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God be wid the time when I went to the classical seminary ov Firdramore! when I'd bring my sod o' turf undher my arm, and sit down on my shnug boss o' straw, wid my back to the masther and my shins to the fire, and score my sum in Dives's denominations ov the double rule o' three, or play fox and geese wid purty Jane Cruise that sat next me, as plisantly as the day was long, widout any one so much as saying, "Mikey Hefferman, what's that you're about?" for ever since I was in the one lodge wid poor ould Mat I had my own way in his school as free as ever I had in my mother's shebeen.
Amid this deluge of rain we arrived in Clonmel and stopped at a 'shebeen, kept by the boy's uncle driving into the back yard through a gate in a board fence fifteen feet high, which shut it in from the street.
Bull-baiting for it was common in his youth was luxury to him; and, ere he reached fourteen, every one knew Phelim O'Toole as an adept at card-playing. Wherever a sheep, a leg of mutton, a dozen of bread, or a bottle of whiskey was put up in a shebeen house, to be played for by the country gamblers at the five and ten, or spoil'd five, Phelim always took a hand and was generally successful.
"'God he sees, says my mother-in-law, 'that there's them here this day we didn't desarve this from, to rise such a norration, as if the house was a shebeen or a public-house! It's myself didn't think either me or my poor coolleen here, not to mention the dacent people she's joined to, would be made so little of, as to have our place turned into a play-acthur for a play-acthur couldn't be worse.
Where has it been for near two years? The Habeas Corpus Act suspended, the gaols crowded, the steamers searched, spies listening at shebeen shops for sedition, and the end of it a Fenian panic in England. Oh, before it be too late, before more blood shall stain the pages of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land.
Now that he could go no further because of the sea, he found that he was very tired and the night very cold, and went into a shebeen close to the shore and threw himself down upon a bench. The room was full of Spanish and Irish sailors who had just smuggled a cargo of wine and ale, and were waiting a favourable wind to set out again. A Spaniard offered him a drink in bad Gaelic.
Those who lived by the vices the low indulgences and the ruinous excesses of their fellow-creatures trembled and became aghast at its approach. The vulgar and dishonest publican, who sold a bona fide poison under a false name; the low tavern-keeper; the proprietor of the dram-shop; of the night-house; and the shebeen all were struck with terror and dismay. Their occupation was doomed to go.
In an ordinary case, I would have been beginning to fear that that shack had become a common shebeen, but I knew Jake was not the man to accept money from any of his fellow creatures in exchange for any hospitality it might be in his power to offer.
Pierre Benoist, the survivor of the French brig, arrived at Mother McKay's shebeen in good order, with the borrowed blanket draped over his broad shoulders and the borrowed sealing-gun under his arm. All birds of Pierre's variety of feather seemed to arrive naturally at Mother McKay's, sooner or later.
I remember when my father died that was three months comin' to his grave; begad he'd ha' sold the shebeen above our heads for ten minutes' quittance of purgathory. An' he did all he could. That's why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an' for that reason you'll find so many women go there. An' that same's a conundrum."
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