That order of the day of the agrarian army was, however, absent from the house furniture of one of my friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on the Garvogue, near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the Abbey of Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing countenance, whose weather-beaten face was shaded by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by two wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in manner and appearance. When I entered his cabin for the first time he was engaged in preparing his dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold potato; but tearing down from a hook near the fire-place a small piece of bacon, the old man hastily rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying embers; in it he placed the herring. A great noise and spluttering followed, then Mat, mindful of future feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on its hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his meagre repast.
“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a relish.”
I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he nevertheless offered me a share of it. I explained I had already lunched, and while he was discussing his meal, we entered into conversation.
“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I said, “though one would not think it to see how you manage your boat.”
“Shure, sir, I was borren in the Ribillion!”
Let me here observe that this is the common answer given by many Irish peasants as to their age. The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in their history, and they consider that any person over middle age must have been born during that momentous period. The date appears to matter little to them. So, though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being 89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.
“Have you any children?”
“Shire I have!... Me sons they are fishermen, and me daughters are all marr’d, near here....”
“And you live alone?”
“Yes, sir, that I do.”