My route from the village to Bally———— lay partly through a desolate bog, whose burning surface, heated by a vertical sun, gave me no inadequate idea of Arabia Deserta; and the pangs of an acute headache, brought on by exercise more violent than my still delicate constitution was equal to support, determined me to defer my journey until the meridian ardours were abated; and taking your Horace from my pocket, I wandered into a shady path, “impervious to the noontide ray.” Throwing my “listless length” at the foot of a spreading beech, I had already got to that sweet ode to Lydia, which Scaliger in his enthusiasm declares he would rather have written than to have possessed the monarchy of Naples, when somebody accosted me in Irish, and then with a “God save you, Sir!” I raised my eyes, and beheld a poor peasant, driving, or rather soliciting, a sorry lame cow to proceed.
“May be,” said he, taking off his hat, “your Honour would be after telling me what’s the hour?” “Later than I supposed, my good friend,” replied I, rising, “it is past two.” He bowed low, and stroking the face of his companion, added, “well, the day is yet young, but you and I have a long journey before us, my poor Driminduath.”
“And how far are you going, my friend?”
“Please your Honour, two miles beyond Bally———-.”
“It is my road exactly, and you, Driminduath, and I, may perform the journey together.” The poor fellow seemed touched and surprised by my condescension, and profoundly bowed his sense of it, while the curious triumviri set off on their pedestrian tour together.
I now cast an eye over the person of my compagnon de voyage. It was a tall, thin, athletic figure, “bony and gaunt,” with an expressive countenance, marked features, a livid complexion, and a quantity of coarse black hair hanging about the face; the drapery was perfectly appropriate to the wearer—an under garment composed of “shreds and patches,” was partially covered with an old great coat of coarse frieze, fastened on the breast with a large wooden skewer, the sleeves hanging down on either side unoccupied, * and a pair of yarn hose which scarcely reached midleg, left the ankle and foot naked.
* This manner of wearing the coat, so genera, among the
peasantry, is deemed by the natives of the county of Galway
a remnant of the Spanish mode.
Driminduath seemed to share in the obvious poverty of her master—she was almost an anatomy, and scarcely able to crawl. “Poor beast!” said he, observing I looked at her, “Poor beast! little she dreamed of coming back the road she went, and little able is she to go it, poor soul; not that I am overly sorry I could not get nobody to take her off my hands at all at all; though to-be-sure ’tis better to lose one’s cow than one’s wife, any day in the year.”
“And had you no alternative?” I asked.
“Anan!” exclaimed he, starting.