“Ay, indeed!” muttered the hag; “I was sure of it: his own son! his own son!”
These words she repeated in a tone of profound sorrow, and for a time seemed quite unmindful of our presence.
“Are we to get in at all?” said the old man, in an accent of impatience.
“What a hurry yer in; and maybe 'tis wishing yerself out again ye 'd be, after ye wor in!”
“I think we'd better try somewhere else,” whispered Joe to me; “I don't like the look of this place.” Before I could reply to this, a loud yell burst forth from the end of the street, accompanied by the tramp of many people, who seemed to move in a kind of regulated step.
“Here they are! Here they come!” cried the old woman; “step in quick, or ye 'll be too late!” and she dragged the young girls forward by the cloak into the hall; we followed without further question. Then, placing the lantern on the floor, she drew a heavy chain across the door, and dropped her cloak over the light, saying in a low, tremulous voice, “Them's the 'Tapageers!'”
The crowd now came closer, and we perceived that they were singing in chorus a song, of which the air, at least, was Irish.
The barbarous rhyme of one rude verse, as they sung it in passing, still lingers in my memory:
“No bloody agint here we see,
Ready to rack, distrain, and saze us;
Whatever we ax, we have it free,
And take at hand, whatever plaze us.
Row, row, row, Will yez show me, now,
The polis that 'll dare to face us!”
“There they go! 'tis well ye wor safe!” said the old hag, as the sounds died away, and all became silent in the street without.