XV.

"Again to the praties-again To the music of pleasure,

While Murphy the fiddler was fiddling his strain

In REAL IRISH measure

The hop and the revel resume

The web of their frolicksome loom;
And the cobwebs all flapped on the wall,
As they capered about in the ball.

There every "peerless dame" was come,
To welcome Thady's footsteps home;
And as the tallow tapers glow,
"They little think of grief or woe;"
Whiskey, bacon, wit and song

Were high amidst the joyous throng,
But mark-" from distant Ballyblany,
Borne by the breeze to the river Slany,
The clock chimes twelve. The rising gale
Is loaded with an awful wail.

Sir Thady looks like withered hope,
Or felon swinging on a rope,

Or but no matter. In the blaze
"Of his grey eye's" encircling rays,
"There was a fearless frenzy" seen
He was not what he once had been.

XVI.

"The night was chill upon the hill,” The Slany hoarsely roared,

The lamps look sick-with lengthened wick,

The splashing rain-drop poured.

Serenely calm was each and all”

—The guests in cot, the pigs in stall,
When forth a spalpeen poured his note,
His thrilling sounds all slowly float,
And rouse each wondering guest.
A form-another-and three more,
Now enter at the cabin door,

And towards Sir Thady pressed.
The foremost opes his mouth, and loud
Proclaims, before the gaping crowd,
"Sir Thady, I arrest thee--come-

No vain delay-thou knowest thy doom."
Sir Thady shook in "every limb,"
And quivered with dismay :

He rose and followed sullenly

"That man's unhallowed way."

XVII

And he is gone from out his cot,
Without one hand to aid;

The garsoons looked like sheep, I wot,

"All trembling and afraid."

But hark! a shriek has fanned each cheek

With horrible alarms;

In haste they pour, and through the door

They rush with "palsied arms."

XVIII.

They bustled onward through the cot,
Like praties bubbling in the pot,
The walls all wept to see them move
"Like goblins through a leafless grove,"
Each knows not what he thinks;
Some say he's there, and some say here,
They "hold companionship" with fear,
And all their valour sinks.

But Thady's gone-"no trace remained,
To tell the great man's fate,
A sleepy silence only reigned
About the cabin gate;"

Save, and except, that one loud cry
Was heard from out the deep pig-stye,

Where each fat porker, with a groan,
Cried, "Ah, Sir Thady are ye gone!"

XIX.

None but the pigs his fate lamenting, “Unshrined and unannealed,"

Sir Thady vanished, curses venting

As o'er the bog he reeled.

Ah! swift was fixed the judgment dread;

The gallows scowled above his head;

The murder twain of sire and maid

Sir Thady at the gibbet paid.

And from the beam the carcase bleached,

And lessons to each vagrant preached.

XX.

Where the moon in her full, and the moon in her

wane

Looks down on each alley, each court, and each lane,

Of Brummagem city, where watchmen and rats Roam about through the gloom, with the owls and the bats,

"It is said that, at eve when the twilight is closing, And sleep on each Brummagite's eyes reposing," That out of that house, where the butcher and maid,

Fell, pierced by the reeking, bright, murderous blade,

The sound of a ghostly old fiddle you'll hear, "Like the hymning of harps in a heavenlier sphere ;"

And then a pale ghost in the moon-beams appears,
Who wades through a flood of his own briny tears;
While a maiden enrobed in her drapery of snow,
"Seems to beckon him on"-for he follows but
slow :

And a grim butcher form just arisen from the dead,
Points first at a cleaver, and then at her head,
And with a voice of destraction, of murder, and
death,

Thus calls with a sulpherous, "pestilent breath ;"
"In that charnel, where reptiles are feasting on
flesh,"

There, there shall thy heart's blood my vengeance refresh ;

I will carve and dissect thee, and gnashing my teeth, Will riot and feed on the harvest of death.

And the maiden "who fell 'neath thy terrific blow," Shall bathe her red wound in the sweat of thy brow.

THE HERMIT IN OSCOTT.

NUMBER III.

-True, I talk of dreams

Which are the children of an idle brain.

SHAKSPEARE.

MR. EDITOR,

You will excuse me, for so long withholding this month's communication, as a multitude of untoward circumstances have combined to prevent me from forwarding my production earlier. In fact, had I not been informed that you had left four pages vacant on my account, I know not whether I should have trespassed, at all, on your fifth Number. The burden of declining years, added to the incidental inclemencies of the season, have unnerved that vigour, which marked my younger days, and damped those energies which some fifty Summers