“Would you have any objection to tell me all you do?”
“Why I sells needles, as I said before, and sometimes I buys things of servants, and sometimes I tells fortunes.”
“Do you ever do anything in the way of striopachas?”
“O, no! I never do anything in that line; I would be burnt first. I wonder you should dream of such a thing.”
“Why surely it is not worse than buying things of servants, who no doubt steal them from their employers, or telling fortunes, which is dealing with the devil.”
“Not worse? Yes a thousand times worse; there is nothing so very particular in doing them things, but striopachas—O dear!”
“It’s a dreadful thing I admit, but the other things are quite as bad; you should do none of them.”
“I’ll take good care that I never do one, and that is striopachas; them other things I know are not quite right, and I hope soon to have done wid them; any day I can shake them off and look people in the face, but were I once to do striopachas I could never hold up my head.”
“How comes it that you have such a horror of striopachas?”
“I got it from my mother and she got it from hers. All Irish women have a dread of striopachas. It’s the only thing that frights them; I manes the wild Irish, for as for the quality women I have heard they are no bit better than the English. Come, yere hanner, let’s talk of something else.”