“Well, any way, there was truth in this; so, accordingly, the reckoning was ped, and, as this was the thrate of the weddiners to the bride and bridegroom, every one of the men clubbed his share, but neither I nor the girls anything.  Ha—­ha—­ha!  Am I alive at all?  I never—­ha—­ha—­ha—!—­I never laughed so much in one day as I did in that, today I can’t help laughing at it yet.  Well, well! when we all got on the top of our horses, and sich other iligant cattle as we had—­the crowning of a king was nothing to it.  We were now purty well I thank you, as to liquor; and, as the knot was tied, and all safe, there was no end to our good spirits; so, when we took the road, the men were in high blood, particularly Billy Cormick, the tailor, who had a pair of long cavalry spurs upon him, that he was scarcely able to walk in—­and he not more nor four feet high.  The women, too, were in blood, having faces upon them, with the hate of the day and the liquor, as full as trumpeters.

“There was now a great jealousy among thim that were bint for winning the bottle; and when one horseman would cross another, striving to have the whip hand of him when they’d set off, why you see, his horse would get a cut of the whip itself for his pains.  My uncle and I, however, did all we could to pacify them; and their own bad horsemanship, and the screeching of the women, prevented any strokes at that time.  Some of them were ripping up ould sores against one another as they went along; others, particularly the youngsters, with their sweethearts behind them, coorting away for the life of them, and some might be heard miles off, singing and laughing; and you may be sure the fiddler behind my uncle wasn’t idle, no more nor another.  In this way we dashed on gloriously, till we came in sight of the Dumb-hill, where we were to start for the bottle.  And now you might see the men themselves on their saddles, sacks and suggans; and the women tying kerchiefs and shawls about their caps and bonnets, to keep them from flying off, and then gripping their fore-riders hard and fast by the bosoms.  When we got to the Dumb-hill, there were five or six fellows that didn’t come with us to the priest’s, but met us with cudgels in their hands, to prevent any of them from starting before the others, and to show fair play.

“Well, when they were all in a lump,—­horses, mules, raheries, and asses—­some, as I said, with saddles, some with none; and all jist as I tould you before;—­the word was given and off they scoured, myself along with the rest; and divil be off me, if ever I saw such another sight but itself before or since.  Off they skelped through thick and thin, in a cloud of dust like a mist about us; but it was a mercy that the life wasn’t trampled out of some of us; for before we had gone fifty perches, the one-third of them were sprawling a-top of one another on the road.  As for the women, they went down right and left—­sometimes bringing the horsemen with them; and many of the boys getting black eyes and bloody noses on the stones.  Some of them, being half blind with the motion of the whiskey, turned off the wrong way, and galloped on, thinking they had completely distanced the crowd; and it wasn’t until they cooled a bit that they found out their mistake.