Then I got the Irish book out of my chest, and I gave it into his
hand.
'Read that to me,' said I, 'if you know Greek.'
He took it, and he looked at it this way, and that way, and not a
bit of him could make it out.
'Bedad, I've forgotten my Greek,' said he.
'You're telling a lie,' said I. 'I'm not,' said he; 'it's the divil
a bit I can read it.'
Then I took the book back into my hand, and said to him - 'It's the
sorra a word of Greek you ever knew in your life, for there's not a
word of Greek in that book, and not a bit of you knew.'
He told me another story of the only time he had heard Irish spoken
during his voyages: -
One night I was in New York, walking in the streets with some other
men, and we came upon two women quarrelling in Irish at the door of
a public-house.
'What's that jargon?' said one of the men.
'It's no jargon,' said I.
'What is it?' said he.
'It's Irish,' said I.
Then I went up to them, and you know, sir, there is no language like
the Irish for soothing and quieting. The moment I spoke to them they
stopped scratching and swearing and stood there as quiet as two
lambs.
Then they asked me in Irish if I wouldn't come in and have a drink,
and I said I couldn't leave my mates.
'Bring them too,' said they.
Then we all had a drop together.
While we were talking another man had slipped in and sat down in the
corner with his pipe, and the rain had become so heavy we could
hardly hear our voices over the noise on the iron roof.
The old man went on telling of his experiences at sea and the places
he had been to.
'If I had my life to live over again,' he said, 'there's no other
way I'd spend it. I went in and out everywhere and saw everything. I
was never afraid to take my glass, though I was never drunk in my
life, and I was a great player of cards though I never played for
money'
'There's no diversion at all in cards if you don't play for money'
said the man in the corner.
'There was no use in my playing for money' said the old man, 'for
I'd always lose, and what's the use in playing if you always lose?'
Then our conversation branched off to the Irish language and the
books written in it.
He began to criticise Archbishop MacHale's version of Moore's Irish
Melodies with great severity and acuteness, citing whole poems both
in the English and Irish, and then giving versions that he had made
himself.
'A translation is no translation,' he said, 'unless it will give you
the music of a poem along with the words of it.
