Penelope's Irish ExperiencesWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
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Penelope's Irish Experiences
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Ireland -- Fiction
Och! musha bedad, man alive, but it's a fine counthry over here, and it
bangs all the jewel of a view we do be havin' from the windys, begorra!
Knockarney House is in a wild, remoted place at the back of beyant, and
faix we're as much alone as Robinson Crusoe on a dissolute island; but
when we do be wishful to go to the town, sure there's ivery convaniency.
There's ayther a bit of a jauntin' car wid a skewbald pony for drivin',
or we can borry the loan of Dinnis Rooney's blind ass wid the plain
cart, or we can just take a fut in a hand and leg it over the bog. Sure
it's no great thing to go do, but only a taste of divarsion like, though
it's three good Irish miles an' powerful hot weather, with niver a dhrop
of wet these manny days. It's a great old spring we're havin' intirely;
it has raison to be proud of itself, begob!
Paddy, the gossoon that drives the car (it's a gossoon we call him,
but faix he stands five fut nine in his stockin's, when he wears
anny)--Paddy, as I'm afther tellin' you, lives in a cabin down below
the knockaun, a thrifle back of the road. There's a nate stack of turf
fornint it, and a pitaty pot sets beside the doore, wid the hins and
chuckens rachin' over into it like aigles tryin' to swally the smell.
Across the way there does be a bit of sthrame that's fairly shtiff wid
troutses in the saison, and a growth of rooshes under the edge lookin'
that smooth and greeny it must be a pleasure intirely to the grand young
pig and the goat that spinds their time by the side of it when out of
doores, which is seldom. Paddy himself is raggetty like, and a sight to
behould wid the daylight shinin' through the ould coat on him; but he's
a dacint spalpeen, and sure we'd be lost widout him. His mother's a
widdy woman with nine moidtherin' childer, not countin' the pig an' the
goat, which has aquil advantages. It's nine she has livin', she says,
and four slapin' in the beds o' glory; and faix I hope thim that's in
glory is quieter than the wans that's here, for the divil is busy wid
thim the whole of the day. Here's wan o' thim now makin' me as onaisy as
an ould hin on a hot griddle, slappin' big sods of turf over the
dike, and ruinatin' the timpers of our poulthry. We've a right to be
lambastin' thim this blessed minute, the crathurs; as sure as eggs is
mate, if they was mine they'd sup sorrow wid a spoon of grief, before
they wint to bed this night!
Mistress Colquhoun, that lives at Ardnagreena on the road to the town,
is an iligant lady intirely, an' she's uncommon frindly, may the peace
of heaven be her sowl's rist! She's rale charitable-like an' liberal
with the whativer, an' as for Himself, sure he's the darlin' fine man!
He taches the dead-and-gone languages in the grand sates of larnin',
and has more eddication and comperhinson than the whole of County Kerry
rowled together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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