192 AN ANECDOTE. 



Andy Bawn has felt the arrow of " the villain," and believed 

 " fond wretch !" that he was beloved again. The night o 

 the portmanteau affair will ever be chronicled upon his me- 

 mory ; for while he was under fear and terror at the bridge 

 of Ballyveeney, she, the lady of his love, was at a prinkum* at 

 Latrah, performing "apples for gentlemen/'f with another 

 suitor. Nay, more, the quondam lover, as was reported, had 

 actually cecisbeo'd Miss Biddy Currigan across the bogs ; and 

 dark and dangerous inuendoes arose from this imprudent escort. 

 Andy Bawn was unhappily a man " who doubts, but dotes ; 

 suspects, yet fondly loves." Alas ! what was to be done ? 

 Could Miss Currigan become Mrs. Donahoo, after suffering 

 a regular blast, as they call it, in the kingdom of Con- 

 naught ? Impossible ! her character must be cleared, and 

 Andy satisfied. 



The magistrate was proposed well, that was good 

 enough, if it were the identity of a strayed sheep, or the 

 murder of a man ; but in a nice case, like Miss Currigan's, 

 it was totaly inefficient. " The vestment would be taken," 

 still better ; but the world was censorious : and, after all, 

 Biddy Currigan w r as a giddy girl to cross a couple of miles 

 of moorland, after midnight, with a declared lover, and him 

 hearty;^. and so thought Andy Bawn. At last the sus- 

 pected virgin volunteered to " take the skull/' dispel the 

 fears of her liege lord, and put calumny to the blush for 

 ever. Andy Bawn " breathed again ;" and the otter- killer 

 was directed to provide the necessary articles for the cere- 

 mony. 



A skull was accordingly procured from a neighbouring 

 bury ing- ground ; and Andy's mother, anxious for the honour 

 of the family, threw into the relic a bunch of keys for 

 iron, they say, adds desperately to the solemnity of the 

 obligation. The apparatus being paraded, Antony explained, 

 in the mother tongue, that the sins of the lady or gentleman 

 to whom the skull had once appertained, would be added to 

 Miss Currigan's, if she, Biddy, swore falsely ; and Mrs. Do- 

 nahoo jingkd the old iron, and showed that she was " awake 



* A Ballycmv ball, on the " free and easy" plan, where much whisky 

 and no ceremony, is used. 



f A favourite contre danse a the above assemblies. 

 Ancilice t half drunk. 



