6 LIFE IN IRELAND 



a lick of by way of oiling my tongue before I begin ? ' 

 Brian stared, he had never before heard of a steel bar 

 being used for such purposes, and looked, as they say 

 in Connaught, 'all a one hoo.' ' Och ! brother Blake, 

 don't you rade me ? hand out the stalrinky ! ' Mooney 

 immediately produced the whiskey bottle, out of which 

 she had a hearty pull. Her tale was so long we sha'nt 

 give it verbatim here ; suffice it, her name was Peg 

 O'Shambles, known once as the first cockle picker at 

 Ringsend, Dublin, but now 7'educed to sell water-grass 

 in the streets of Belfast, through Phelim her drunken 

 husband, who had not left her the value of a copper 

 crawly to keep her out of the sleiigh (ditch) of despair. 

 'There's Belfast,' said Peg, as they rose over the 

 summit of Hungry Hill, 'and there have I been 

 moiling all day for the value of a hog and a penny 

 (fourteen pence) that Phelim will swallow at one 

 gulp.' 



Brian, who knew too little of life to be ashamed 

 without cause, drove in broad daylight, with Peg at his 

 back, up to the door of the Donegal Arms, from the 

 window of which in the course of an hour he beheld 

 Peg and her husband quarrelling for the ten-pennies 

 he had given her. Brian was in his own country 

 accounted a poet, and had gained many a pretty girl's 

 heart by jinghng rhymes in her ear to some favourite 

 tune. If he did not write as well as Tommy Moore, 

 he pleased those he wrote for as well, and having 

 nothing to amuse himself with, he invoked his Muse 

 to assist him in the praise of Mr. and Mrs, O'Shambles. 



