“And it’s keen as the frost when the summer-time dies,
That we rode to the glen and with never a fear.”
Then he added: “The end’s cut off, Joey, me boy; but what’s a tobogan ride, annyway?”
“Listen to that, Pierre. I’ll be eternally shivered if he knows what a tobogan ride is!”
“Hot shivers it’ll be for you, Joey, me boy, and no quinine over the bar aither,” said Shon.
“Tell him what a tobogan ride is, Pierre.”
And Pretty Pierre said: “Eh, well, I will tell you. It is like-no, you have the word precise, Joseph. Eh? What?”
Pierre then added something in French. Shon did not understand it, but he saw The Honourable smile, so with a gentle kind of contempt he went on singing:
“And it’s hey for the hedge, and it’s hey for the wall!
And it’s over the stream with an echoing cry;
And there’s three fled for ever from old Donegal,
And there’s two that have shown how bold Irishmen die.”
The Honourable then said, “What is that all about, Shon? I never heard the song before.”
“No more you did. And I wish I could see the lad that wrote that song, livin’ or dead. If one of ye’s will tell me about your tobogan rides, I’ll unfold about Farcalladen Rise.”