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 Irish
men 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. 'Leum-a-rinka' 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--killing the hares, and gaffing 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 pleasant 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 continially coortin' and kissin' the
girls (an' more's the pity) without exposin' himself to the most eminent
parril; an' so signs all' what should happen Billy Malowney himself, but
to fall in love at last wid little Molly Donovan, in Coolnamoe.

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 antil 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