But you won’t, you won’t, O bitter woe!’
West wid me to the house for a spade and a skive. I hadn’t the spade in the ground right, when up popped every knasster[32] as big as your head. I went home in high glee,—sure, a wran’s egg wouldn’t break under me, my heart was so light,—I washed the praties for myself and hung them over the fire. Then I sat on the seestheen,[33] and reddened (lit) my pipe. I hadn’t a shoch (whiff) and a half pulled when here are the praties fubbling. I tuk ’em off the fire at my dead aise and put ’em on the table after a spell. Glory be to God that gave ’em to me; ’tis they wor the fine ating; I never ate the like of ’em, and I won’t again too till the Day of Flags (day of his burial). ’Tisn’t that itself, but they wor laffing with me, widout they knowing I was going to lie my back-teeth on ’em.”
Meehawl was often obliged to go to England. Once, after returning home, a contemptible little fellow asked him would himself find any kind of suitable employment there. Meehawl looked at him from head to foot, as he stood by the fire warming himself, though the sun was splitting the trees, the heat was so great. A fly alighted on his nose; but he gave him a slap which put an end to his pricking. “The divel,” says Meehawl, “if you had a whip I am sure you would keep the flies from the hams of bacon which I used see hanging in the houses in England!”
He was very fond of liquor, but alas! he had not the means whereby to indulge his desires. At times, however, he used to have a few shillings; then he would go to the fair,—not without bringing his blackthorn stick,—and finding some neighbour whom he made much of, they would both go and have a “drop” together, till his money was spent; after which he would make his exit from the tavern like a mad thunderbolt. And if anybody came near him he was sure to get a taste of his blackthorn. To do him justice, there were few men who could beat him fighting with a stick.
One day he came home drunk; “he had a blow on the cat and a blow on the dog.” His wife was sitting in the corner as mute as a cat, but she uttered not a word till he had slept off the effects of the drunkenness; then she asked him why he had come home as he did the night before. It did not take him long to find his answer:—“Sure,” said he, “I had to drink something to clane the cobwebs out of my throat!” The poor fellow had no stripper that winter, so that he had to eat his food dry.
I have stated before that Meehawl often had to go to England. Here is one of the stories which he used to relate after coming back:—“After going to England I was a spell widout any work, and sure it did not take me long to spind the little penny of money that I brought wid me, and I wouldn’t get a lodging anywhere, since my pocket wasn’t stiff. I put my hand in my pocket, trying for my pipe, and what should I get there but tuppence (2d.) by the height of luck. I bought a loaf of bread for myself; I ate a bit of it, and put the rest of it in the pocket of my casoge.[34] When it was going of me to get a lodging anywhere, what should I see a couple of steps from me but a big gun. It was a short delay for me to get into its mouth, and while you’d be closing your eye I wasn’t inside when I fell asleep. In the morning, when I was waking myself up, I didn’t feel a bit till I got a bullet that put so much hurry on me that I couldn’t ever or ever stop till I fell in a fine brickle (brittle) moantawn[35] in France. ‘Well, Meehawl,’ says I to myself, ‘maybe you oughtn’t complain since you didn’t fall into the say where you’d get swallowing without chawing (chewing).’ Then I thanked God who brought me safe and sound so far. I put my hand in the pocket of my casoge and what should be there before me but the small little bit of bread I put into it the night before that. ‘Food is the work-horse, wherever you’ll be,’ says I to myself, ating up the bread dry as fast as I could. When I had it ate, I looked around me just as cute as Norry-the-bogs[36] when she’d be trying for fish in a river, but sure if I stopped looking till the Day of Flags, I wouldn’t get as much as the full of my eye of wan Frenchman.
“‘Well, that’s best,’ says I, going to a fine cock of hay, as high as Miskish, but high as it was, I went on top of it. I made a hole through it, and left myself into it, widout a bit of me out but the top of my nose, to draw my breath. I wasn’t there long till I fell asleep, and I didn’t feel anything till morning. When I woke up I looked round me—where was I? God for ever wid me! where was I only in the middle of the say, and my heart ruz as I thought of it right. I suppose ’tis how a cloud fell near the cock, and that ruz the flood in the river so much that it swept myself and the cock all together away—widout letting me know of it. I gave myself up to God, but if I did ’tis likely I didn’t deserve much of the good from Him, for again a spell here’s a whale to me (there’s a creeping could running through me when I think of him!), and he opened his dirty mouth and he swallowed myself and the cock holus bolus.
“I wasn’t gone right till that happened me. People say that Hell is dark, but if it is as dark as the stomach of that baste, the divil entirely is in it. But that isn’t here nor there; you’d see the fish running hither and over about his stomach, some of ’em swimming fine and aisy for theirself, more of ’em lepping as light as flays (fleas), and some more of ’em bawling like young childer. ‘Ye haven’t any more right to do that nor me,’ says I, and I tuk out and opened a big knife; widout a lie it was sharp—wan blow of it would cut off the leg of the biggest horse that ever trod or walked on grass. Here am I cutting, and ’tis short till the pain pinched the whale, and begor I saw that he would like to turn off. ‘Squeeze out,’ says I, and wid that I saw the fish running out. ‘That your road may rise wid ye,’ says I; but I wasn’t going to stop till he would give the same tratement or better to myself. Here’s he blowing; ‘Blow on wid you,’ says I, and I was cutting always at such a rate that it wasn’t long till I put my knife out through his side, and I fell on the top of my head. ‘Fooisg! fooisg!’ says the stomach of the whale, and praise and thanks be to God, he blew me out through his mouth. He was tired of me and I was no less tired of him too. He blew me so high in the sky that I couldn’t be far from the sun, there was so much hate (heat) there. But any way I fell down safe and sound on a fine soft bog of turf that was cut only a few days before that. Nothing happened to me, only that the nail was taken off the loodeen[37] of my left leg!”
Patrick O’Leary.