“After this comes the Weds or Forfeits, or what they call putting round the button.  Every one gives in a forfeit—­the boys a neck-handkerchief or a pen-knife, and the girls a pocket-handkerchief or something that way.  The forfeit is held over them, and each of them stoops in tarn.  They are, then, compelled to command the person that owns that forfeit to sing a song—­to kiss such and such a girl—­or to carry some ould man, with his legs about their neck, three times round the house, and this last is always great fun.  Or, maybe, a young, upsetting fellow, will be sent to kiss some toothless, slavering, ould woman, just to punish him; or if a young woman is any way saucy, she’ll have to kiss some ould, withered fellow, his tongue hanging with age half way down his chin, and the tobacco water trickling from each comer of his mouth.

“By jingo, many a time, when the friends of the corpse would be breaking their very hearts with grief and affliction, I have seen them obligated to laugh out, in spite of themselves, at the drollery of the priest, with, his ould black coat and wig upon him; and when the laughing fit would be over, to see them rocking themselves again with the sorrow—­so sad.  The best man for managing such sports in this neighborhood, for many a year, was Roger M’Cann, that lives up as you go to the mountains.  You wouldn’t begrudge to go ten miles the cowldest winter night that ever blew, to see and hear Roger.

“There’s another play that they call the Priest of the Parish, which, is remarkably pleasant.  One of the boys gets a wig upon himself as before—­goes out on the flure, places the boys in a row, calls one his man Jack and says to each ‘What will you be?’ One answers ’I’ll be black cap;’ another—­red cap;’ and so on.  He then says, ’The priest of the parish has lost his considhering cap some says this, and some says that, but I say my man Jack!’ Man Jack, then, to put it off himself, says, Is it me, sir?’ ‘Yes, sir!’ ‘You lie, sir!’ ‘Who then, sir?’ ‘Black cap!’ If Black cap, then, doesn’t say ‘Is it me, sir?’ before the priest has time to call him, he must put his hand on his ham, and get a pelt of the brogue.  A body must be supple with the tongue in it.

“After this comes one they call Horns, or the Painter.  A droll fellow gets a lump of soot or lamp black, and after fixing a ring of the boys and girls about him, he lays his two fore-fingers on his knees, and says.  ‘Horns, horns, cow horns!’ and then raises his finders by a jerk up above his head; the boys and girls in the ring then do the same thing, for the meaning of the play is this:—­the man with the black’ning always raises his fingers every time he names an animal; but if he names any that has no horns, and that the others jerk up their fingers, then they must get a stroke over the face with the soot.  ’Horns, horns, goat horns!’—­then he ups with his fingers like lightning; they must all do the same,