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At last, wearied with being twitted by him with not being able to learn his thaives' Greek, I proposed that I should teach him Irish, that we should spake it together when we had anything to say in secret. To that he consented willingly; but, och! a purty hand he made with Irish, 'faith, not much better than I did with his thaives' Hebrew.
Going nearly up to him, I stood still, whereupon he looked up, and perceiving I was looking steadfastly at him, he said, in an angry tone, "Arrah! what for are you staring at me so? By my shoul, I think you are one of the thaives who are after robbing me. I think I saw you among them, and if I were only sure of it, I would take the liberty of trying to give you a big bating."
So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in many other fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or rather my master, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and an unkind one, for do all I could I could never give him pleasure; and he was continually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting me because I could not learn his thaives' Latin, and discourse with him in it, and comparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a pal of his, whom he said he had parted with in the fair, and of whom he was fond of saying all kinds of wonderful things, amongst others, that he knew the grammar of all tongues.
But a purty thing for you and the world to stickle at the Pope's playing at cards at a religious house of Irish; och! if I were to tell you and the world, what the Pope has been sometimes at, at the religious house of English thaives, I would excuse you and the world for turning up your eyes. However, I wish to say nothing against the Pope.
There is a proverb about it, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of the Moors, which holds good to the present day it is, that in Torre Lodones there are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning that all the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is not reckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the greatest thaif of the lot.
Peter's Church by the servant of an English family, which those thaives of the English religious house had been endeavouring to bring over to the Catholic faith, and who didn't approve of their being converted.
The sight of the cards made me stop, and then, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish to play, so not being able to speak their language, I made signs to them to let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so I sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in a little time had won plenty of their money, but I had better never have done any such thing, for suddenly the priest and all his parishioners set upon me and bate me, and took from me all I had, and cast me out of the village more dead than alive.
Och! his Holiness did us all sore injustice to call us English, and to confound our house with the other; for however dirty our house might be, our house was a clane house compared with the English house, and we honest people compared with those English thaives.
I say, Murtagh, the Irish owe much to the Danes " "Devil a bit, Shorsha, do they owe to the thaives, except many a bloody bating and plundering, which they never paid them back. Och, Shorsha! you, edicated in ould Ireland, to say that the Irish owes anything good to the plundering villains the Siol Loughlin."
"Then why did you bother me to tell it at first, Shorsha? Och, it was doing my ownself good, and making me forget my own sorrowful state, when ye interrupted me with your thaives of Danes!
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