“‘Well, and what am I to do, Mary?’ says I, knowing very well that what she sed was thrue enough, although I didn’t wish her to see that I was afeard.

“‘Why,’ says she, ’you must first exchange money with me, and then, if you do as I bid you you may lave the rest to myself.’

“’I then took out, begad, a daicent lot of silver—­say a crown or so—­for my blood was up and the money was flush—­and gave it to her for which I got a cronagh-bawn* half-penny in exchange.

     * So-called from Cronebane, in the county of Wicklow, where
     there is a copper mine.

“‘Now,’ says she, ’Shane, you must keep this in your company, and for your life and sowl, don’t part wid it for nine days after your marriage; but there’s more to be done,’ says she—­’hould out your right knee;’ so with this she unbuttoned three buttons of my buckskins, and made me loose the knot of my garther on the right leg.  ‘Now,’ says she, ’if you keep them loose till after the priest says the words, and won’t let the money I gave you go out of your company for nine days, along with something else I’ll do that you’re to know nothing about, there’s no fear of all their pisthroges.’* She then pulled off her right shoe, and threw it after us for luck.

* Charms of an evil nature.  These are ceremonies used by such women, and believed to be of efficacy by the people.  It is an undoubted fact that the woman here named—­and truly named—­was called in by honest Ned Donnelly, who, I believe, is alive, and could confirm the truth of it.  I remember her well, as I do the occasion on which she was called in by Ned or his friends.  I also remember that a neighbor of ours, a tailor named Cormick M’Elroy—­father, by the way, to little Billy Cormick, who figures so conspicuously at the wedding—­ called her in to cure, by the force of charms, some cows he had that were sick.

“We were now all in motion once more—­the bride riding behind my man, and the bridesmaid behind myself—­a fine bouncing girl she was, but not to be mintioned in the one year with my own darlin’—­in troth, it wouldn’t be aisy getting such a couple as we were the same day, though it’s myself that says it.  Mary, dressed in a black castor hat, like a man’s, a white muslin coat, with a scarlet silk handkercher about her neck, with a silver buckle and a blue ribbon, for luck, round her waist; her fine hair wasn’t turned up, at all at all, but hung down in beautiful curls on her shoulders; her eyes, you would think, were all light; her lips as plump and as ripe as cherries—­and maybe it’s myself that wasn’t to that time o’ day without tasting them, any how; and her teeth, so even, and as white as a burned bone.  The day bate all for beauty; I don’t know whether it was from the lightness of my own spirit it came, but, I think, that such a day I never saw from that to this; indeed, I thought everything was dancing and smiling about me, and sartinly every one said, that such a couple hadn’t been married, nor such a wedding seen in the parish for many a long year before.