but they hadn't forgotten him all the same, and she had a bottle of whisky for him in the cupboard. He sat down by the fire and began drinking the whisky. When he had a couple of glasses taken and was warm by the fire, he began making a song, and this was the song that he made about the wedding of Peggy O'Hara.'
He had the poem in both English and Irish; but as it has been found elsewhere and attributed to another folk-poet, I need not give it.
We had another round of porter and whisky, and then the old man who had MacSweeny's wedding gave us a bit of a drinking song, which the scholar took down, and I translated with him afterwards:
'This is what the old woman says at the Beulleaca when she sees a man without knowledge:
'Were you ever at the house of the Still, did you ever get a drink from it? Neither wine nor beer is as sweet as it is; but it is well I was not burnt when I fell down after a drink of it by the fire of Mr. Sloper.
'I praise Owen O'Hernon over all the doctors of Ireland; it is he put drugs on the water, and it lying on the barley.
'If you gave but a drop of it to an old woman
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