THE CURSE OF O'KELLY. Carmac O'Kelly, the celebrated Irish harper, went to Doneraile, in the county of Cork, where his watch was pilfered from his fob. This so roused his ire that he celebrated the people in the following unexampled "string of curses:" Alas! how dismal is my tale, I lost my watch in Doneraile, My Dublin watch, my chain and seal, May Heaven a chosen curse entail, To beam their lights on Doneraile; May every pestilential gale Blast that cursed spot called Doneraile; May patriots, kings, and commonweal Despise and harass Doneraile; May vengeance fall on head and tail, May Egypt's plagues at once prevail, To thin the knaves at Doneraile; May frost and snow, and sleet and hail, May wolves and bloodhounds race and trail May Oscar with his fiery flail To atoms thrash all Doneraile; May every mischief, fresh and stale, May no one coffin want a nail, That wraps a rogue in Doneraile; May all the thieves who rob and steal, The gallows meet in Doneraile; The Rapparees of Doneraile; Hiberniana. MARIA EDGEWORTH, in her Essay on Irish Bulls, remarks that "the difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd a bull that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine." Very true; but if the prize were offered for a batch of Irish diamonds, we think the following copy of a letter written during the Rebellion, by S―, an Irish member of Parliament, to his friend in London, would present the strongest claim : "My dear Sir:-Having now a little peace and quietness, I sit down to inform you of the dreadful bustle and confusion we are in from these blood-thirsty rebels, most of whom are (thank God!) killed and dispersed. We are in a pretty mess; can get nothing to eat, nor wine to drink, except whiskey; and when we sit down to dinner, we are obliged to keep both hands armed. Whilst I write this, I hold a pistol in each hand and a sword in the other. I concluded in the beginning that this would be the end of it; and I see I was right, for it is not half over yet. At present there are such goings on, that every thing is at a stand still. I should have answered your letter a fortnight ago, but I did not receive it till this morning. Indeed, hardly a mail arrives safe without being robbed. No longer ago than yesterday the coach with the mails from Dublin was robbed near this town: the bags had been judiciously left behind for fear of accident, and by good luck there was nobody in it but two outside passengers who had nothing for thieves to take. Last Thursday notice was given that a gang of rebels were advancing here under the French standard; but they had no colors, nor any drums except bagpipes. Immediately every man in the place, including women and children, ran out to meet them. We soon found our force much too little; and we were far too near to think of retreating. Death was in every face; but to it we went, and by the time half our little party were killed we began to be all alive again. Fortunately, the rebels had no guns, except pistols, cutlasses, and pikes; and as we had plenty of guns and ammunition, we put them all to the sword. Not a soul of them escaped, except some that were drowned in an adjacent bog; and in a very short time nothing was to be heard but silence. Their uniforms were all different colors, but mostly green. After the action, we went to rummage a sort of camp which they had left behind them. All we found was a few pikes without heads, a parcel of empty bottles full of water, and a bundle of French commissions filled up with Irish names. Troops are now stationed all around the country, which exactly squares with my ideas. I have only time to add that I am in great haste. "Yours truly, "P. S.-If you do not receive this, of course it must have miscarried therefore I beg you will write and let me know." Miss Edgeworth says, further, that "many bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital points." To prove this, she cites numerous examples of well-known bulls, with their foreign prototypes, not only English and Continental, but even Oriental and ancient. Among the parallels of familiar bulls to be found nearer our American home since the skillful defender of Erin's naïveté wrote her Essay, one of the best is an economical method of erecting a new jail : The following resolutions were passed by the Board of Coun cilmen in Canton, Mississippi : 1. Resolved, by this Council, that we build a new Jail. 2. Resolved, that the new Jail be built out of the materials of the old Jail. 3. Resolved, that the old Jail be used until the new Jail is finished. It was a Frenchman who, in making a classified catalogue of books, placed Miss Edgeworth's Essay in the list of works on Natural History; and it was a Scotchman who, having purchased a copy of it, pronounced her "a puir silly body, to write a book on bulls, and no ane word o' horned cattle in it a', forbye the bit beastie [the vignette] at the beginning." Examples from the common walks of life and from periodical literature may readily be multiplied to show that these phraseological peculiarities are not to be exclusively attributed to Ireland. But if we adopt Coleridge's definition, which is, that "a bull consists in a mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas, with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection," we shall find frequent instances of its occurrence among standard authors. Take the following blunders, for examples : Adam, the goodliest man of men since born Milton's Paradise Lost. The loveliest pair That ever since in love's embraces met.-lb. B. iv. Swift, being an Irishman, of course abounds in blunders, some of them of the most ludicrous character; but we should hardly expect to find in the elegant Addison, the model of classical English, such a singular inaccuracy as the following:So the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains Of rushing torrents and descending rains.-Cuto. He must have seen in a blaze of blinding light (this is "ip. sis Hibernis Hibernior') the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and Christian life.-Gilfillan's Bards of the Bible. The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburgh consists in thus sailing apparently upon the bosom of the ocean, into a city of palaces.-Sedgwick's Letters from the Baltic. The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar, with which he had filled all his pockets.— Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. |