it’s an ould custom.  While the priest was going over the business, I kept my eye about me, and sure enough, there were seven or eight fellows all waiting to snap at her.  When the ceremony drew near a close, I got up on one leg, so that I could bounce to my feet like lightning, and when it was finished, I got her in my arm, before you could say Jack Robinson, and swinging her behind the priest, gave her the husband’s first kiss.  The next minute there was a rush after her; but, as I had got the first, it was but fair that they should come in according as they could, I thought, bekase, you know, it was all in the coorse of practice; but, hould, there were two words to be said to that, for what does Father Dollard do but shoves them off, and a fine stout shoulder he had—­shoves them off, like childre, and getting his arms about Mary, gives her half a dozen smacks at least—­oh, consuming to the one less—­that mine was only a cracker** to.  The rest, then, all kissed her, one after another, according as they could come in to get one.  We then went straight to his Reverence’s barn, which had been cleared out for us the day before, by his own directions, where we danced for an hour or two, his Reverence and his Curate along with us.

     * There is always a struggle for this at an Irish wedding,
     where every man is at liberty—­even the priest himself—­to
     anticipate the bridegroom if he can.

** Cracker is the small, hard cord which is tied to a rustic whip, in order to make it crack.  When a man is considered to be inferior to another in anything, the people say, “he wouldn’t make a cracker to his whip.”

“When this was over we mounted again, the fiddler taking his ould situation behind my uncle.  You know it is usual, after getting the knot tied, to go to a public-house or shebeen, to get some refreshment after the journey; so, accordingly, we went to little lame Larry Spooney’s—­grandfather to him that was transported the other day for staling Bob Beaty’s sheep; he was called Spooney himself, for his sheep-stealing, ever since Paddy Keenan made the song upon him, ending with ‘his house never wants a good ram-horn spoon;’ so that let people say what they will, these things run in the blood—­well, we went to his shebeen house, but the tithe of us couldn’t get into it; so we sot on the green before the door, and, by my song, we took (* drank) dacently with him, any how; and, only for my uncle, it’s odds but we would have been all fuddled.

“It was now that I began to notish a kind of coolness between my party and the bride’s, and for some time I didn’t know what to make of it—­I wasn’t long so, however; for my uncle, who still had his eye about him, comes over to me, and says, ’Shane, I doubt there will be bad work amongst these people, particularly betwixt the Dorans and the Flannagans—­the truth is, that the old business of the law-shoot will break out, except they’re kept from drink, take my word for it, there will be blood spilled.  The running for the bottle will be a good excuse,’ says he, ’so I think we had better move home before they go too far in the drink.’