ers,
proclaiming no information to the multitude, but a blank note of
interrogation addressed to Providence, as if an answer from above would
be vouchsafed to their impudence! They haven't the first principles of
good manners. And some of 'm in a rage bawl the answer for themselves.
Hear that! No, Phil; No, Pat, no: devotion's good policy.--You're not
drinking! Are you both of ye asleep? why do ye leave me to drone away
like this, when it 's conversation I want, as in the days of our first
parents, before the fig-leaf?--and you might have that for scroll
and figure on the social banner of the hypocritical Saxon, who's a
gormandising animal behind his decency, and nearer to the Arch-devourer
Time than anything I can imagine: except that with a little exertion
you can elude him. The whisky you've got between you 's virgin of the
excise. I'll pay double for freepeaty any day. Or are you for claret, my
lads? No? I'm fortified up here to stand a siege in my old round tower,
like the son of Eremon that I am. Lavra Con! Con speaks at last! I don't
ask you, Pat, whether you remember Maen, who was born dumb, and had
for his tutors Ferkelne the bard and Crafting the harper, at pleasant
Dinree: he was grandson of Leary Lore who was basely murdered by his
brother Cova, and Cova spared the dumb boy, thinking a man without a
tongue harmless, as fools do: being one of their savings-bank tricks, to
be repaid them, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns at
compound interest, have no fear. So one day Maen had an insult put on
him; and 'twas this for certain: a ruffian fellow of the Court swore he
couldn't mention the name of his father; and in a thundering fury Maen
burst his tongue-tie, and the Court shouted Lavra Maen: and he had to go
into exile, where he married in the middle of delicious love-adventures
the beautiful Moira through the cunning of Craftine the harper. There's
been no harper in my instance but plenty of ruffians to swear I'm too
comfortable to think of my country.' The captain holloaed. 'Do they hear
that? Lord! but wouldn't our old Celtic fill the world with poetry if
only we were a free people to give our minds to 't, instead of to the
itch on our backs from the Saxon horsehair shirt we're forced to wear.
For, Pat, as you know, we're a loving people, we're a loyal people, we
burn to be enthusiastic, but when our skins are eternally irritated, how
can we sing? In a freer Erin I'd be the bard of the land, ne