"Carolan that could play the fiddle and the harp used to be going about
with Cahil-a-Corba, that was a tambourine man. But they got tired of one
another and parted, and Carolan went to the house of the King of Mayo,
and he stopped there, and the King asked him to stop for his lifetime.
There came a grand visitor one time, and when he heard Carolan singing
and playing and his fine pleasant talk, he asked him to go with him on a
visit to Dublin. So Carolan went, and he promised the King of Mayo he
would come back at the end of a month. But when he was at the
gentleman's house he liked it so well that he stopped a year with him,
and it wasn't till the Christmas he came back to Mayo. And when he got
there the doors were shut, and the King was at his dinner, and Queen
Mary and the three daughters, and he could see them through the windows.
But when the King saw him he said he would not let him in. He was vexed
with him and angry he had broken his promise and his oath. So Carolan
began to give out a song he had made about the King of Mayo and all his
family, and he brought Queen Mary into it and the three daughters. Then
the Queen asked leave of the King to bring him in, because he made so
good a song, but the King would not give in to it. Then Carolan began to
draw down the King of Mayo's father and his grandfather into the song.
And Queen Mary asked again for forgiveness for him, and the King gave
it that time because of the song that had in it the old times, and the
old generations went through him. But as to Cahil-a-Corba, he went to
another gentleman's house and he stopped too long in it and was driven
out. But he came back, having changed his form, that the gentleman did
not know him, and he let him in again, and then he was forgiven."
'NINETY-EIGHT
"In the year '98 there were the Yeomanry that were the worst of all. The
time Father Murphy was killed there was one of them greased his boots in
his heart. There was one of them was called Micky the Devil in Irish; he
never went out without the pitchcap and the triangle, and any rebel he
would meet he would put gunpowder in his hair and set a light to it. The
North Cork Militia were the worst; there are places in Ireland where you
would not get a drink of water if they knew you came from Cork. And it
was the very same, the North Cork, that went of their own free will to
the Boer war, volunteered, asked to go that is. They had the same sting
in them always. A great many of them were left dead in that war, and a
great many better men than themselves. There was one battle in that war
there was no quarter given, the same as Aughrim; and the English would
kill the wounded that would be left upon the field of battle. There is
no Christianity in war."