La Coruña, Battle of, La Coruña, Spain, 1809 -- Juvenile fiction; Moore, John, Sir 1761-1809 -- Juvenile fiction
"We will go into the village and see if we can find a suitable place for
taking our meals. It may be that in time our fellows will learn how to
cook for us, but, by jabers! we will live dacent as long as we can. My
servant, Tim Hoolan, has gone on ahead to look for such a place, and he is
the boy to find one if there is one anyhow to be got. As our companies are
number 1 and 2, it is reasonable that we should stick together, and though
O'Driscol's a quare stick, with all sorts of ridiculous notions, he is a
good fellow at heart, and I will put up with him for the sake of having
you with me."
As they entered the village the servant came up. "I have managed it,
Captain; we have got hold of the best quarters in the village; it is a
room over the only shebeen here. The ould scoundrel of a landlord wanted
to keep it as a general room, but I brought the Church to bear on him, and
I managed it finally."
"How did you work it, Tim?"
"Sure, your honour, I went to the praste, and by good luck his house is in
front of the church. I went into the church, and I crossed myself before
the altar and said a prayer or two. As I did so who should come out of the
vestry but the father himself. He waited until I had done and then came up
to me, and to my surprise said in good Irish:
"'So it's a Catholic you are, my man?'
"'That am I, your riverence,' said I, 'and most all of the rigiment are;
sure, we were raised in the ould country, and belong, most of us, to
County Mayo, and glad we were to come out here to fight for those of the
true religion against these Frenchmen, who they say have no religion at
all, at all. And how is it you spake the language, your riverence, if I
may be so bold as to ask?'"
"Then he told me that he had been at college at Lisbon, where the sons of
many Catholic Irish gentlemen were sent to be educated, and that he had
learned it from them.
"'And how is it that you are not with your regiment, my man?'
"'I am here to hire rooms for the officers, your riverence, just a place
where they can ate a dacent meal in peace and quietness. I have been to
the inn, but I cannot for the life of me make the landlord understand. He
has got a room that would be just suitable, so I thought I would come to
your riverence to explain to you that the rigiment are not heretics, but
true sons of the Church. I thought that, being a learned man, I might make
shift to make you understand, and that you would maybe go wid me and
explain the matter to him.'
"'That will I,' says he; and he wint and jabbered away with the innkeeper,
and at last turned to me and said: 'He will let you have a room, seeing
that it is for the service of good Catholics and not heretics.'"
"But, you rascal, you know that we are not Catholics."
"Sure, your honour, didn't I say that most all the rigiment were
Catholics; I did not say all of them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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