Thomas Palmer was hale and healthy;—his fifty-seventh year had handed him over safe and sound to its next neighbour: his property was just sufficient (and no more) to gallop side by side with his hospitality. When at home, his boiler was seldom found bubbling without a corned round withinside it; and a gander or cock turkey frequently danced at the end of a string before the long turf fire. Ducks, hares, chickens, or smoked ham, often adorned the sides of his table; whilst apple-dumplings in the centre and potatoes at cross corners completed a light snack for five or six seven-feet Ossoronians, who left no just reason to the old cook and a couple of ruddy ploughmen, (who attended as butlers,) to congratulate themselves upon the dainty appetites of their masters, or the balance of nourishment left to liquidate the demand of their own stomachs. But, alas! those pleasurable specimens of solid fare have passed away for ever! As age advances, Nature diminishes her weights and measures in our consumption, and our early pounds and Scotch pints (two bottles) are at length reduced to the miserable rations of ounces and glassfuls.
At this magistrate’s cottage, which had as stout a roof to it as any mansion in the county, I once dined, about the year 1781, when the state of medicine in Ireland was exemplified in a way that neither Cullen, Darwin, Perceval, James, or any other learned doctor ever contemplated, and which I am convinced—had it been the practice in Italy—Doctor Morgan would not have passed over in total silence.
We had scarcely finished such a meal as I have particularised, and “got into the punch,” when a crowd of men, women, and children, came up to the door in great confusion, but respectfully took off their hats and bonnets, and asked humbly to speak to his worship.
Tom Palmer seemed to anticipate their business, and inquired at once “if Dan Dempsey of the Pike (turnpike) was in the same way still?”
“Ough! please your worship,” cried out twenty voices together, “worse, your worship, worse nor ever, death’s crawling upon him—he can’t stop, and what’s the use in leaving the poor boy in his pains any longer, your worship? We have got two good feather-beds at the Pike, and we want your worship’s leave to smother Dan Dempsey, if your worship pleases.”
“Ough avourneen! he growls and barks like any mastiff dog, please your worship,” cried a tremulous old woman, who seemed quite in terror.
“You lie, Nancy Bergin,” said her older husband, “Dan Dempsey does not bark like a mastiff;—it’s for all the world like your worship’s white lurcher, when she’s after the rabbits, so it is!”
“He snapped three times at myself this morning,” said another humane lady, “and the neighbours said it were all as one, almost, as biting me.”
“Hush! hush!” said the magistrate, waving his hand: “any of you who can read and write, come in here.”
“Ough! there’s plenty of that sort, please your worship,” said Maurice Dowling, the old schoolmaster. “Sure it’s not ignorance I’d be teaching my scholards every day these forty years, except Sundays and holidays, at the Pike. There’s plenty of swearing scholards here any how, your worship.”