69 



THE RECORDER OF BALLYPOREEN, 



AN ELECTION RECORD. 



A medley of endearments, jars, 

 Suspicions, quarrels, reconcilements, wars, 

 Then peace again. 



IT is not many months since the following marriage advertisement, 

 in most of the Irish newspapers, excited equal curiosity and amuse- 

 ment wherever it was read : 



" Married, by the Rev. Oliver Bible, Mr. Patrick Hogan, Recor- 

 der of the Ballyporeen Petty Sessions, to Miss Anne Switzer, of the 

 same town." 



The curiosity was to know who could the lady be, with the extra- 

 ordinary un-Irish name; and the amusement was created by the 

 high-sounding appellation which was given to the poor and paltry 

 office of a petty sessions clerk. 



The village of Ballyporeen is, or rather was, one of those quiet and 

 retired nooks, the very look of which promises, to those who dwell in 

 it, security against the invasions of ambition, and the equally dan- 

 gerous visitations of fame. Even in the recollection of the oldest 

 inhabitant, there had not been a burning within a mile of it, and only 

 three tithe-proctors were ever shot in its vicinity, and that was so 

 long ago as the times of the old White-boys. No Catholic monks had 

 raised an abbey in its neighbourhood, and no old castle was erected 

 beside it, which Cromwell might have dragged down in his devastat- 

 ing progress through Ireland. It had neither a Well nor a Cross to 

 tempt a visit from the infirm or the wandering pilgrim, and there 

 was no inducement for the antiquarian or the fashionable tourist to 

 pass through its solitary, and almost grass-grown streetl No attorney 

 had embroiled its humble denizens in law, and the only " professional 

 gentleman" ever found in it was a desperate apothecary, who once 

 opened a shop, but who, in six months after he had displayed his 

 fellow pestle and mortar, poisoned himself. The only active person 

 in the town the only one who had business to do, was Mrs. Dorney, 

 an old and an experienced practitioner, who diffused joy and glad- 

 ness wherever she came, as she was never known to depart from a 

 house in Ballyporeen without announcing that there was to be, or 

 there had been, an increase to the population. Commerce neither 

 brought to the quiet inhabitants of the village wealth or cares the 

 far-travelling pedlar conveyed to them all the luxuries of life, and all 

 the news of the great world, from which their agricultural avocations 

 removed them. The few Palatines and descendants of the German 

 Protestants (imported by James the First) who lived in the town) 

 had been many a night drunk, in toasting "success to the British 

 arms in America," long after the independence of " the Colonies" 

 was acknowledged ; and Buonaparte was some time upon the throne 

 of France before they had heard of the decapitation of Louis the 

 Sixteenth ! In such a state of happy ignorance and contented 



