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"Matthew Collins was a well-to-do farmer of the neighboring parish of Errigle-Keeran, and had a snug cottage and barn, with a good team of plough-horses, a cow, two goats, and a pig, beside poulthry enough to keep him in egg-milk, and even an occasional fowl or two on a birthday, or holy feast. He married Katty Bane, one of the prettiest girls and greatest coquettes in the whole parish.

'But he wint out the wrong door, bein' a thrifle hearty in himself, an' not rightly knowin' whether he was standin' on his head or his heels, or both iv them at the same time, an' in place iv gettin' into bed, where did he thrun himself but into the poulthry hamper, that the boys had settled out ready for the gandher in the mornin'. An' sure enough he sunk down soft an' complate through the hay to the bottom; an' wid the turnin' and roulin' about in the night, the divil a bit iv him but was covered up as shnug as a lumper in a pittaty furrow before mornin'.

Well, Tim Donovan could not settle to sleep at all at all, an' so he kep' discoorsin' the wife about the new cows he bought, an' the stripphers he sould, an' so an for better than an hour, ontil from one thing to another he kem to talk about the pigs, an' the poulthry; and at last, having nothing betther to discoorse about, he begun at his daughter Molly, an' all the heartscald she was to him be raison iv refusin' the men.

But divil a notice the gandher tuck, no more nor if they wor spaking iv the Lord-Liftinant; an' Terence desired the boys to get ready the kish for the poulthry, an' to "settle it out wid hay soft an' shnug," says he, "for it's the last jauntin' the poor ould gandher 'ill get in this world," says he.

It's nine she has livin', she says, and four slapin' in the beds o' glory; and faix I hope thim that's in glory is quieter than the wans that's here, for the divil is busy wid thim the whole of the day. Here's wan o' thim now makin' me as onaisy as an ould hin on a hot griddle, slappin' big sods of turf over the dike, and ruinatin' the timpers of our poulthry.