fought along
with their brothers; others did not scruple even to assist in giving
their enamored swains the father of a good beating. Many, however, were
more faithful to love than to natural affection, and these sallied out,
like heroines, under the banners of their sweethearts, fighting with
amazing prowess against their friends and relations; nor was it at all
extraordinary to see two sisters engaged on opposite sides--perhaps
tearing each other as, with dishevelled hair, they screamed with a fury
that was truly exemplary. Indeed it is no untruth to assert that the
women do much valuable execution. Their manner of fighting is this--as
soon as the fair one decides upon taking a part in the row, she
instantly takes off her apron or her stocking, stoops down, and lifting
the first four pounder she can get, puts it in the corner of her apron,
or the foot of her stocking, if it has a foot, and marching into the
scene of action, lays about her right and left. Upon my credibility,
they are extremely useful and handy, and can give mighty nate
knockdowns--inasmuch as no guard that a man is acquainted with can ward
off their blows. Nay, what is more, it often happens, when a son-in-law
is in a faction against his father-in-law and his wife's people
generally, that if he and his wife's brother meet, the wife will clink
him with the _pet_ in her apron, downing her own husband with great
skill, for it is not always that marriage extinguishes the hatred of
factions; and very often 'tis the brother that is humiliated.

"Up to the death of these two men, John O'Callaghan and Rose's father,
together with a large party of their friends on both sides, were
drinking in a public-house, determined to take no portion in the fight,
at all at all. Poor Rose, when she heard the shouting and terrible
strokes, got as pale as death, and sat close to John, whose hand she
captured hers, beseeching him, and looking up in his face with the most
imploring sincerity as she spoke, not to go out among them; the tears
falling all the time from her fine eyes, the mellow flashes of which,
when John's pleasantry in soothing her would seduce a smile, went into
his very heart. But when, on looking out of the window where they sat,
two of the opposing factions heard that a man on each side was killed;
and when on ascertaining the names of the individuals, and of those who
murdered them, it turned out that one of the murdered men was brother
to a person in the