He was yet speaking. when the rope severed under Black Yamon's breast, and the three men were precipitated into the boiling waters beneath. "HOLLAND-TIDE". Straw for youer gentilesse! quod our hoste― CILAUCER. "HOLLAND-TIDE", "All-Hollands", "Hollands-Eve", or November-Eve, was once a merrier time in Ireland than it is at present, though even still its customary enjoyments are by no means neglected. Fortunately for "all the Saints", in whose honour the feast is celebrated, it occurs at a season of the year when the pressure of want is less sensibly felt than at most others, and, among a people who are, generally speaking, so easily satisfied as to the external comforts of life, that a comparative alleviation of suffering is hailed with as hearty a welcome as if it were a positive acquisition of happiness. The peasant sees, at this period at least, the assurance of present abundance around him. He beholds a vast extent of land all cultivated, and burdened with the treasured produce of the soil-gardens of stubble covered with shocks of wheat, oats, and barley, which look just as if they were intended to make bread for him and his neighbours; fields of potatoes, some in which the numerous earthen mounds, or pits,* have been * There is a curious inversion of signification in the words pit, ditch, and dyke, in the sister isle. A potato pit is an elevated mound of earth, containing potatoes. A ditch is a dyke, and a dyke means a ditch. |