,
seemed to me like utter destitution, and as I leaned against the chimney
I burst into tears.

"Don't cry, alannah! don't cry," said the old man; "it 's the worst way
at all. Get up again and ride him at it bould. Oh vo! look at where the
thief is taking now,--along the stonewall there!" Here he broke out into
a low, wailing ditty:--

"And the fox set him down and looked about--
And many were feared to follow;