New Irish Comedies | Page 2

scholar she laid Dermot down to be. A good doing

fellow for himself. A man would be well able to go up to his promise.
_Darby:_ That is the same account used to be given out of Timothy.
_Taig:_ To some trade of merchandise it is likely Dermot was reared. A
good living man that was never any cost on his mother.
_Darby:_ To own an estate before he would go far in age Timothy was
on the road.
_Taig:_ To have the handling of silks and jewelleries and to be free of
them, and of suits and the making of suits, that is the way with the big
merchants of the world.
_Darby:_ It is letting out his land to grass farmers a man owning acres
does be making his profit.
_Taig:_ A queer thing you to be the way you are, and he to be an
upstanding gentleman.
_Darby:_ It is the way I went down; my mother used to be faulting me
and I not being the equal of him. Tormenting and picking at me and
shouting me on the road. "You thraneen," she'd say, "you little trifle of
a son! You stumbling over the threshold as if in slumber, and Timothy
being as swift as a bee!"
_Taig:_ So my own mother used to be going on at myself, and be
letting out shrieks and screeches. "What now would your cousin
Dermot be saying?" every time there would come a new rent in my
rags.
_Darby:_ "Little he'd think of you," she'd say; "you without body and
puny, not fit to lift scraws from off the field, and Timothy bringing in
profit to his mother's hand, and earning prizes and rewards."
_Taig:_ The time it would fail me to follow my book or to say off my
A, B, ab, to draw Dermot down on me she would. "Before he was up to
your age," she would lay down, "he was fitted to say off Catechisms
and to read newses. You have no more intellect beside him," she'd say,
"than a chicken has its head yet in the shell."
_Darby:_ "Let you hold up the same as Timothy," she'd give out, and I
to stoop my shoulders the time the sun would prey upon my head. "He
that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on the brink of the bog."
_Taig:_ "It is you will be fit but to blow the bellows," my mother
would say, "the time Dermot will be forging gold." I let on the book to
have gone astray on me at the last. Why would I go crush and bruise
myself under a weight of learning, and there being one in the family

well able to take my cost and my support whatever way it might go?
Dermot that would feel my keep no more than the lake would feel the
weight of the duck.
_Darby:_ I seen no use to be going sweating after farmers, striving to
plough or to scatter seed, when I never could come anear Timothy in
any sort of a way, and he, by what she was saying, able to thrash out a
rick of oats in the day. So it fell out I was thrown on the ways of the
world, having no skill in any trade, till there came a demand for me
going aloft in chimneys, I being as thin as a needle and shrunken with
weakness and want of food.
_Taig:_ I got my living for a while by miracle and trafficking in rabbit
skins, till a sweep from Limerick bound me to himself one time I was
skinned with the winter. Great cruelty he gave me till I ran from him
with the brush and the bag, and went foraging around for myself.
_Darby:_ So am I going around by myself. I never had a comrade lad.
_Taig:_ My mother that would hit me a crack if I made free with any of
the chaps of the village, saying that would not serve me with Dermot,
that had a good top-coat and was brought up to manners and behaviour.
_Darby:_ My own mother that drew down Timothy on me the time
she'd catch me going with the lads that had their pleasure out of the
world, slashing tops and pebbles, throwing and going on with games.
_Taig:_ I took my own way after, fitting myself for sports and funning,
against the time the rich man would stretch out his hand. Going with
wild lads and poachers I was, till they left me carrying their snares in
under my coat, that I was lodged for three months in the gaol.
_Darby:_ The neighbours had it against me after, I not being friendly
when we were small. The most time I am