rror. Before recounting the
history of his own especial master and patron, Sir Condy Rackrent, last
of the line, Thady gives his ingenuous account of the three who
previously bore the name; Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, and Sir Kit. Sir
Patrick, the inventor of raspberry whiskey, died at table: "Just as the
company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a
sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised in
the morning to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick." That
no gentleman likes to be disturbed after dinner, was the best recognised
rule of life in Ireland; if your host happened to have a fit, you knew
he would wish you to sit it out. Gerald Griffin in _The Collegians_
makes the same point with his usual vigour. A shot is heard in the
dining-room by the maids downstairs. They are for rushing in, but the
manservant knows better: "Sure, don't you know, if there was anyone shot
the master would ring the bell." After Sir Patrick, who thus lived and
died, to quote his epitaph, "a monument of old Irish hospitality," came
Sir Murtagh, "who was a very learned man in the law, and had the
character of it"; another passion that seems to go with the land-hunger
in Ireland. Sir Murtagh married one of the family of the Skinflints:
"She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent and all fast
days, but not holidays." However, says Thady (is there not a strong
trace of Swift in all this?).

"However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a
charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read
and write gratis, and where they were well kept to spinning gratis
for my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from
the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from
first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate
took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's
interest could get from the Linen Board to distribute gratis....
Her table the same way, kept for next to nothing; duty fowls, and
duty turkeys, and duty geese came as fast as we could eat them, for
my lady kept a sharp look-out and knew to a tub of butter
everything the tenants had all round.... As for their young pigs,
we had them, and the best bacon and hams they could make up, with
all young chickens in the spring; but they were a set of poor
wretches, and we had not