POTEEN THE REAL MOUNTAIN DEW. 269 



short, there is a cacoethes bibendi in all Scotchmen, 

 and one only wonders how, unless their stomachs 

 are coppered and their throats tinned, they can 

 imbibe so much of what a certain learned Edinburgh 

 physician called " heele fire strang stuff," without 

 either going on fire or dying of spontaneous 

 combustion. But I am getting too far away from 

 the country and people I was describing, and though 

 I have a little more to say of the inhabitants of the 

 Emerald Isle, I will close the subject of Parliament 

 whiskey and poteen. 



