“It's merry we'll be, as whiskey and good stories can make us,” said the piper: “I don't care a bawbee for St. Swithin, while I've a cork, or even a thumb left, to keep him out of my bottle. But I'll not be disrespectful to the Saint, though, any way why should I?--He does me no more harm than my betters; and if I offended him, mightn't he follow me, far and near, and rain on me wherever I went? May be, you never heard how he served the little nation that lived here long ago how should you, that didn't know where you were, and you sitting on Henniker's folly? Why, then, I'll tell you:--Once upon a time--long ago it was, in the days of our forefathers--this place was peopled by Mathawns, and one King Ounshough reigned over them, and he and his subjects were all believers in blarney. Well, who should come to the king one day, but a man that said, if he got the weight of what he could ate during nine days, in gold, and had his own people to wait on him, he'd make all the spiders grow so big, that the ladies might wear their webs by the way of veils; and after that, may be, for more gold, he'd carry his invention to such a pitch, that the insects should weave fishing-nets, strong enough to catch whales themselves,--to say nothing of salmon and smaller fish.--Well, while he was at work, along comes another, who sould them a secret for planting trees in such a way, that they'd grow of themselves into ships: and, says he, 'for a trifle, I'll teach you how to sow hemp and flax, in little pots, on their branches, so that they may shoot up into ready-made sails and rigging; and all by philosophy, without a morsel of magic.'--Wasn't this more than men could wish? The boobies bit at the bait,--high and low; and thinks they to themselves, 'what fine fellows we'll be, to catch whales and conquer the world by philosophy!'--While the trees were growing, and the spiders were spinning, there comes another man, and says he, 'Don't you know me, any of you?'--And some suspected they did; and others was almost sure he was related to them by their mother's side; but nobody owned him. So then, says he, 'I'll tell you who I am: that moon yonder, that lights you, is my property; you've had the use of it for years, but I've been too generous. I'm grown poor, and can't be liberal any longer:--you sha'n't have the light of my moon gratis; so pay five hundred a year, or I'll put it out: and then what'll you do?'--Well, what they'd do, sure enough, they didn't know; but before they'd done debating upon it, up comes a smart little man--a foreigner--who advised them to pay what was asked for the present, and if they'd subscribe for him, he'd get up an opposition moon, that should shine better, and be full all the year round, for half the expense of the ould one. Wasn't that too good an offer to be rejected?--It was; and the Mathawns bit at that too. But this wasn't all:--before the new moon was made, or the trees grown