The night I heard of The Beg's being sould, I was sitting alone here in my cabin, brooding over the bad news, when whose voice should I hear, outside my door, but that of Corney Carolan, the wooden-legged piper and rhymester of Drogheda?--You'll know more of Corney, if you'll just listen to the story I'll tell you, by-and-by, about Luke Sweeney; that is--Fogarty, I should say; for the piper's cousin--that's Luke himself--don't like to be called by his own name, which, to spake the truth, is Sweeney, and nothing else: however, I'll tell you a trifle about the piper now, and especially what happened him the night I sat mumchance here, making myself sick, at what, if I was wiser, may be, I'd know shouldn't concern me. Corney was bound 'prentice to a brogue-maker, in his native place--which is Drogheda; but, as he tells us, he was too much the lad o' wax to stick to his last, and left a good home, to seek his fortune on the wide ocean. But there's many of us have done as bad: so we shouldn't cry out upon Corney, you know;--should we, now?--The sea is the sole and only thing in the world that an English, Irish, Scotch, or Welch boy, ever feels truly and deeply in love with. The lad that's one day or other to have his name mentioned with Nelson and Collingwood,--or to be the hero of the forecastle, if he comes of poor parents,--may be fond of a toy, or a sugar-plum, or his little cousin Kitty, or thousands of things besides, before he tumbles into his teens; but--mark what I say, if you plaze--the sea alone is the darling he doats on; and no man alive ever fell into a more consuming passion for a beautiful young woman, than many a boy has for the fine ould ocean. It's the hereditary love such numbers of us have, when young, for the beautiful billows, that makes us masters of the main. In other countries, as I've heard, neither whips nor words will persuade lads to take to the sea; in these, stone walls themselves will but barely keep them from it: and bad luck to him, I say, that ever, by word or deed, does a ha'p'orth to blight our national fondness for the waters, which keeps our country afloat.--Hurrah! The rhymester of Drogheda has made a song of what happened him at sea;--and a mighty queer song it is, as you'll hear, for I think I can give you a sample. After Corney has noticed all he saw and suffered, for four or five years, aboard a man-o'-war, he says,--or rather sings,-- “We met the French one day, Near what the Nile they call, And axed them would they play A friendly game of ball?-- Isn't it grape they shoot? Away my leg they blew; And the two-pound note to boot, I'd hid inside my shoe.” After that, Corney retired upon a wooden leg and a pension; and, turning his sword into an awl, he transmogrified the corner of an ould stable into a new cobbler's stall. “And you'd think I'd do well,” says he, in his song; “for,” he continues,