oubt but there's them here that wishes you ill--that would rather be
in your shoes this blessed day, with your young _colleen bawn_, (* Fair
Girl) that will be your wife before the sun sets, plase the heavens.
There's ould Fanny Barton, the wrinkled thief of a hag, that the
Finigans axed here for the sake of her decent son-in-law, who ran away
with her daughter Betty, that was the great beauty some years ago: her
breath's not good, Shane, and many a strange thing's said of her. Well,
maybe, I know more about that nor I'm not going to mintion, any how:
more betoken that it's not for nothing the white hare haunts the
shrubbery behind her house.'

"'But what harm could she do me, Sonsy Mary?' says I--for she was called
Sonsy--'we have often sarved her one way or other.'

"Ax me no questions about her, Shane,' says she, 'don't I know what
she did to Ned Donnelly, that was to be pitied, if ever a man was to be
pitied, for as good as seven months after his marriage, until I relieved
him; was gone to a thread he was, and didn't they pay me decently for my
throuble!'

"'Well, and what am I to do, Mary?' says I, knowing very well that what
she sed was thrue enough, although I didn't wish her to see that I was
afeard.

"'Why,' says she, 'you must first exchange money with me, and then, if
you do as I bid you you may lave the rest to myself.'

"'I then took out, begad, a daicent lot of silver--say a crown or
so--for my blood was up and the money was flush--and gave it to her for
which I got a cronagh-bawn* half-penny in exchange.

* So-called from Cronebane, in the county of Wicklow, where
there is a copper mine.

"'Now,' says she, 'Shane, you must keep this in your company, and for
your life and sowl, don't part wid it for nine days after your marriage;
but there's more to be done,' says she--'hould out your right knee;'
so with this she unbuttoned three buttons of my buckskins, and made me
loose the knot of my garther on the right leg. 'Now,' says she, 'if you
keep them loose till after the priest says the words, and won't let
the money I gave you go out of your company for nine days, along with
something else I'll do that you're to know nothing about, there's no
fear of all their pisthroges.'* She then pulled off her right shoe, and
threw it after us for luck.

* Charms of an evil nature. These are ceremonies used by
such women, and believed to be of efficacy by the people. It
is an undoubted