The Ned M'Keown Stories: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume ThreeCarleton, William
General
The Ned M'Keown Stories: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of; William Carleton, Volume Three
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
“'Tis you that may say that, Mr. Morrow,” replied Shane: “but the house,
you see, wasn't able to hould one-half of us; so there was a dozen or
two tables borrowed from the neighbors and laid one after another in two
rows, on the green, beside the river that ran along the garden-hedge,
side by side. At one end Father Corrigan sat, with Mary and myself, and
Father James at the other. There were three five-gallon kegs of whiskey,
and I ordered my brother to take charge of them; and there he sat beside
them, and filled the bottles as they were wanted--bekase, if he had left
that job to strangers, many a spalpeen there would make away with lots
of it. Mavrone, such a sight as the dinner was! I didn't lay my eye on
the fellow of it since, sure enough, and I'm now an ould man, though
I was then a young one. Why there was a pudding boiled in the end of a
sack; and troth it was a thumper, only for the straws--for you see, when
they were making it, they had to draw long straws acrass in order to
keep, it from falling asunder--a fine plan it is, too. Jack M'Kenna, the
carpenther, carved it with a hand-saw, and if he didn't curse the same
straws, I'm not here. 'Draw them out, Jack,' said Father Corrigan--'draw
them out.--It's asy known, Jack, you never ate a polite dinner, you poor
awkward spalpeen, or you'd have pulled out the straws the first thing
you did, man alive.'
“Such lashins of corned beef, and rounds of beef, and legs of mutton,
and bacon--turkeys and geese, and barn-door fowls, young and fat. They
may talk as they will, but commend me to a piece of good ould bacon,
ate with crock butther, and phaties, and cabbage. Sure enough, they
leathered away at everything, but this and the pudding were the
favorites. Father Corrigan gave up the carving in less than no time, for
it would take him half a day to sarve them all, and he wanted to provide
for number one. After helping himself, he set my uncle to it, and maybe
he didn't slash away right and left. There was half a dozen gorsoons
carrying about the beer in cans, with froth upon it like barm--but that
was beer in airnest, Nancy--I'll say no more.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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