44 AN EVENING AT BELLEEK. 



sugar. It is then drowned, or covered with 

 whisky, the national spirit, which, when the 

 bells are large, generally fills about three- 

 fourths of the tumbler ; water is poured upon 

 the top of this, particular care being taken 

 by the celebrants that it be screeching hot. 

 The whole then is solemnly drained to the 

 very bottom, the leader first pronouncing a 

 set form of words, which, like most religious 

 mysteries, is totally unintelligible to the un- 

 initiated.* I cannot give you much informa- 

 tion about the remaining part of the cere- 

 monies, which, like those of Eleusis, are car- 

 ried on throughout the whole of the night ; 

 but the next morning the mystce are com- 

 monly found in as exhausted a state as ever 



* The Author has been furnished with a copy of the 

 commemoration service of the great Any thingarian saint 

 by a correspondent from the north of Ireland. It would 

 be altogether foreign to the tolerant spirit which so 

 happily characterises the nineteenth century were he to 

 seem to condemn the religious observances of any deno- 

 mination of Christians ; moreover, he is not quite certain 

 that he entirely understands one word of it. Neverthe- 

 less, he thinks it advisable to suppress certain parts, 

 which a harshly-judging public might think blasphemous 

 or indecent. The remainder is as follows : — 



" The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the 



