“Judy – Judy Kelly – Judy! – will ye give us no breakfast to-day – and the sun splitting the trees these two hours? – and the pig itself – the cratur – skreetching alive wid the hunger?”

“Och, it's true for ye, Mick, honey! – true for ye – and the pratees are almost done – and yon's Ellen. She carries the pitcher so lightly, that it's little milk she's got from the big house, this fine harvest morning.”

And Mistress Kelly “hourisht” the pig out of the cabin – placed three noggins on an old table that she pulled from a dark corner (there was but one window in the room, and that was stuffed with the Piper's coat, in lieu of glass), wiped the aforesaid table with the corner of her “praskeen,” and, from another corner, lifted the kish, that served to wash, strain, and “dish” the potatoes, feed the pig, or rock the child, as occasion might require.

Judy Kelly was certainly one of the worst specimens of an Irish woman I had ever the duty of inspecting. She never washed her face except on Sundays; and then it always gave her so bad a cold in her head – on account (to use her own words) “of the tinderness of her skin” – that she was obliged to cure it with liberal draughts of whisky – the effects of which rendered Judy (at other times a peaceable woman) the veriest scold in Bannow. Poor Kelly always anticipated this storm, and on Sunday evenings mounted his miserable donkey – miscalled Dumpling (a name, however, which might have been appropriate before he took service with his present master), and, with pipes under arm, posted to St. Patrick – the most respectable “sheebeen shop” on the moor – and finished the night, sometimes with a comfortable nap by the road-side, or on a sand-bank.