nians,
and when we worked all manner of beautiful contrivances in gold and
silver,--bracelets and collars and teapots, elegant to look at,--and read
Roosian and Latin, and played the harp and the barrel-organ, and eat and
drank of the best, for nothing but asking."

"Blessed times, upon my life!" quoth the major; "I wish we had them back
again."

"There's more of your mind," said Mike, steadying himself. "My ancesthors
was great people in them days; and sure it isn't in my present situation
I'd be av we had them back again,--sorra bit, faith! It isn't, 'Come
here, Mickey, bad luck to you, Mike!' or, 'That blackguard, Mickey Free!'
people'd be calling me. But no matter; here's your health again, Major
Monsoon--"

"Never mind vain regrets, Mike. Let us hear your song; the major has taken
a great fancy to it."

"Ah, then, it's joking you are, Mister Charles," said Mike, affecting an
air of most bashful coyness.

"By no means; we want to hear you sing it."

"To be sure we do. Sing it by all means; never be ashamed. King David was
very fond of singing,--upon my life he was."

"But you'd never understand a word of it, sir."

"No matter; we know what it's about. That's the way with the Legion; they
don't know much English, but they generally guess what I'm at."

This argument seemed to satisfy all Mike's remaining scruples; so placing
himself in an attitude of considerable pretension as to grace, he began,
with a voice of no very measured compass, an air of which neither by name
nor otherwise can I give any conception; my principal amusement being
derived from a tol-de-rol chorus of the major, which concluded each verse,
and indeed in a lower key accompanied the singer throughout.

Since that I have succeeded in obtaining a free-and-easy translation of the
lyric; but in my anxiety to preserve the metre and something of the spirit
of the original, I have made several blunders and many anachronisms. Mr.
Free, however, pronounces my version a good one, and the world must take
his word till some more worthy translator shall have consigned it to
immortal verse.

With this apology, therefore, I present Mr. Free's song:

AIR,--_Na Guilloch y' Goulen_.

Oh, once we were illigint people,
Though we now live in cabins of mud;
And the land that ye see from the steeple
Belonged to us all from the Flood.
My father was then King of Connaught,
My grand-aunt Viceroy of Tralee;
But the