to prevent them from being overlooked by evil eyes, or elf-shot by the fairies, who seem to possess a peculiar power over females of every species during the period of parturition.  It is unnecessary to mention the variety of charms which she possessed for that obsolete malady the colic, for toothache, headaches, or for removing warts, and taking motes out of the eyes; let it suffice to inform our readers that she was well stocked with them; and, that in addition to this, she, together with her husband, drank a potion made up and administered by an herb-doctor, for preventing for ever the slightest misunderstanding or quarrel between man and wife.  Whether it produced this desirable object or not, our readers may conjecture, when we add, that the herb-doctor, after having taken a very liberal advantage of their generosity, was immediately compelled to disappear from the neighbourhood, in order to avoid meeting with Bartley, who had a sharp look-out for him, not exactly on his own account, but “in regard,” he said, “that it had no effect upon Mary, at all at all”; whilst Mary, on the other hand, admitted its efficacy upon herself, but maintained, “that Bartley was worse nor ever afther it.”

Such was Mary Sullivan, as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone, engaged as we have represented her.  What she may have been meditating on, we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked sharply into the “backstone,” or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm.  By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the sounds to which she paid such deep attention proceeded.  At length she crossed herself devoutly, and exclaimed, “Queen of saints about us!—­is it back ye are?  Well sure there’s no use in talkin’ bekase they say you know what’s said of you, or to you—­an’ we may as well spake yez fair.  Hem—­musha yez are welcome back, crickets, avour-neenee!  I hope that, not like the last visit ye ped us, yez are comin’ for luck now!  Moolyeen died, any way, soon afther your other kailyee, ye crathurs ye.  Here’s the bread, an’ the salt, an’ the male for yez, an’ we wish ye well.  Eh?—­saints above, if it isn’t listenin’ they are jist like a Christhien!  Wurrah, but ye are the wise an’ the quare crathurs all out!”

She then shook a little holy water over the hob, and muttered to herself an Irish charm or prayer against the evils which crickets are often supposed by the peasantry to bring with them, and requested, still in the words of the charm, that their presence might, on that occasion, rather be a presage of good fortune to man and beast belonging to her.

“There now, ye dhonans ye, sure ye can’t say that ye’re ill-thrated here, anyhow, or ever was mocked or made game of in the same family.  You have got your hansel, an’ full an’ plenty of it; hopin’ at the same time that you’ll have no rason in life to cut our best clothes from revinge.  Sure an’ I didn’t desarve to have my brave stuff long body riddled the way it was the last time ye wor here, an’ only bekase little Barny, that has but the sinse of a gorsoon, tould yez in a joke to pack off wid yourselves somewhere else.  Musha, never heed what the likes of him says; sure he’s but a caudy, that doesn’t mane ill, only the bit o’ divarsion wid yez.”