he form thereof into their cloaks, called
Pallai, as some of the Irish also use; and the ancient Latins and Romans
used it, as you may read in Virgil, who was a great antiquary, that
Evander, when AEneas came to him at his feast, did entertain and feast
him sitting on the ground, and lying on mantles: insomuch that he useth
the very word mantile for a mantle--

"Humi mantilia sternunt:"

so that it seemeth that the mantle was a general habit to most nations,
and not proper to the Scythians only.

Spenser knew the convenience of the said mantle, as housing, bedding,
and clothing: 'IREN. Because the commodity doth not countervail the
discommodity; for the inconveniences which thereby do arise are much
more many; for it is a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel,
and an apt cloak for a thief. First, the outlaw being, for his many
crimes and villanies, banished from the towns and houses of honest men,
and wandering in waste places, far from danger of law, maketh his mantle
his house, and under it covereth himself from the wrath of Heaven, from
the offence of the earth, and from the sight of men. When it raineth, it
is his penthouse; when it bloweth, it is his tent; when it freezeth, it
is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose; in winter he can wrap
it close; at all times he can use it; never heavy, never cumbersome.
Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable; for in this war that he
maketh (if at least it deserves the name of war), when he still flieth
from his foe, and lurketh in the THICK WOODS (this should be BLACK BOGS)
and straight passages, waiting for advantages, it is his bed, yea, and
almost his household stuff.']

To look at me, you would hardly think 'Poor Thady' was the father of
Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady
says, and having better than fifteen hundred a year, landed estate,
looks down upon honest Thady; but I wash my hands of his doings, and as
I have lived so will I die, true and loyal to the family. The family
of the Rackrents is, I am proud to say, one of the most ancient in the
kingdom. Everybody knows this is not the old family name, which was
O'Shaughlin, related to the kings of Ireland--but that was before my
time. My grandfather was driver to the great Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin,
and I heard him, when I was a boy, telling how the Castle Rackrent
estate came to Sir Patrick; Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent was cousin-german to
him, and had a fine estate