to be bored in
the end, which must be filled with melted lead. This gives it a
widow-and-orphan-making quality, a child-bereaving touch, altogether
very desirable. If, however, the top splits in the boring--which, in
awkward hands, is not uncommon--the defect may be remediated by putting
on an iron ferrule, and driving two or three strong nails into it,
simply to preserve it from flying off; not that an Irishman is ever at a
loss for weapons when in a fight, for so long as a scythe, flail, spade,
pitchfork, or stone is at hand, he feels quite contented with the lot
of war. No man, as they say of great statesmen, is more fertile in
expedients during a row; which, by the way, I take to be a good quality,
at all events.

"I remember the fair-day of Knockimdowny well; it has kept me from
griddle-bread and tough nutriment ever since. Hard fortune to Jack Roe
O'Hallaghan! No man had better teeth than I had till I met with him that
day. He fought stoutly on his own side; but he was ped then for the
same basting that fell to me, though not by my hands, if to get his jaw
dacently divided into three halves could be called a fair liquidation of
an old debt--it was equal to twenty shillings in the pound, any how.

"There had not been a larger fair in the town of Knockimdowny for years.
The day was dark and sunless, but sultry. On looking through the crowd,
I could see no man! without a cudgel; yet, what was strange, there was
no certainty of any sport. Several desultory skrimmages had locality,
but they I were altogether sequestered from the great factions of the
O's. Except that it was pleasant and stirred one's blood to look at
them, or occasioned the cudgels to be grasped more firmly, there was no
personal interest felt by any of us in them; they therefore began and
ended, here and there, through the fair, like mere flashes in the pan,
dying in their own smoke.

"The blood of every prolific nation is naturally hot; but when that hot
blood is inflamed by ardent spirits, it is not to be supposed that men
should be cool; and God he knows, there is not on the level surface of
this habitable globe, a nation that has been so thoroughly inflamed by
ardent spirits of all kinds as Ireland.

"Up till four o'clock that day, the factions were quiet. Several
relations on both sides had been invited to drink by John and Rose's
families, for the purpose of establishing a good feeling between them.
But this was, after all, hardly to be exp