So The
People, After Breaking My Furniture And Ill-Trating Two Or Three
Dumb Beasts, Which Happened Not To Have Been Made Away With, Went
Away, And In The Dead Of Night I Returned To The House, Where I
Found My Son, Who Had Just Crawled Home Covered Wit Bruises.
We
hadn't, however, a home long, for the agents of the landlord came
to seize for rent, took all they could find, and turned us out upon
the wide world.
Myself and son wandered together for an hour or
two, then, having a quarrel with each other, we parted, he going
one way and I another. Some little time after I heard that he was
transported. As for myself, I thought I might as well take a leaf
out of the woman's book who had been the ruin of me. So I went
about bidding people give me alms for the glory of God, and
threatening those who gave me nothing that the mass should never
comfort them. It's a dreadful curse that, honey; and I would
advise people to avoid it even though they give away all they have.
If you have no comfort in the mass, you will have comfort in
nothing else. Look at me: I have no comfort in the mass, for as
soon as the priest's bell rings, I shouts and hoorahs, and performs
tumblings before the blessed corpus, getting myself kicked out of
chapel, and as little comfort as I have in the mass have I in other
things, which should be a comfort to me. I have two sons who ought
to be the greatest comfort to me, but are they so? We'll see - one
is transported, and of course is no comfort to me at all. The
other is a sodger. Is he a comfort to me? Not a bit. A month ago
when I was travelling through the black north, tumbling and
toppling about, and threatening people with my prayer, unless they
gave me alms, a woman, who knew me, told me that he was with his
regiment at Cardiff, here in Wales, whereupon I determined to go
and see him, and crossing the water got into England, from whence I
walked to Cardiff asking alms of the English in the common English
way, and of the Irish, and ye are the first Irish I have met, in
the way in which I asked them of you. But when I got to Cardiff
did I see my son? I did not, for the day before he had sailed with
his regiment to a place ten thousand miles away, so I shall never
see his face again nor derive comfort from him. Oh, if there's no
comfort from the mass there's no comfort from anything else, and he
who has the evil prayer in the Shanna Gailey breathed upon him,
will have no comfort from the mass. Now, honey, ye have heard the
story of Johanna Colgan, the bedivilled woman. Give her now a
dacent alms and let her go!"
"Would you consider sixpence a decent alms?"
"I would.
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