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Where now, we sadly ask, is the Ireland of Tom Moore, Father Prout, Lover and Lever? Not enough left of it to furnish a new drama for Mr. Boucicault. Donnybrook Fair has given place to midnight conspirations. Fox-hunts to the stalking of landlords all the jolly old customs extinct, except the "wake." Peasant-life, over there, sometimes seems, at the best, one protracted "wake."
It required but a short time, when he reached his hand to the lad, and shook it for the third or fourth time, smiling at the same time in his old jolly way, as he rose rather unsteadily upon his pins. "I'll have to wait a while till the kink gets out of me legs, before I give ye the Donnybrook jig, but I make the engagement wid ye, and the thing is down for performance, do ye mind that?
Not one of the Legionaries had uniforms completely whole. Hardly half of them still kept their slippers. Torn, barefooted, burned, bleeding, decimated, they still laughed. Wild gibes penetrated the door of the treasure-crypt, against which the mad attack was already beginning to clash and thunder. "Faith, but this is a grand fight!" the major exulted. "It's Donnybrook with trimmings!"
"Make your mind quite easy, Grady," said Sergeant Barton, who was riding near. "The Arabs won't baulk you, if you want something to remind you of Donnybrook." "It isn't for myself, Mr Sergeant, sir, that I care. I am a peaceable man, and would sooner get what I want quietly.
A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the medal.
And lower and lower sunk the head of the old chieftainess, till her long white locks mingled with the dark curls of the young lord; then her voice ceased altogether, and her forehead lay heavy and cold against his, and he knew that Grace O'Malley was dead. Donnybrook A mile or two south of Dublin is Donnybrook, the place where a famous annual fair is held.
This happy change has been effected partly by the Temperance reform, and partly by the establishment of a strong and active government police. Now for a short story of Donnybrook Fair. Away toward the hills of Wicklow, some five or six miles from Dublin, there lived, not many years ago, a humble peasant family, by the name of O'Shaughnessy.
I wouldn't give a day at Donnybrook wid a shillelah for all the sieges of Sebastopool as ever I heard tell of. Well, suddintly, bang goes a round shot slap through the hull of the Agamemnon, below the water-line! Here was a pretty to do! The ordinary coorse in this case would have bin to haul out of action, go right away to Malta, an' have the ship docked and repaired there. But what does they do?
If it's anything like the Old League, there's going to be a sort of Donnybrook before it's done with. I wonder who's running it this time." "We should like to know that. If you find out, you might tell us." "I will." "And don't tell anybody else," said Trevor. "This business has got to be kept quiet. Keep it dark about my study having been ragged." "I won't tell a soul." "Not even Moriarty."
The sound of guitars and the drone of peasant songs come up the hill, and groups of men are leaping in the wild barbaric dances of Iberia. The scene is of another day and time. The Celt is here, lord of the land. You can see these same faces at Donnybrook Fair.
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