Wall, we wuz a-layin’ out to leave there the next mornin’, but Martin, by his pryin’ round, found that there wuz a-goin’ to be a wake that night in a cabin not fur from the tarvern where we wuz a-stayin’, and by payin’ some money—I d’no how much—he got a chance to attend to it, and he said that Josiah and I could go if we wanted to. He told me he didn’t spoze that Al Faizi would care about goin’, and he wanted Alice and Adrian to rest, for the next mornin’ early we wuz to set out for Dublin.
But I thanked him real polite, and told him that “I would stay with the children.”
And afterwards, seein’ that Al Faizi wanted to go, them three men sot off.
A old man had passed away, and they wuz a-makin’ a great wake for him.
They didn’t stay long, for they said that the whiskey and drinkin’ and tobacco-smokin’ in the little hovel drove ’em out.
Drinkin’ and tobacco-smokin’ in the little hovel drove ’em out.
But Martin observed complacently that he would be glad to say that he had been to a real Irish Wake.
Al Faizi spoke of the old wimmen wailers, and said that they had jest sech professional mourners in Egypt and parts of Africa, and he wondered quite a good deal how that custom come way off here in this fur-off Ireland, but he spozed that it wuz in some way brought here from the East. Mebby it come down from them old days nobody knows anything about, of which relics remains in them old round towers, etc. So old nobody knows who built ’em, or what for.
He wondered a good deal, but didn’t take out that book of hisen with the star and cross on’t. No, he writ in another book with a plain Russia leather cover on’t.