* The white horses are produced by the extrication of air, which rises in white bubbles to the surface when the potatoes are beginning to boil; so that when the first symptoms of boiling commence, it is a usual phrase to say, the white horses are on the pot—­sometimes the white friars.

“From less to more, they went on squabbling and fighting, until at last you might see Sally one time with a black eye or a cut head, or another time going off with herself, crying, up to Tom Hance’s or some other neighbor’s house, to sit down and give a history of the ruction that he and she had on the head of some trifle or another that wasn’t worth naming.  Their childher were shows, running about without a single stitch upon them, except ould coats that some of the sarvints from the big house would throw them.  In these they’d go sailing about,with the long skirts trailing on the ground behind them; and sometimes Larry would be mane enough to take the coat from the gorsoon, and ware it himself.  As for giving them any schooling, ’twas what they never thought of; but even if they were inclined to it, there was no school in the neighborhood to send them to, for God knows it’s the counthry that was in a neglected state as to schools in those days, as well as now.

“It’s a thrue saying, that as the ould cock crows the young one larns; and this was thrue here, for the childher fought one another like so many divils, and swore like Trojans—­Larry, along with everything else, when he was a Brine-oge, thought it was a manly thing to be a great swearer; and the childher, when they got able to swear, warn’t worse nor their father.  At first, when any of the little souls would thry at an oath, Larry would break his heart laughing at them; and so, from one thing to another, they got quite hardened in it, without being any way checked in wickedness.  Things at last drew on to a bad state, entirely.  Larry and Sally were now as ragged as Dives and Lazarus, and their childher the same.  It was no strange sight, in summer, to see the young ones marching about the street as bare as my hand, with scarce a blessed stitch upon them that ever was seen, they dirt and ashes to the eyes, waddling after their uncle Tom’s geese and ducks, through the green sink of rotten water that lay before their own door, just beside the dunghill:  or the bigger ones running after the Squire’s laborers, when bringing home the corn or the hay, wanting to get a ride as they went back with the empty cars.

“Larry and Sally would never be let into the Squire’s kitchen now to eat or drink, or spend an evening with the sarvints; he might go out and in to his meal’s mate along with the rest of the laborers, but there was no grah (* goodwill) for him.  Sally would go down with her jug to get some buttermilk, and have to stand among a set of beggars and cotters, she as ragged and as poor as any of them, for she wouldn’t be let into the kitchen till her turn came, no more nor another, for the sarvints would turn up their noses with the greatest disdain possible at them both.