DELICATE EXCAVATION. 217 



Joe, as they made fresh efforts to rise. At length, it was proposed 

 by Dan Tyron to send for the stone-cutter, and get him to cut 

 them out of the wall with a chisel. I was literally unable to 

 speak two sentences for laughing. The old woman meanwhile 

 tried to soften the obdurate wall with melted butter and new 

 milk but in vain. I related the school story how Hannibal had 

 worked through the Alps with hot vinegar and hot irons : this 

 experiment likewise was made, but Hannibal's solvent had no 

 better success than the old crone's. Peter, being of a more pass- 

 ionate nature, grew ultimately quite outrageous : he roared, 

 gnashed his teeth, and swore vengeance against the mason ; but 

 as he was only held by one side, a thought at last struck him : 

 he asked for two knives, which being brought, he whetted one 

 aginst the other, and introducing the blades close to his skull, 

 sawed away at cross corners till he was liberated, with the loss 

 only of half his hair and a piece of his scalp, which he had sliced 

 off in zeal and haste for his liberty. I never saw a fellow so ex- 

 travagantly happy ! Fur was scraped from the crown of a hat, 

 to stop the bleeding ; his head was duly tied up with the old 

 woman's praskeen ; * and he was soon in a state of bodily con- 

 valescence. Our solicitude was now required solely for Joe, 

 whose head was too deeply buried to be exhumated with so much 

 facility. At this moment Bob Casey, of Ballynakill, a very cele- 

 brated wig-maker, just dropped in, to see what he could pick up 

 honestly in the way of his profession, or steal in the way of any 

 thing else; and he immediately undertook to get Mr. Kelly out 

 of the mortar by a very expert but tedious process, namely, 

 clipping with his scissors and then rooting out with an oyster 

 knife. He thus finally succeeded, in less than an hour, in setting 

 Joe once more at liberty, at the price of his queue, which was 

 totally lost, and of the exposure of his raw and bleeding occiput. 

 The operation was, indeed, of a mongrel description somewhat 

 between a complete tonsure and an imperfect scalping, to both of 

 which denominations is certainly presented claims. However, it 

 is an ill wind that blows nobody good ! Bob Casey got the 

 making of a skull-piece for Joe, and my brother French had the 

 pleasure of paying for it, as gentlemen in those days honoured 

 any order given by a guest to the family shop-keeper or artizan. 



BARRIKGTON. 



* A coarse dirty apron, worn by working women in a kitchen, 

 in the country parts of Ireland. 



VOL. i. 1833. D2 



