Who battered the Donovans often, and now will go do it again;
To-day we will teach them some manners, and show that, in spite of their talk,
We still, like our fathers before us, are surely the cocks of the walk.
After cutting out work for the sexton by smashing a dozen or so,
We’ll quit in the utmost of splendour, and down to Peg Slattery’s go;
In gallons we’ll wash down the battle, and drink to the next merry day,
When mustering again in a body, we all shall go leathering away.
William Maginn, LL.D.
DANIEL O’ROURKE.
People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke, but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the walls of the Phooka’s tower. I knew the man well: he lived at the bottom of Hungry Hill, just at the right-hand side of the road as you go towards Bantry. An old man was he, at the time that he told me the story, with grey hair, and a red nose; and it was on the 25th of June, 1813, that I heard it from his own lips, as he sat smoking his pipe under the old poplar tree, on as fine an evening as ever shone from the sky. I was going to visit the caves in Dursey Island, having spent the morning at Glengariff.