Even in the most tragic moments of our history, a certain sense of humour has never deserted us Irish. It has helped, perhaps, to keep us sane in the midst of our woes; and it has certainly saved us from the deplorable sentimentality, which we find so trying in our Teutonic neighbours (including the Anglo-Saxon) and the emphatic bombast which tinges with insincerity our Latin cousins. We may be sure there was many a ludicrous incident in ’98, as in ’16—and the men and women of ’98 had the same faculty as their descendants of to-day of seeing the humour of the situation. Some of the jokes of ’98 are current to-day—and since laughter is as characteristic of life as weeping, I will end my book with one of them. It comes from the village of Ballyclare, and was first told in print in the _Shan Van Vocht_. On the morning of the fight in Antrim the wife of Billy Morrison rose early and spread the table with the best in the house for her man’s breakfast. There were fine home-cured bacon, and eggs, and tea, and potato cake and oaten bread. When Billy had done justice to these good things, and had his wife’s assurance that his pockets were full of more of them, for the day’s provisions, he grasped his pike, and rose to go. Then did his _guid wife_, “in lieu of sentimental, or patriotic, or pious admonition,” thus address him in valediction: “Ye hae got as guid a brekfust as ony mon in Ballyclare; sae kill naebody till they kill you, and then doe for yerself, Billy Morrison.” One fancies that Billy Morrison gave a good account of himself that day in Antrim town, and did credit, with his strong pike arm, to his wife’s good feeding. And so it has not seemed unfitting to evoke, from the past, her homely sturdy form, and set her even by the side of the tragic figure of Willie Neilson’s widowed mother. For from the sturdiness of the one, no less than from the heroism of the other, proceeds the unconquerable spirit of Ireland. Finis. _Printed by_ M. H. GILL & SON, LTD., _Dublin_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that: was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); was in bold by is enclosed by “equal” signs (=bold=).