the first on the ground, all
busy in their respective vocations. The highways, the fields, and the
boreens, or bridle-roads, were filled with living streams of people
pressing forward to this great scene of fun and religion. The devotees
could in general be distinguished from the country folks by their
Pharisaical and penitential visages, as well as by their not wearing
shoes; for the Stations to such places were formerly made with bare
feet: most persons now, however, content themselves with stripping off
their shoes and stockings on coming within the precincts of the holy
ground. Human beings are not the only description of animals that
perform pilgrimages to holy wells and blessed lakes. Cows, horses, and
sheep are made to go through their duties, either by way of prevention,
or cure, of the diseases incident to them. This is not to be wondered
at, when it is known that in their religion every domestic animal has
its patron saint, to whom its owner may at any time pray on its behalf.
When the crowd was collected, nothing in the shape of an assembly
could surpass it in the originality of its appearance. In the glen were
constructed a number of tents, where whiskey and refreshments might be
had in abundance. Every tent had a fiddler or a piper; many two of them.
From the top of the pole that ran up from the roof of each tent, was
suspended the symbol by which the owner of it was known by his friends
and acquaintances. Here swung a salt herring or a turf; there a
shillelah; in a third place a shoe, in a fourth place a whisp of hay, in
a fifth an old hat, and so on with the rest.

The tents stood at a short distance from the scene of devotion at the
well, but not so far as to prevent the spectator from both seeing and
hearing what went on in each. Around the well, on bare knees, moved a
body of people thickly wedged together, some praying, some screaming,
some excoriating their neighbors' shins, and others dragging them out of
their way by the hair of the head. Exclamations of pain from the sick
or lame, thumping oaths in Irish, recriminations in broken English, and
prayers in bog Latin, all rose at once to the ears of the patron
saint, who, we are inclined to think--could he have heard or seen his
worshippers--would have disclaimed them altogether.

"For the sake of the Holy Virgin, keep your sharp elbows out o' my
ribs."

"My blessin' an you, young man, an' don't be lanin' an me, i' you
plase!"

"_Damnho sherry o