“The next is Frimsy Framty, and is played in this manner:—A chair or stool is placed in the middle of the flure, and the man who manages the play sits down upon it, and calls his sweetheart, or the prettiest girl in the house. She, accordingly, comes forward, and must kiss him. He then rises up, and she sits down. 'Come, now,' he says, 'fair maid—Frimsy framsy, who's your fancy?' She then calls them she likes best, and when the young man she calls comes over and kisses her, he then takes her place, and calls another girl—and so on, smacking away for a couple of hours. Well, throth, it's no wonder that Ireland's full of people; for I believe they do nothing but coort from the time they're the hoith of my leg. I dunno is it true, as I hear Captain Sloethern's steward say, that the Englishwomen are so fond of Irishmen?”
“To be sure it is,” said Shane Fadh; “don't I remimber myself, when Mr. Fowler went to England—and he as fine looking a young-man, at the time, as ever got into a saddle—he was riding up the street of London, one day, and his servant after him—and by the same token he was a thousand pound worse than nothing; but no matter for that, you see luck was before him—what do you think, but a rich dressed livery servant came out, and stopping the Squire's man, axed whose servant he was?
“'Why, thin,' says Ned Magavran, who-was his body servant at the time, 'bad luck to you, you spalpeen, what a question do you ax, and you have eyes in your head!' says he—'hard feeling to you!' says he, 'you vagabone, don't you see I'm my master's?'
“The Englishman laughed. 'I know that, Paddy,' says he—for they call us all Paddies in England, as if we had only one name among us, the thieves; 'but I wish to know his name,' says the Englishman.
“'You do!' says Ned; 'and by the powers!' says he, 'but you must first tell me which side of the head you'd wish to hear it an.'
“'Oh! as for that,' says the Englishman—not up to him, you see——'I don't care much, Paddy, only let me hear it, and where he lives.'
“'Just keep your ground, then,' says Ned, 'till I light off this blood-horse of mine'—he was an ould garron that was fattened up, not worth forty shillings—'this blood-horse of mine,' says Ned, 'and I'll tell you.'
“So down he gets, and lays the Englishman sprawling in the channel.
“' Take that, you vagabone! says he, and it'll larn you to call people by their right names agin: I was christened as well as you, you spalpeen!'
“All this time the lady was looking out of the windy, breaking her heart laughing at Ned and the servant; but, behould!—she knew a thing or two, it seems; for, instead of sending a man at all at all, what does she do but sends her own maid—a very purty girl, who comes up to Ned, putting the same question to him.