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
“'Come here, Dick,' says Tom; 'God help you, my poor bouchal (*
boy)--Come here, and walk alongside of me, for you can't go back to your
mother, till I see her first--God help you, my poor bouchal, it's you
that's to be pitied, this blessed and sorrowful day;' and the poor
fellow could by no means keep in the tears. But he was saved the trouble
of breaking the dismal tidings to poor Sally; for as she stood watching
the crowd, she saw a door carried upon their shoulders, with something
like a man stretched upon it. She turned in, feeling as if a bullet had
gone through her head, and sat down with her back to the door, for fraid
she might see the thruth, for she couldn't be quite sure, they we're at
such a distance. At last she ventured to take another look out, for she
couldn't bear what she felt within her, and just as she rose and came
to the door, the first thing she saw coming down the hill a little above
the house, was the body of her husband stretched on a door--dead. At
that minute, her brother-in-law, Tom, just entered, in time to prevent
her and the child she had in her arms from falling on the flure. She
had seen enough, God help her!--for she took labor that instant, and, in
about two hours, afterwards, was stretched a corpse beside her husband,
with her heart-broken and desolate orphans in an uproar of outher misery
about them. That was the end of Larry M'Farland and Sally Lowry;
two that might have done well in the world, had they taken care of
themselves--avoided, fairs and markets--except when they had business
there--not given themselves idle fashions by drinking, or going to
dances, and wrought as well for themselves as they did for others.”
“But how did he lose his life, at all at all?” inquired Nancy.
“Why, they found his hat in a bog-hole upon the water, and on searching
the hole itself poor Larry was fished up from the bottom of it.”
“Well, that's a murdhering sorrowful story,” said Shane Fadh: “but you
won't be after passing that on us for the wake, ainy how.”
“Well, you must learn patience, Shane,” said the narrator, “for you know
patience is a virtue.”
“I'll warrant you that Tom and his wife made a better hand of
themselves,” said Alick M'Kinley, “than Larry and Sally did.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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