‘The English, they say, has no bogs. Nothing but coal.’
‘Quite true.’
‘Erin, ma bouchal you are! first gem of the say! that’s what Dan O’Connell always called you. Are you gettin’ tired with the stick?’
‘I’m tired of your wretched old beast, and your car, and yourself, too,’ said Walpole; ‘and if I were sure that was the castle yonder, I’d make my way straight to it on foot.’
‘And why wouldn’t you, if your honour liked it best? Why would ye be beholden to a car if you’d rather walk. Only mind the bog-holes: for there’s twenty feet of water in some of them, and the sides is so straight, you’ll never get out if you fall in.’
‘Drive on, then. I’ll remain where I am; but don’t bother me with your talk; and no more questioning.’
‘By coorse I won’t—why would I? Isn’t your honour a gentleman, and haven’t you a right to say what you plaze; and what am I but a poor boy, earning his bread. Just the way it is all through the world; some has everything they want and more besides, and others hasn’t a stitch to their backs, or maybe a pinch of tobacco to put in a pipe.’
This appeal was timed by seeing that Walpole had just lighted a fresh cigar, whose fragrant fumes were wafted across the speaker’s nose.
Firm to his determination to maintain silence, Walpole paid no attention to the speech, nor uttered a word of any kind; and as a light drizzling rain had now begun to fall, and obliged him to shelter himself under an umbrella, he was at length saved from his companion’s loquacity. Baffled, but not beaten, the old fellow began to sing, at first in a low, droning tone; but growing louder as the fire of patriotism warmed him, he shouted, to a very wild and somewhat irregular tune, a ballad, of which Walpole could not but hear the words occasionally, while the tramping of the fellow’s feet on the foot-board kept time to his song:—
‘‘Tis our fun they can’t forgive us,
Nor our wit so sharp and keen;
But there’s nothing that provokes them
Like our wearin’ of the green.
They thought Poverty would bate us,
But we’d sell our last “boneen”
And we’ll live on cowld paytatees,
All for wearin’ of the green.
Oh, the wearin’ of the green—the wearin’ of the green!
‘Tis the colour best becomes us
Is the wearin’ of the green!’