f you are a real Kerry man of respectable convictions,
and self-respecting into the bargain, you will never let the man who is
drinking with you entertain any opinions but your own at election times.
If he contradicts you, it's up with your stick and a crack on his skull,
and as that only tickles him up--having much the effect of a nettle
under a donkey's tail--you then go outside and mutually destroy as much
of each other as can be effected in a fight. Some weeks later, when the
vanquished is able to crawl away from the dispensary doctor, and so save
his own life amid the dire forebodings of that physician, who refuses to
answer for the consequences, you begin to drink with him again just to
show there is no ill-feeling; which of course there is not, if you and
he are both real Kerry men. Naturally, if you get a sullen, revengeful,
calculating Protestant from the North, it's another matter, for he'll be
far too friendly with the constabulary and won't hold with the good old
local ways approved by every Kerry Papist and tolerated by most of the
priests.

In 1851 there was a Kerry election. A Protestant candidate stood, and so
did one who in those days was a Whig. I went stoutly for the
Protectionist, but the priests plumped for the Free Trader, and their
congregations have been regretting it ever since.

One tenant was driving in a gig with me to the poll when a priest passed
me on the road and said to my tenant:--

'May the blast of the Almighty be upon you, for I know you are being
taken to vote the wrong way.'

The tenant got very nervous, for in those times it was generally
believed that the priests had power to change men into frogs and toads,
a superstition by no means obsolete even now in lone districts. However,
I took him along very easily, giving him the benefit of the roll of my
tongue as to what he should do, and before he reached the polling-booth
he recovered and voted for the Tory.

A Mr. Scully from Tipperary was the Whig candidate, and the family was
not popular in its own county.

A Cork man, making inquiries of a Tipperary man about him, was
answered:--

'I don't know this gentleman personally, but I believe we have already
shot the best of the family.'

Mr. Scully was a very amusing man, and in the House of Commons he used
to go by the nickname of 'old Skull.'

Lord Monk accosted him by this name one night, and Mr. Scully replied:--

'If you have taken the "e y" off your own name, my lord