But what is far worse, they do that which
the wildest calleen t'other side of Ougteraarde would be burnt
rather than do. Who can tell ye more on that point than I, yere
hanner? I have been at their chapels at nights, and have listened
to their screaming prayers, and have seen what's been going on
outside the chapels after their services, as they call them, were
over - I never saw the like going on outside Father Toban's chapel,
yere hanner! Yere hanner's hanner asked me if I ever did anything
in the way of striopachas - now I tell ye that I was never asked to
do anything in that line but by one of them folks - a great man
amongst them he was, both in the way of business and prayer, for he
was a commercial traveller during six days of the week and a
preacher on the seventh - and such a preacher. Well, one Sunday
night after he had preached a sermon an hour-and-a-half long, which
had put half a dozen women into what they call static fits, he
overtook me in a dark street and wanted me to do striopachas with
him - he didn't say striopachas, yer hanner, for he had no Irish -
but he said something in English which was the same thing."
"And what did you do?"
"Why, I asked him what he meant by making fun of a poor ugly girl -
for no one knows better than myself, yere hanner, that I am very
ugly - whereupon he told me that he was not making fun of me, for
it had long been the chief wish of his heart to commit striopachas
with a wild Irish Papist, and that he believed if he searched the
world he should find none wilder than myself."
"And what did you reply?"
"Why, I said to him, yere hanner, that I would tell the
congregation, at which he laughed and said that he wished I would,
for that the congregation would say they didn't believe me, though
at heart they would, and would like him all the better for it."
"Well, and what did you say then?"
"Nothing, at all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home
and told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and
began to sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have
gone and stuck the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged
him not on her knees.
