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Updated: May 9, 2025
"Not her," said May Girmory, "she has a riding skirt, the way folk has them made in London, and gangs by at a hand-gallop, a different powny every time, and Lord, she doesna spare them!" "That," said Liz McCreath with cold contempt, "is no Princess at all. 'Tis only little Patsy Ferris from Cairn Ferris, and I saw her faither yesterday at the Apothecaries' Hall at the Vennel Head!"
But Miss Liz McCreath, while noting these, let the blanks pass, comfortably sure in her mind that so soon as she got Jo Girmory by himself, she knew a way of making him tell her all about it the same, indeed, as that by which May Girmory had brought Sandy O'Neil to full auricular confession. "But what like is your Princess? Does she wear a goold crown now?" said the Irish girl.
She lowered her voice and spoke in the ear of the Irish girl, the Orangeman's daughter. "Lizzie McCreath," she whispered, "can you keep a secret?" "What else, noo?" said Lizzie, with avidity, "did you ever hear tell where you were with Sandy O'Neil on the night of the Saint John?"
"Well, then," said May, "there is a Princess riding about the country, here and there and away. She has all Stair Garland's band ready, and hundreds more, too aye, thousands if need be, pledged to rescue the lads laid up there. Jo is in it." "Oh," said Liz McCreath, with a curious alteration of tone, "Jo is in it, is he? And he never said a word to me."
"That's nothing," retorted May Girmory, "for where I was on the Beltane eve, there in that very place ye were yourself you and my brither Jo. It is like that ye would keep that secret? But this is different." "I will keep it, 'by the hand and fut of Mary," said Lizzie McCreath, quite forgetting that she was the daughter of the Grand Master of an Orange Lodge.
"Three months he and the ither twa held the sodjers at bay, till they had them clean wearied oot!" May Girmory explained to her bosom friend, Lizzie McCreath, as they promenaded together; "but to my thinkin' there is little that either of the ither two could do. It would be himsel', Lizzie, that did the thinkin' and the fechtin'. He's the head o' a' the Free Bands, ye ken, Lizzie!"
"Her uncle! her uncle!" cried Liz McCreath; "the back o' me hand to all your uncles. How much would you be doing now for all the half-score of uncles that ye have in this parish? Not as much as would fatten a fly. No, nor Elizabeth McCreath either. 'Tis her lad she is fightin' for and well do you know it, May Girmory.
"Then, to my thinkin', it's but little that the 'bands' have done for him, the poor lad and the more shame to them," said Lizzie. "Now, over yonder, in Ulster, if a quiet lad had been as long caged up by them divils of red-coats it's the good dustin' their jackets would be gettin'. 'Tis Elizabeth McCreath and the daughter of a law-abiding Orangeman that will be tellin' ye so!"
Eelen Young, my cousin, that is with Miss Aline at Ladykirk, was telling me all about it, and it appears that up there in London our Miss Patsy could have had the pick of princes and dukes " "Do not be foolish, Liz McCreath," said her comrade, "without doubt it was to save her uncle that was trapped in the Bothy of Blairmore at the same time!"
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