** There was properly only two Psalters, those of Tara and Cashel.  The Psalters were collections of genealogical history, partly in verse; from which latter circumstances they had their name.

“In mentioning my grandfather’s fight with Mucldemurray, I happened to name them blackguards, the O’Hallaghans:  hard fortune to the same set, for they have no more discretion in their quarrels, than so many Egyptian mummies, African buffoons, or any other uncivilized animals.  It was one of them, he that’s married to my own fourth cousin, Biddy O’Callaghan, that knocked two of my grinders out, for which piece of civility I had the satisfaction of breaking a splinter or two in his carcase, being always honestly disposed to pay my debts.

“With respect to the O’Hallaghans, they and our family, have been next neighbors since before the Flood—­and that’s as good as two hundred years; for I believe it’s 198, any how, since my great grandfather’s grand-uncle’s ould mare was swept out of the ‘Island,’ in the dead of the night, about half an hour after the whole country had been ris out of their beds by the thunder and lightning.  Many a field of oats and many a life, both of beast and Christian, was lost in it, especially of those that lived on the bottoms about the edge of the river:  and it was true for them that said it came before something; for the next year was one ’of the hottest summers ever remembered in Ireland.

“These O’Hallaghans couldn’t be at peace with a saint.  Before they and our faction, began to quarrel, it’s said that the O’Donnells, or Donnells, and they had been at it,—­and a blackguard set the same O’Donnells were, at all times—­in fair and market, dance, wake, and berrin, setting the country on fire.  Whenever they met, it was heads cracked and bones broken; till by degrees the O’Donnells fell away, one after another, from fighting, accidents, and hanging; so that at last there was hardly the name of one of them in the neighborhood.  The O’Hallaghans, after this, had the country under themselves—­were the cocks of the walk entirely;—­who but they?  A man darn’t look crooked at them, or he was certain of getting his head in his fist.  And when they’d get drunk in a fair, it was nothing but ‘Whoo! for the O’Hallaghans!’ and leaping yards high off the pavement, brandishing their cudgels over their heads, striking their heels against their hams, tossing up their hats; and when all would fail, they’d strip off their coats, and trail them up and down the street, shouting, ’Who dare touch the coat of an O’Hallaghan?  Where’s the blackguard Donnells now?’—­and so on, till flesh and blood couldn’t stand it.