The Collegians | Page 3

may still occasionally be
heard by the traveller who passes near its ruined dwellings at evening,
to chaunt a stanza of the chorus which was once in the mouth of every
individual in the kingdom:-
"'Tis there we'll drink the nut-brown ale An pay the reck'nin' on the nail
No man for debt shall go to jail From Garryowen a gloria."
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2
How Eily O'Connor Puzzled All the Inhabitants of Garryowen
BUT WHILE Owen lived, and while his garden flourished, he and his
neighbours were as merry together, as if death could never reach the
one, nor desolation waste the other. Among those frequenters of his
little retreat whom he distinguished with an especial favour and
attention, the foremost was the handsome daughter of an old man who
conducted the business of a rope-walk in his neighbourhood, and who
was accustomed on a fine Saturday evening to sit under the shade of a
yellow osier that stood by his door, and discourse of the politics of the

day-of Lord Halifax's administration-of the promising young patriot Mr.
Henry Grattan-and of the famous Catholic concession of 1773. Owen,
like all Irishmen, even of the humblest rank, was an acute critic in
female proportions, and although time had blown away the thatching
from his head, and by far the greater portion of blood that remained in
his frame had colonized about his nose, yet the manner in which he
held forth on the praises of his old friend's daughter was such as put to
shame her younger and less eloquent admirers. It is true, indeed, that
the origin of the suburban beauty was one which, in a troubled country
like Ireland, had little of agreeable association to recommend it; but
few even of those to whom twisted hemp was an object of secret terror,
could look on the exquisitely beautiful face of Eily O'Connor, and
remember that she was a rope-maker's daughter; few could detect
beneath the timid, hesitating, downcast gentleness of manner, which
shed an interest over all her motions, the traces of a harsh and vulgar
education. It was true that she sometimes purloined a final letter from
the King's adjectives, and prolonged the utterance of a vowel beyond
the term of prosodaical orthodoxy, but the tongue that did so seemed to
move on silver wires, and the lip on which the sound delayed
"long murmuring, loth to part"
imparted to its own accents an association of sweetness and grace, that
made the defect an additional allurement. Her education in the outskirts
of a city had not impaired the natural tenderness of her character; for
her father, who all rude as he was, knew how to value his daughter's
softness of mind, endeavoured to foster it by every indulgence in his
power. Her uncle, too, who was now a country parish priest, was well
qualified to draw forth any natural talent with which she had been
originally endowed. He had completed his theological education in the
famous university of Salamanca, where he was distinguished as a youth
of much quietness of temper and literary application, rather than as one
of those furious gesticulators, those "figures Hibernoises," amongst
whom Gil Blas, in his fit of logical lunacy, could meet his only equals.
At his little lodging, while he was yet a curate at St. John's, Eily
O'Connor was accustomed to spend a considerable portion of her time,
and in return for her kindness in presiding at his simple tea- table,

father Edward undertook to bestow a degree of attention on her
education, which rendered her, in a little time, as superior in knowledge,
as she was in beauty, to her female associates. She was remarked
likewise at this time, as a little devotee, very regular in her attendance
at chapel, constant in all the observances of her religion, and grave in
her attire and discourse. On the coldest and dreariest morning in winter,
she might be seen gliding along by the unopened shop- windows to the
nearest chapel, where she was accustomed to hear an early mass, and
return in time to set every thing in order for her father's breakfast.
During the day she superintended his household affairs, while he was
employed upon the adjacent rope-walk; and, in the evening, she usually
slipped on her bonnet, and went across the street to father Edward's,
where she chatted away until tea was over; if he happened to be
engaged in reading his daily office, she amused herself with a volume
of moral entertainment, such as Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia, or Mr.
Addison's Spectator, until he was at leisure to hear her lessons. An
attachment of the purest and tenderest nature was the consequence of
those mutual attentions between the uncle and niece, and it might be
said that if the former