Political geography is not written as it should be, so that there may be people who have not even heard of the Great War between Ballybun and Kilterash. No one knows for certain when it started, or why. A local antiquary, after prolonged study of chronicles, memorials, rolls and records, to say nothing of local churchyards, refers it with some confidence to the reign of Henry II. (Louis VII. being King of France, in the pontificate of Adrian IV. and so on), and to the forcible abduction of a pig (called the White Pearl) by the then ruling monarch of Kilterash. The Editor of The Kilterash Curfew, in one of his recent "Readings for the Day of Rest," remarked that Christian charity compelled him to hurl this foul aspersion back in the teeth of this so-called antiquary; the whole world knew that the pig had been born in the parish of Kilterash, but had "strayed" across the Bun, as things too often had the habit of straying.
I am the "so-called antiquary." My little pamphlet proves in less than three hundred pages the truth of my allegation concerning the abduction of the White Pearl, giving the original texts on which I rely and the genealogies of all concerned in a sordid story.
Since 1157, as far as history records, we have been afflicted with only two periods of truce. One was when, on hearing of the foul wrong done by the German Brute in Belgium, we united in enlisting recruits for our local regiment. This truce was broken by my worthy friend, the Editor of The Curfew, who pointed out, more in anger than in sorrow, that Ballybun had sent six men fewer than Kilterash. The second truce—again broken by the enemy—concerned myself. Wishing to add, if possible, to the evidence from monuments contained in my pamphlet, I was copying an inscription I had only just discovered in the disused churchyard of Killyburnbrae, when one of these light Atlantic showers sprang up and soaked me to the backbone. The result was influenza and a high temperature, which rose while I was reading The Curfew upon my brochure, "The White Pearl of Ballybun, an Impartial Examination with the Original Documents herein set out and now for the first time deciphered by a Member of the Society of Antiquarians. Dedicated to All Lovers of the Truth. Printed by the Ballybun Binnacle Press."
The Curfew said of this fair statement of the evidence (with the original documents, mind you) that it smacked of German scholarship and their graveyard style of doing things. My blood boiled at this, and to keep me cool my niece, who lives with me, pulled down all the blinds, as the sun was strong.
An old fish-woman passing by saw this and said, "Well, well, the poor old fellow's gone at last! A decent man in his time, with no taste in fish! We must all come to it." From her the news spread forty miles on either side of her and reached the Editor of The Curfew in the middle of a philippic. Next morning I was astounded to read in his editorial columns: "Our distinguished neighbour and friend—if he will allow us to call him so—is now no more; in other words is gone ... as Virgil remarks ... famous antiquarian ... scrupulous and methodical, and, as we remarked in our last issue, reminiscent of the palmy days of the best German monumental scholarship ... our slight differences never affected the esteem in which we held him as a patriot, citizen, ratepayer and Man...."
Now this was kindly and fair. I have written to my worthy friend and have proposed to dedicate to him my forthcoming work (non-partisan) on the "Slant Observable in Some Church-Spires, Part I." When he had to unbury me, war had to be resumed—it was his side that insisted upon it—but as far as the two chieftains are concerned it is a war without bitterness. He now introduces his attacks with "Our honoured and able antiquarian friend"; while my answers breathe such sentiments as "The genial editor of that well-conducted organ."
FOOD VALUES IN OUR RESTAURANTS.
Customer. "What do you suggest for to-day, Miss?"