“He made a little too free, my lady mistress,” said the warder, “and is not very fitting for duty, saving your presence;—but he’ll soon sleep it off.”
“Bring him up, nevertheless,” cried Elizabeth:—“I command you to bring up his reverence.”
The priest was accordingly produced by Keeran Karry. “Father,” said the lady, “where’s your manual?”
“Where should it be,” answered the priest (rather sobered), “but where it always is, lady?” pulling, as he spake, a book out of a pocket in the waistband of his breeches, where (diminished and under the name of a fob) more modern clergymen carry their watches.[[51]]
[51]. The priests then, to render mass handy, invariably kept their manual in their breeches with a piece of strong green ribbon (having beads at the end of it) to lug it out by, resembling the chain of a modern buckish parson’s timepiece. They also gave another very extraordinary reason for keeping their manual in their smallclothes—namely, that no devil would presume to come near them when he was sure he should have the mass to encounter before he could get at their carcases.
“Now, your reverence,” said Elizabeth, “we’ll swear the young squire to revenge my poor Stephen, his father, on the Cahills, root and branch, so soon as he comes to manhood. Swear him!—swear him thrice!” exclaimed she.
The boy was duly sworn, and the manual reposited in the priest’s smallclothes.
“Now, take the boy down and duck him, head over heels, in the horse-pond!” cried his mother.[[52]]