2o8 LIFE IN IRELAND 



he did not favour the caUing, but he favoured the 

 man. 



THE EXCISEMAN'S STORY. 



' I 've been engaged with godly wise men, 

 From drunken Parsons to Excisemen.' 



Robert Burns. 



' I was born in some particular village of this dear 

 Island, which I well know, but don't choose to remem- 

 ber at present, from political motives, of which the 

 least that is said is the soonest mended. My father 

 was the Parish Vestry of Ballymuckle of Keal : he 

 was a prime pork butcher, and took more pains to keep 

 his meat sweet three weeks after it was dead, than any 

 living hero of the steel. It happened (a great mis- 

 fortune) in his thirty-seventh year he got choak'd by 

 falling off a cart, and hanging to a lamp-post — it was 

 many a good fellouf s bad luck at that time, and bad luck 

 to him for not keeping more clear of the hempen 

 twister. 



' I had my education at the boarding-school oi Phelim 

 FiREBRASS ; it was by my soul a genuine boarding- 

 school, for we air slept upon the boards, and lived in 

 the puddle: nevertheless, he taught me the Rule of 

 Three, and Subtraction after. In short, he qualified 

 me for a full grown excisetnan ; and so he did my 

 brother, who took a different road in life from what I 

 did ; and when I slipt the joints and fa?ig'd the arm, he 

 strengthened the sinews, and dibb'd the tenpefinies. 



' For a length of years I hovered country villages 

 and country fairs, in the train of the Surveyor-general 



