themselves clane from
striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere hanner, and in
every transaction which they have with people they try to cheat and
overreach--ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had many dealings with them.
But what is far worse, they do that which the wildest calleen t'other
side of Ougteraarde would be burnt rather than do. Who can tell ye more
on that point than I, yere hanner? I have been at their chapels at
nights, and have listened to their screaming prayers, and have seen
what's been going on outside the chapels after their services, as they
call them, were over--I never saw the like going on outside Father
Toban's chapel, yere hanner! Yere hanner's hanner asked me if I ever did
anything in the way of striopachas--now I tell ye that I was never asked
to do anything in that line but by one of them folks--a great man amongst
them he was, both in the way of business and prayer, for he was a
commercial traveller during six days of the week and a preacher on the
seventh--and such a preacher. Well, one Sunday night after he had
preached a sermon an hour-and-a-half long, which had put half a dozen
women into what they call static fits, he overtook me in a dark street
and wanted me to do striopachas with him--he didn't say striopachas, yer
hanner, for he had no Irish--but he said something in English which was
the same thing."

"And what did you do?"

"Why, I asked him what he meant by making fun of a poor ugly girl--for no
one knows better than myself, yere hanner, that I am very ugly--whereupon
he told me that he was not making fun of me, for it had long been the
chief wish of his heart to commit striopachas with a wild Irish Papist,
and that he believed if he searched the world he should find none wilder
than myself."

"And what did you reply?"

"Why, I said to him, yere hanner, that I would tell the congregation, at
which he laughed and said that he wished I would, for that the
congregation would say they didn't believe me, though at heart they
would, and would like him all the better for it."

"Well, and what did you say then?"

"Nothing, at all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home and
told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and began to
sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have gone and stuck
the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged him not on her knees.
After that we had nothing more to do with the Methodists as far as