In songs and ballads he took great delight,

And prophecies of Ireland yet being freed,

And singing them by our fireside at night,

I learned songs from Tead, before I learned to read.

That fireside was a big open hearth; up the chimney somewhere was fastened a rod of iron about an inch thick; at the end of it below was a crook; the whole thing was called a pot-crook, and on it was a movable pot hanger to hang a pot. Then with a turf fire and a big skulb of ver in that fire that lighted the plates on the dresser below with the photograph of all who were sitting in front of it; I, standing or sitting in the embrace of one of the men, would listen to stories of all the fairies that were “showing” themselves from Carrig-Cliona to Inish-Owen, and of all the battles that were fought in Christendom and out of Christendom.

Mind now, I am, in these “recollections,” taking in the time that transpired between the years 1839 and 1845—the time I was between the age of seven and thirteen.

In the skurreechting company at the fireside was an old man who had a lot of stories about wars and battles. One story he’d tell of one battle he was in that I could not thoroughly understand at the time, nor did I thoroughly understand it either, until several years after I heard it. It was a story of some battle he was fighting, and he’d rather have the other side win the battle than his side.

One Summer’s day I had my wheel-and-runners outside the door winding quills; an old man with a bundle on a stick on his shoulder came up the street and asked me who lived there in my house. I told him. And who lives in that house opposite? Jillen Andy. And in the next house? Joannie Roe. And the next? Paddy Lovejoy. That Paddy Lovejoy was the father of the rich man Stephen Lovejoy, of the Seventh Ward, New York, who died last year; and Joannie Roe was the sister of the old man Dan Roe, who was making the inquiries of me. He was an English pensioner soldier coming home to Ireland. He had joined the North Cork Militia when a young man, just as many an Irishman joins the Irish militia to day, for the purpose of learning the use of arms for Ireland’s sake; the war of ’98 broke out; the North Cork Militia were sent into Wexford; the battle that Dan Roe was speaking about at my father’s fireside, wherein he’d rather the other side would win than his side, was the battle of Vinegar Hill.

“Oh!” he’d say, “if they had only done so and so they’d have gained the day.”