“I can’t, I tell ye. I’m going in all haste to marry a couple.”
“Och! if I knew that, I’d be very sorry to detain your rivirince! What I have to say may well keep for another opportunity. See this curst boult now! Throth the skin is torn off my fingers strivin’ to pull it back, an’ yer rivirince in sitch a disperate hurry! But ye have the patience of Job himself, beyant all doubt. God help the couple that’s expectin’ ye, sur! And who are they, the craithurs?”
The impatient churchman looked at his watch and groaned: but as the inexorable gate would not open to let him pass through, he gratified the newsmonger with the information that “the couple he was about to marry were Dennis Costigan and Catherine, Miles Kavanagh’s daughter.”
“Tunder an’ turf!” exclaimed Mr Colfer, opening his eyes as wide as he could, and raising his hands to express the extremity of astonishment. “Is it ould Dinnis Costigan, father to Jem, that’s goin’ to be married to handsome Kate Kavanagh, the belle o’ the barony?—it’s quite onpossible!”
“It’s not impossible,” said the priest, angrily: “and I see nothing extraordinary in her father preferring to give her to a sensible steady old man, than to a wild young one. But don’t I see the gate open, and you pretending it was bolted? Oh! ye double-dyed slieveen, quit my way this moment, or by all that’s good I’ll let you feel the weight of this,” and he raised his horsewhip.
“Och! wid all the pleasure in life!” quoth Watty, jumping quickly aside; and the gate flew open as if by magic, through which Father Tobin dashed at full speed.
Watty then, sound in wind and limb, shot off through the fields—a short cut to a certain cross-road, about a mile from the priest’s house, and less than a quarter from Miles Kavanagh’s cottage, by which his reverence should pass. Puffing a little, he was just in time to gravely touch his hat as the priest cantered by. Then raising his voice he shouted after him, “Ride aisy, ride aisy, yer rivirince; take things aisy, can’t ye? Young James Costigan an’ Kate Kavanagh ran off together this mornin’, an’ they’re now man an’ wife! Arrah, take things aisy, can’t ye?”
“Oh! ye limb of Satan!” ejaculated the disappointed clergyman, as he pulled up to hear these tidings, “why didn’t you tell me this before, and not send me off on a fool’s errand?”
“How could I, sur?” responded the slieveen, meekly, “when you war in sitch a disperate hurry?—sure ye wouldn’t let me spake at all at all!”
His reverence returned to his home, muttering denunciations upon Watty’s devoted head; and Watty went his way, laughing immoderately at the success of his joke. He had given his spiritual director a ride of a mile or so without his breakfast, which no clerical stomach, Catholic or Protestant, could put up with, unless with a wedding breakfast in prospective. And he told but the truth after all. Young Costigan and handsome Kate had that morning given the knowing old ones the slip, and got married in Wexford; and Dennis, our portly friend Dennis, since he couldn’t have the “belle o’ the barony” for his bride, put a good face on the matter, and received her as his daughter-in-law. Twelve rejected suitors were at the “hauling home;” amongst them Counsellor Shiel of course, who favoured the company with a song made for the occasion, the concluding lines of which we give: