fight doesn't resemble this at all at all. Paddy's at
home here; all song, dance, good-humor, and affection. His cheek is
flushed with delight, which, indeed, may derive assistance from the
consciousness of having no bayonets or loaded carabines to contend with;
but anyhow, he's at home--his eye is lit with real glee--he tosses his
hat in the air, in the height of mirth--and leaps, like a mounteback,
two yards from the ground. Then, with what a gracious dexterity he
brandishes his cudgel! what a joyous spirit is heard in his shout at the
face of a friend from another faction! His very 'who!' is contagious,
and would make a man, that had settled on running away, return and join
the sport with an appetite truly Irish. He is, in fact, while under the
influence of this heavenly afflatus, in love with every one, man, woman,
and child. If he meet his sweetheart, he will give her a kiss and a hug,
and that with double kindness, because he is on his way to thrash her
father or brother. It is the acumen of his enjoyment; and woe be to him
who will adventure to go between him and his amusements. To be sure,
skulls and bones are broken, and lives lost; but they are lost in
pleasant fighting--they are the consequences of the sport, the beauty
of which consists in breaking as many heads and necks as you can; and
certainly when a man enters into the spirit of any exercise, there is
nothing like elevating himself to the point of excellence. Then a man
ought never to be disheartened. If you lose this game, or get your
head good-humoredly beaten to pieces, why you may win another, or your
friends may mollify two or three skulls as a set-off to yours; but that
is nothing.

"When the evening became more advanced, maybe, considering the poor look
up there was for anything like decent sport--maybe, in the early part of
the day, it wasn't the delightful sight to see the boys on each side of
the two great factions beginning to get frolicsome. Maybe the songs and
the shouting, when they began, hadn't melody and music in them, any
how! People may talk about harmony; but what harmony is equal to that in
which five or six hundred men sing and shout, and leap and caper at each
other, as a prelude to neighborly fighting where they beat time upon
the drums of each other's ears and heads with oak drumsticks? That's an
Irishman's music; and hard fortune to the _garran_* that wouldn't have
friendship and kindness in him to join and play a stave along w