Till my Jacky came in, and says he, “Darby Kelsh,
Shure you can’t court at all—look at Tatther Jack Welsh!”
So up the rogue rushes, and gave me a pogue,[57]
And Darby ran out, like he’d got a polthogue,[58]—
“Arrah, what can be ailing,” says he, “Darby Kelsh?”
“Haith, you know well enough,” says I, “Tatther Jack Welsh!”
Patrick J. McCall.
THEIR LAST RACE.
I.—The Faction Fight.
In the heart of the Connemara Highlands, Carrala Valley hides in a triangle of mountains. Carrala Village lies in the comer of it towards Loch Ina, and Aughavanna in the corner nearest Kylemore. Aughavanna is a wreck now: if you were to look for it you would see only a cluster of walls grown over by ferns and nettles; but in those remote times, before the Great Famine, when no English was spoken in the Valley, there was no place more renowned for wild fun and fighting; and when its men were to be at a fair, every able-bodied man in the countryside took his kippeen—his cudgel—from its place in the chimney, and went out to do battle with a glad heart.