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Updated: June 23, 2025
Of the casualities that happened in this year, I should not forget to put down, as a thing for remembrance, that an aged woman, one Nanse Birrel, a distillator of herbs, and well skilled in the healing of sores, who had a great repute among the quarriers and colliers she having gone to the physic well in the sandy hills to draw water, was found, with her feet uppermost in the well, by some of the bairns of Mr Lorimore's school; and there was a great debate whether Nanse had fallen in by accident head foremost, or, in a temptation, thrown herself in that position, with her feet sticking up to the evil one; for Nanse was a curious discontented blear-eyed woman, and it was only with great ado that I could get the people keepit from calling her a witchwife.
Here the crone stopped, peered in, and with caution gave one of the panes a gentle tap. This was responded to by one much louder from within, and almost immediately the door was softly opened. From thence issued another female figure, evidently that of Nanse M'Collum, her niece.
"Is it by Ellen's ordhers you take it, Nanse?" "To be sure who else's? but the divil a one o' me knows what she means by it, any how only that I daren't go back widout it." "Take it, Nanse; she knows I wouldn't refuse her my heart's blood, let alone a bit of a kippeen." "A bit of a kippeen! Faix, this is a quare kippeen! Why, it would fell a bullock."
"Then," says he, "the darkness of the latter days came over my spirit like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years to come but beggary and starvation, myself a fallen-back old man. with an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald brow, hirpling over a staff, requeeshting an awmous: Nanse a broken-hearted beggar-wife, torn down to tatters, and weeping like Eachel when she thought on better days; and poor wee Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on his back."
Nanse, you are right in one sinse, and the cook's right in another; you're both right, but at the present spakin' you're both wrong. Listen you all know the Shan-dhinne-dhuv?" "Know him! The Lord stand between us and him," replied Nanse; "I hope in God we'll never either know or see him." "You know," proceeded Barney, "that he keeps' the haunted house, and appears in the neighborhood of it?"
We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer's advocatt, a preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman's gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, "Tak' your ain way, gudeman."
"Please your worship," said the young man, "you hear the woman say that she brings no charge against me; but I can prove on oath, that Nell M'Collum and her niece, Nanse M'Collum, along with two men that I don't know, except that one was called Rody, met at Franklin's gate, with an intention of robing, an' it's my firm belief, of murdering this woman."
The two ruffians, finding that there was no chance of succeeding, fled across the fields; and our humble hero, on looking for Nanse and her aunt, discovered that they also had disappeared. It is unnecessary to detail the strong terms in which the strangers expressed their gratitude to Lamh Laudher.
"It is, Barney, achora," replied Nanse; "but there's something wrong wid you." "I wish to goodness, Nanse, you'd let the boy alone," said the cook; "when he chooses to spake, he'll spake to them that can undherstand him." "O, jaminy stars! that's you, I suppose; ha, ha, ha." "Keep silence," said Barney, "and listen.
The droll varlet had an appetite like a shark, and a strong relish for drink besides, and what between precious tidbits from the cook and borrowing small sums for liquor from Nanse, he contrived to play them off one against the other with great tact. "I think," said he, his eyes still closed, "that that is Nanse's voice; is it, acushla?"
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