365 



and climb up the legs, thighs, and bodies of their assailants 

 in such numbers, and with such pertinacity, as to force them to 

 give way and retreat ingloriously from the battle-field, fully 

 convinced that the action of the rats was governed by an 

 influence against which human force was unavailing. What 

 became of the rats after this day, or how long they remained 

 at Querin Head, I cannot say ; but I have often heard my 

 father, Owen Mor O'Curry, William Macguire, and Denis 

 Macgrath, three of the most expert rat-killers with the stick 

 in the parish, and who were at Querin Head on the occasion, 

 talk with wonder and fright of the scene in which they were 

 engaged. And these were not men who were frightened at 

 seeing their own precious blood copiously following the appli- 

 cation of well-balanced, well-directed ' shillelaghs' to their 

 own living skulls. No, they were men well accustomed to 

 give and take in that agreeable Avay. 



" It is a common tradition in Limerick, and not older than 

 my own boyish days, that when ships were found dangerously 

 infested with rats, there were men to be found then who came 

 and placed an open razor in a fixed position on the ship's deck, 

 andcompelled all the rats inhertocome in succession — I do not 

 know by what agency — and rub their throats to the razor's edge 

 so as to kill themselves. 



" There are people still in the Avest of the county of Clare 

 who pretend to possess a form of satire for the banishment of 

 rats. One man, Thomas Keane, land surveyor, now living 

 near Kilkee, told me, about the year 1820, that he had thus ba- 

 nished one or more destructive rats from his mill and house at 

 Belahaglass, near Dunlicky Castle, on the Kilkee coast. It 

 must be remembered, that the rat satire was always composed 

 in rhyme, and in the most obscure and occult phraseology of 

 the Irish language. Having myself a small inkling of the 

 rhymin^ propensity, I tried my hand at a satire on rats, in 

 the house of a friend at Kilkee, in the year 1820, but I fear 

 the Avords I made use of were too hard for the vermin to un- 



