I charmed this old soul as much by laughing heartily, and entering with spirit into Fanny's humour, as if I had presented her with fifty pounds. She called an aged man from the next door to hobble out and join in the merriment, which I dare say ran before it stopped, like an electric stream through every conductor of the whole series. As we walked on, "I perceive," said I, "that her majesty of _pastime_, is a Protestant, by her assurance that my cousins are all travelling the high road to heaven." "You are mistaken my dear fellow,--Kate has an _ave_ for every bead in her _paddreen_, which is the Hibernian version of Corona, or Coronach; and blind as she is, is conveyed by one of my paddock horses annually on the eve of St. John, to a holy well, not far distant from Lisfarne. This little journey is all the work that the queen and her cattle are able to accomplish; and the same beast, that 'roan barbary' which came up to welcome us at the gate, has drawn Kate and her truckle for so many years, that were True-penny to die, I believe that blind as is his mistress, she would find out that she had lost him, and be uneasy till the priest was sent for, to _shrive_ and anoint her, in the full persuasion that _her_ hour was also come." "Well, you really do surprise me, but to confess the truth, you deal in nothing but miracles in this county of Kerry. In less than a week I have seen some strange things, which had any one presumed, ere I beheld them, to say were existing realities, I should have laughed as the king of Pegu is said to have done when he heard of nations being governed without a monarch. I have seen _Blue-stockings_ without pedantry, refinement that has never been learned in the world of fashion, religion free from cant, retirement unaccompanied by _ennui_; and now, as my list goes on increasing like the story of the house that Jack built, here is the Roman Catholic creed divested of bigotry; in the shape of an old woman too, who fully expects, though a Papist herself, to meet a Protestant family in the skies." "Aye, my boy, and I hope that you will soon cease to wonder at any of these things. The poor people of this island are brim-full of intelligence and feeling; qualities which are of _adjective_ character, and increase the measure of good or bad exactly as they happen to be associated. Were our peasantry fairly dealt with, the tables would speedily be turned, and instead of that cold-hearted sarcasm which would seem to be 'the badge and sufferance of all their kind,' you would see their accusers glad to steal away, and hide their diminished heads."