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49Q THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF |
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Was Shamus O'Brien, from the town of Glengall. His limbs were well set, and his body was light, An' the keen fanged hound hadn't teeth half so white. But his face was as pale as the face of the dead, And his cheek never warmed with the blush of the
red; And, for all that, he wasn't an ugly young Boy, For the devil himself couldn't blaze with his eye, So funny and so wicked, so dark and so bright, Like a fire-flash that crosses the depth of the night. And he was the best mower that ever has been, And the illigantest hurler that ever was seen; In fincin' he gave Patrick Mooney a cut, And in jumpin' he bate Tom Malony a foot. For lightness of foot there wasn't his peer, For, begorra, you'd think he'd outrun the red.deer; And his dancin' was such that the men used to stare, And the women turned crazy, he had done it so
quare — And, begorra, the whole world ' gave in to him there. And it's he was the boy that was hard to be caught j And it's often he ran, and it's often he fought, And it's many's the one can remember quite well The quare things he done; and it's often I heerd tell How he frightened the magistrate in Cahirbally, And escaped through the sojers in Aherlovv valley, And leathered the yeomen, himself agin four, And stretched the two strongest on old Galtimore.
1 In Gaelic the consonant r is given its full value before another consonant, producing the effect of a dissyllable; e. g. tarbk, pronounced " thorruv " (a bull) ; compare the French taureau. This practice, like many other Gaelic locutions, has been carried into English ; hence " worruld " for " world " j "firrum" for "firm," etc. |
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