“God save all here!” said Shane Glas, approaching the festive group. “O, wisha! Misther Cronin, but you and the boys is up to fun. The devil a naither glass o’ brandy: no wonder ye should laugh and sing over it. How goes the Colleen Ayrigh, and her Bochal Fadda, that knows how to bark so purty at thim plundering thieves, the wather-guards?”
“Ah! welcome, Shane,” replied the person addressed; “the customer you’ve brought may be depinded on, I hope. Sit down, boys.”
“’Tis ourselves that will, and welkim,” rejoined Shane. “Depinded on! why, ’scure to the dacenther father’s son from this to himself than Paddy Corbett, ’tisn’t that he’s to the fore.”
“Come, taste our brandy, lads, while I help you to some ham,” said the smuggler. “Shane, you have the stomach of a shark, the digestion of an ostrich, and the gout of an epicure.”
“By gar ye may say that wid yer own purty mouth, Misther Cronin,” responded the garrulous Shane. “Here, gintlemin, here is free thrade to honest min, an’ high hangin’ to all informers! O! murdher maura (smacking his lips), how it tastes! O, avirra yealish (laying his bony hand across his shrunken paunch), how it hates the stummuck!”
“You are welcome to our mansion, Paddy Corbett,” interrupted the hospitable master of the cavern; “the house is covered in, the rent paid, and the cruiskeen of brandy unadulterated; so eat, drink, and be merry. When the moon rises, we can proceed to business.”
Paddy Corbett was about to return thanks when the interminable Shane Glas again broke in.
“I never saw a man, beggin’ yer pardon, Misther Cronin, lade a finer or rolickinger life than your own four bones—drinking an’ coorting on land, and spreading the canvass of the Colleen Ayrigh over the salt say, for the good o’ thrade. Manim syr Shyre, if I had Trig Dowl the piper forninst me there, near the cruiskeen, but I’d drink an’ dance till morning. But here’s God bless us, an’ success to our thrip, Paddy, avrahir;” and he drained his glass. Then when many a successive round went past, and the famished-looking wretch grew intoxicated, he called out at the top of his voice, “Silence for a song,” and in a tone somewhat between the squeak of a pig and the drone of a bagpipe, poured forth a lyric, of which we shall present one or two stanzas to the reader.
I thravelled France an’ Spain, an’ likewise in Asia,
Fal de ral, &c &c.