Teag. Arra, dear shoy, I don’t think that there are, but it is a pity but they had, for they would fly with people above the sea, which would put the use of ships out of fashion, and then there would be nobody drowned at sea at all.
Tom. Very well Pady: but in all your travels did you ever get a wife?
Teag. Ay that’s what I did, and wicked wife too.
Tom. And what is become of her now?
Teag. Dear shoy, I can’t tell whether she is gone to Purgatory, or the parish of Pig-trantrum: for she told me she should certainly die the first opportunity she could get, as this present evil world was not worth the waiting on, so she would go and see what good things is in the world to come; and so when that old rover called the Fever, came raging like a madman over the whole kingdom, knocking the people on the head with deadly blows, she went away and died out of spite, leaving me with nothing but two motherless children.
Tom. O, but Pady, you ought to have gone to a doctor, and got some pills and physic for her.
Teag. By shaint Patrick I had as good a pill of my own as any doctor in the kingdom could give her, and as for sneeshing, she could never use snuff nor tobacco in her life.
Tom. O you fool that is not what I mean; you ought to have brought the doctor to feel her pulse, and let blood of her if he thought it needful.
Teag. Yes, that’s what I did; for I ran to the doctor whenever she died, and sought something for a dead or dying woman; the old foolish devil was at his dinner, and began to ask me some dirty questions, which I answered distinctly.
Tom. And what did he ask, Pady?