ivals--Christmas--which the
family of M'Kenna, like every other family in the neighborhood, were
making preparations to celebrate with the usual hilarity. They cleared
out their barn in order to have a dance on Christmas-eve; and for this
purpose, the two sons and the servant-man wrought with that kind of
industry produced by the cheerful prospect of some happy event. For a
week or fortnight before the evening on which the dance was appointed
to be held, due notice of it had been given to the neighbors, and, of
course, there was no doubt but that it would be numerously attended.

Christmas-eve, as the day preceding Christmas is called, has been always
a day of great preparation and bustle. Indeed the whole week previous to
it is also remarkable, as exhibiting the importance attached by the
people to those occasions on which they can give a loose to their love
of fun and frolic. The farm-house undergoes a thorough cleansing.
Father and sons are, or rather used to be, all engaged in repairing
the out-houses, patching them with thatch where it was wanted, mending
mangers, paving stable-floors, fixing cow-stakes, making boraghs,*
removing nuisances, and cleaning streets.

* The rope with which a cow is tied in the cowhouse.

On the ether hand, the mother, daughters and maids, were also engaged in
their several departments; the latter scouring the furniture with sand:
the mother making culinary preparations, baking bread, killing fowls,
or salting meat; whilst the daughters were unusually intent upon the
decoration of their own dress, and the making up of the family linen.
All, however, was performed with an air of gayety and pleasure; the ivy
and holly were disposed about the dressers and collar beams with great
glee; the chimneys were swept amidst songs and laughter; many bad
voices, and some good ones, were put in requisition; whilst several who
had never been known to chaunt a stave, alarmed the listeners by the
grotesque and incomprehensible nature of their melody. Those who were
inclined to devotion--and there is no lack of it in Ireland--took to
carols and hymns, which they sang, for want of better airs, to tunes
highly comic. We have ourselves often heard the Doxology sung in Irish
verse to the facetious air of "Paudeen O'Rafferty," and other hymns to
the tune of "Peas upon a Trencher," and "Cruskeen Lawn." Sometimes,
on the contrary, many of them, from the very fulness of jollity,
would become pathetic, and i