rap. And so
it happened that my father used to travel half the county; going here and
there wherever there was trade stirring; and faix, a man didn't think
himself rightly buried if my father wasn't there; for ye see, he knew all
about it: he could tell to a quart of spirits what would be wanting for a
wake; he knew all the good criers for miles round; and I've heard it was a
beautiful sight to see him standing on a hill, arranging the procession as
they walked into the churchyard, and giving the word like a captain,--

"'Come on, the stiff; now the friends of the stiff; now the pop'lace.'

"That's what he used to say, and troth he was always repeating it, when he
was a little gone in drink,--for that's the time his spirits would rise,
and he'd think he was burying half Munster.

"And sure it was a real pleasure and a pride to be buried in them times;
for av it was only a small farmer with a potato garden, my father would
come down with the black cloak on him, and three yards of crape behind his
hat, and set all the children crying and yelling for half a mile round;
and then the way he'd walk before them with a spade on his shoulder, and
sticking it down in the ground, clap his hat on the top of it, to make it
look like a chief mourner. It was a beautiful sight!"

"But Mike, if you indulge much longer in this flattering recollection of
your father, I'm afraid we shall lose sight of the ghost entirely."

"No fear in life, your honor; I'm coming to him now. Well, it was this
way it happened: In the winter of the great frost, about forty-two or
forty-three years ago, the ould priest of Tullonghmurray took ill and died.
He was sixty years priest of the parish, and mightily beloved by all
the people, and good reason for it; a pleasanter man, and a more
social crayture never lived,--'twas himself was the life of the whole
country-side. A wedding nor a christening wasn't lucky av he wasn't there,
sitting at the top of the table, with may be his arm round the bride
herself, or the baby on his lap, a smoking jug of punch before him, and as
much kindness in his eye as would make the fortunes of twenty hypocrites if
they had it among them. And then he was so good to the poor; the Priory was
always so full of ould men and ould women sitting around the big fire in
the kitchen that the cook could hardly get near it. There they were, eating
their meals and burning their shins till they were speckled like a trout's
back, and grumbli