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Immediately the old mauma at the end of the front bench "sets de tchune," a sad, quavering minor, and pitched so high that any attempt to follow it seems utterly hopeless. But no: the women all strike in on the same soaring key, while the men, by a skillful management of the falsetto, keep up with the screamiest flights.
"By an' by they hears um a-comin . . . a-hollerin' an' laughin' tu umsilf, an' roarin' an' singin' 'Th' Jug av Potheen. Full av ut, tu, by token av th' voice av um. Tim makes all ready wid th' blundherbuss. All av a suddint tho', th' tchune shtops, an' tho' they waits for um for quite a toime, he niver shows up. By an' by they gets fed up wid lyin' belly-down in th' soakin' rain.
Now, you may b'lave me or b'lave me not, but me own ould father God rest his sowl! was comin' over Croagh Patrick one night before Christmas with a bottle of whisky in one hand of him, and a goose, plucked an' claned an' all, in the other, which same he'd won in a lottery, when, hearin' a tchune no louder than the buzzin' of a bee, over a furze-bush he peeps, and there, round a big white stone, the Good People were dancing in a ring hand in hand, an' kickin' their heels, an' the eyes of them glowin' like the eyes of moths; and a chap on the stone, no bigger than the joint of your thumb, playin' to thim on a bagpipes.
I was in the height of the air, when the door opened, and Barney thrust his high-cheeked-bone face into the room, his mouth as wide open as that of a frozen porker. "Where the divil did ye come from?" demanded the new footman, with the muscles of that vast aperture of his working from grin to grim, and grim to grin again. "Yee's wilcome to the tchune; but how comes ye here?"
"I coomes vrom Halle, in Preussen. Vat isht your vaterland?" "Be yees a Jew?" "Nein I isht a goot Christian. Vilt you haf Yankee Tootle?" "Yankee T'under! Ye'll wake up the masther, and he'll be displais'd, else ye might work upon t'at tchune till the end of time. That I should hear it here, in my own liberary, and ould Ireland t'ree thousand laigues away!"
"Beat ut, he did, over hedge an' bog an' ditch, wid all our money, th' dhirrty dog. But I cud run tu, in thim days, an' whin I caught up I shure did play a tchune on th' nob av um!" concluded the sergeant thoughtfully. In pursuance of his daily round of the wards, Dr. Sampson presently came swinging in amongst them and saluted the party with his usual breezy bonhomie. A universal favourite with the members of the Force his entry was acclaimed with delight. They promptly bade him sit down and contribute
An' there they finds um head-first shtuck in th' bog just th' tu feet av um shtickin' out an' which boots Tim sez he can swear tu. 'Begorrah! sez me father, 'that accounts for th' tchune shtoppin' so suddint! Let us luk for th' jug? Well, they hunts around for th' jug awhile, but all they finds is his ould caubeen.
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