n lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in
the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they
dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and
girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him
all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of
the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market
so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the
father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that
he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and
damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his
belly was full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their
ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language
and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he
would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself
(for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up
on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying:
By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And,
says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or
the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much
as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half
the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all
by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says
Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks
in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house
and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell
hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But
one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal
pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for
himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row
with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull
and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry
he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous
champion bull of the Romans, _Bos Bovum_, which is good bog Latin for
boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his
head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers