“Who’s there?” said a voice from the ground,
“We’ve no room, for the place is quite full.”
“O! room must be speedily found,
For we come from the parish of Skull.
“Though Murphys and Crowleys appear
On headstones of deep-letter’d pride;
Though Scannels and Murleys lie here,
Fitzgeralds and Toonies beside;
“Yet here for the night we lie down,
To-morrow we speed on the gale;
For having no heads of our own,
We seek the Old Head of Kinsale.”
THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN.
XXIX.
“God speed you, and a safe journey this night to you, Charley,” ejaculated the master of the little sheebeen house at Ballyhooley after his old friend and good customer, Charley Culnane, who at length had turned his face homewards, with the prospect of as dreary a ride and as dark a night as ever fell upon the Blackwater, along the banks of which he was about to journey.
Charley Culnane knew the country well, and, moreover, was as bold a rider as any Mallow-boy that ever rattled a four-year-old upon Drumrue race-course. He had gone to Fermoy in the morning, as well for the purpose of purchasing some ingredients required for the Christmas dinner by his wife, as to gratify his own vanity by having new reins fitted to his snaffle, in which he intended showing off the old mare at the approaching St. Stephen’s day hunt.
Charley did not get out of Fermoy until late; for although he was not one of your “nasty particular sort of fellows” in any thing that related to the common occurrences of life, yet in all the appointments connected with hunting, riding, leaping, in short, in whatever was connected with the old mare, “Charley,” the saddlers said, “was the devil to plase.” An illustration of this fastidiousness was afforded by his going such a distance for his snaffle bridle. Mallow was full twelve miles nearer “Charley’s farm” (which lay just three quarters of a mile below Carrick) than Fermoy; but Charley had quarrelled with all the Mallow saddlers, from hard-working and hard-drinking Tim Clancey, up to Mr. Ryan, who wrote himself “Saddler to the Duhallow Hunt;” and no one could content him in all particulars but honest Michael Twomey of Fermoy, who used to assert—and who will doubt it—that he could stitch a saddle better than the lord-lieutenant, although they made him all as one as king over Ireland.
This delay in the arrangement of the snaffle bridle did not allow Charley Culnane to pay so long a visit as he had at first intended to his old friend and gossip, Con Buckley, of the “Harp of Erin.” Con, however, knew the value of time, and insisted upon Charley making good use of what he had to spare. “I won’t bother you waiting for water, Charley, because I think you’ll have enough of that same before you get home; so drink off your liquor, man. It’s as good parliament as ever a gentleman tasted, ay, and holy church too, for it will bear ‘x waters,’ and carry the bead after that, may be.”