ng dog biscuit sown with caraway seeds--and, above
all, of the "crubeens," which, being interpreted, means "pigs' feet,"
slightly salted, boiled, cold, wholly abominable. Here also is the
three-card trick, demonstrated by a man with the incongruous accent of
Whitechapel and a defiant eye, that even through the glaze of the second
stage of drunkenness held the audience and yet was 'ware of the
disposition of the nine of hearts. Here is the drinking booth, and here
sundry itinerant vendors of old clothes, and--of all improbable
commodities to be found at a horse-fair--wall-paper. Neither has much
success. The old-clothes woman casts down a heap of singularly repellant
rags before a disparaging customer; she beats them with her fists,
presumably to show their soundness in wind and limb: a cloud of
germ-laden dust arises.

"Arrah!" she says; "the divil himself wouldn't plaze ye in clothes."

The wall-paper man is not more fortunate. "Look at that for a nate
patthern!" he says ecstatically, "that'd paper a bed! Come now, ma'am,
wan an' thrippence!"

The would-be purchaser silently tests it with a wrinkled finger and
thumb, and shakes her head.

"Well, I declare to ye now, that's a grand paper. If ye papered a room
with that and put a hen in it she'd lay four eggs!" But not even the
consideration of its value as an aesthetic stimulant can compass the
sale of the one-and-threepenny wall-paper.

Down at this end of the fair field congregate the three-year-olds and
two-year-olds; they pierce the air with their infant squeals and neighs,
they stamp, and glare, and strike attitudes with absurd statuesqueness,
while their owners sit on a bank above them, playing them like fish on
the end of a long rope, and fabling forth their perfections with
tireless fancy. The perils of the way increase at every moment. In and
out among the restless heels the onlooker must steer his course, up into
the ampler space on the hill-top, where the horses stand in more open
order and a general view is possible.

Much may be learned at Bandon Fair of how the County Cork hunter is
arrived at, of the Lord Hastings colt out of a high-bred Victor mare; of
New Laund, of Speculation, of Whalebone, of the ancient and well-nigh
mythical Druid, whose name adds a lustre to any pedigree. These things
are matters far more real and serious than English history to every man
and boy in the fair field, whether he is concerned in practical
horse-dealing or not. E