o designed
this costume has perished, nor does there remain any written record
of the use which these tightly-secured pocket-covers were supposed to
serve. Augusta Goold suggested that perhaps they were meant to prevent
the troopers' money from falling out in the event of any commanding
officer ordering his men to receive the enemy standing on their heads.'
In the light of the intelligence displayed by the English Generals up
to the present,' she said, 'the War Office is quite right to be prepared
for such a thing happening.'

It seemed possible to procure almost any amount of leave from the
Curragh, and the yeomen delighted to spend it in promenading the
fashionable streets of the metropolis. The tea-shops reaped a rich
harvest from the regal way in which they treated their female relatives
and friends. Indeed, their presence must have seriously disorganized the
occupations by which young women earn their living. It was difficult to
imagine that the sick in the hospitals could have been properly looked
after, or the letters of solicitors typewritten, so great was the number
of damsels who attached themselves to these attractive heroes. The
philosophic observer found another curious subject for speculation in
the fact that this parade of military splendour took place in a city
whose population sympathized intensely with the Boer cause, and was
accustomed to receive the news of a British defeat with delight. The
Dublin artisan viewed the yeomen much as the French in Paris must have
looked upon the allied troops who entered their city after Waterloo.
The very name by which they were called had an anti-national sound, and
suggested the performance of other amateur horse-soldiers in Wexford a
century earlier.

The little band whose writings filled the pages of the _Croppy_ were
more than anyone else enraged at the flaunting of Imperialism in their
streets. They had rejoiced quite openly after Christmas, and called
attention every week in prose and poetry to the moribund condition of
the British Empire, even boasting as if they themselves had borne a part
in its humiliation. They were still in a position to assert that the
Boers were victorious, and that the volunteers were likely to do no more
than exhaust the prison accommodation at Pretoria. They could and did
compose biting jests, but their very bitterness witnessed to a deep
disappointment. It was not possible to deny that the despised English
garrison in Ireland was