( 15 )
aileth thee to die! it was not for want of good butter-milk and potatoes.
PART III.
Tom. WELL Pady, and what did you do when your wife died? Teag. Dear honey, what would I do? do you think I was such a big fool as to die too, I am sure it I had I would not have got fair play, when I am not so old yet as my father was when he died.
Tom. No Pady, it is not that I mean, was you sorry, or did you weep for her? Teag. Weep for her. by shaint Patrick I would not weep for her nor yet be sorry, suppose my own mother, and all the women m Ireland had died seven years before I was born.
Tom. What did you do with your children when she die?
Teag. Do you imagine I was such a big fool as bury my children alive, along with a dead woman? Arra dear honey, we always commonly gives nothing along with a dead person, but an old shirt, a winding sheet, a big hammer, with a long candle, and an Irish threepenny piece.
Tom. Dear Pady, and what use do they make of all them things? Teag. Then Tom since you are so inquisitive, you may go-ask the priest.
Tom. What did you make of your children when Pady? Teag. And what should I make of them, do you imagine that would give them into the hands of the butchers as they had been a parcel of young bogs; by shaint Patrick I had mere unnaturally in me than put them in any hospital, as others do.
Tom. No. I suppose you would leave them with your friends? Teag. A, ay, a poor man’s friends is sometimes worse than a profess’d enemy, the best friend ever I had in the world, was my own pocket while my money lasted; but I left my two babes
