“Is his honor at home? I’ve something for him from Mr. Davern.” Mickey well knew that few western gentlemen were without constant intercourse with the Athlone attorney. The poor countryman accordingly hastened through the fence and pursued the coach with all speed for above a mile, Mike pretending all the time to be in the greatest anxiety for his overtaking them, until at last, as he stopped in despair, a hearty roar of laughter told him that, in Mickey’s _parlance_, he was “sould.” “Taste it, my dear; devil a harm it’ll do ye. It never paid the king sixpence.” Here he filled a little horn vessel from a black bottle he carried, accompanying the action with a song, the air to which, if any of my readers feel disposed to sing it, I may observe, bore a resemblance to the well-known, “A Fig for Saint Denis of France.” POTTEEN, GOOD LUCK TO YE, DEAR. Av I was a monarch in state, Like Romulus or Julius Caysar, With the best of fine victuals to eat, And drink like great Nebuchadnezzar, A rasher of bacon I’d have, And potatoes the finest was seen, sir, And for drink, it’s no claret I’d crave, But a keg of ould Mullens’s potteen, sir, With the smell of the smoke on it still. They talk of the Romans of ould, Whom they say in their own times was frisky; But trust me, to keep out the cowld, The Romans at home here like whiskey. Sure it warms both the head and the heart, It’s the soul of all readin’ and writin’; It teaches both science and art, And disposes for love or for fightin’. Oh, potteen, good luck to ye, dear.