“Were you frightened, Mr. O’Donnell?” said I (he told me that was his name).
“By my sowl!” replied O’Donnell, who seemed a decent sort of farmer, “if you had been in it that same day, your honour would have had no great objections to be out of it agin.”
“Now,” said I, “pray, Serjeant Butler, how came the Kilkenny to run away that day so soon and with so little reason?”
“Becaize we were ordered to run away,” answered the serjeant.
“How can you say that, serjeant?” said the doctor. “I was myself standing bolt upright at the left of the Kilkenny when they ran without any order.”
“O yes, indeed! to be sure, doctor!” said Serjeant Butler; “but were you where I was when Captain Millar the aidycam ordered us off in no time?”
“He did not,” replied the doctor.
“Why, then, since you make me curse, by J—s he did; becaize the officers afterward all said, that when he ordered us off, he forgot half what he had to say to us.”
“And pray, what was the other half, serjeant?” inquired I.
“Ah, then, I’ll tell you that, counsellor,” replied Butler. “That same aidycam was a fat, bloated gentleman, and they said he was rather thick-winded like a beast, when his mind was not easy: so he comes up (my lord was looking at the fight, and did not mind him), and he kept puffing and blowing away while he was ordering us, till he came to the words, ‘you’ll get off,’ or ‘you’ll advance backwards,’ or some words of the same kind, I can’t exactly say what;—but it seems, when he desired us to make off, he forgot to say ‘thirty yards,’ as the officers told us at Tuam was the general’s word of command:—and as he desired us to make off, but didn’t order us when to stop, by my sowl some of us never stopped or stayed for thirty good miles, and long miles too, only to get a drink of water or halt a noggin of whisky, if there was any in the alehouse. And sorry enough we were, and sore likewise!—Then there was that Chapman and his heavy horse; troth I believe every horse in the place cantered over us as if we were sods of turf. Bad luck to their sowls! many a poor Kilkenny lad couldn’t get out of their way while they were making off, and so they tumbled over the Kilkenny themselves, and all were tumbling and rolling together, and the French were coming on to stick us; and we were trampled and flattened in the dust, so that you’d hardly know a corpse from a sheet of brown paper, only for the red coat upon it.”