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Ah, that Irish!  How frequently do circumstances, at first sight the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!—­how frequently is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn!  On a wild road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for the first time; and I was seized with a desire to learn Irish, the acquisition of which, in my case, became the stepping-stone to other languages.  I had previously learnt Latin, or rather Lilly; but neither Latin nor Lilly made me a philologist.  I had frequently heard French and other languages, but had felt little desire to become acquainted with them; and what, it may be asked, was there connected with the Irish calculated to recommend it to my attention?

First of all, and principally, I believe, the strangeness and singularity of its tones; then there was something mysterious and uncommon associated with its use.  It was not a school language, to acquire which was considered an imperative duty; no, no; nor was it a drawing-room language, drawled out occasionally, in shreds and patches by the ladies of generals and other great dignitaries, to the ineffable dismay of poor officers’ wives.  Nothing of the kind; but a speech spoken in out-of-the-way desolate places, and in cut-throat kens, where thirty ruffians, at the sight of the king’s minions, would spring up with brandished sticks and an ‘ubbubboo, like the blowing up of a powder-magazine.’  Such were the points connected with the Irish, which first awakened in my mind the desire of acquiring it; and by acquiring it I became, as I have already said, enamoured of languages.  Having learnt one by choice, I speedily, as the reader will perceive, learnt others, some of which were widely different from Irish.

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I said:  ’Now, Murtagh, tit for tat; ye will be telling me one of the old stories of Finn-ma-Coul.’  ‘Och, Shorsha!  I haven’t heart enough,’ said Murtagh.  ’Thank you for your tale, but it makes me weep; it brings to my mind Dungarvon times of old—­I mean the times we were at school together.’  ‘Cheer up, man,’ said I, ’and let’s have the story, and let it be about Ma-Coul and the salmon and his thumb.’  ’Well, you know Ma-Coul was an exposed child, and came floating over the salt sea in a chest which was cast ashore at Veintry Bay.  In the corner of that bay was a castle, where dwelt a giant and his wife, very respectable and dacent people, and this giant, taking his morning walk along the bay, came to the place where the child had been cast ashore in his box.  Well, the giant looked at the child, and being filled with compassion for his exposed state, took the child up in his box, and carried him home to his castle, where he and his wife, being dacent respectable people, as I telled ye before, fostered the child and took care of him, till he became old enough to go out to service and gain his livelihood, when they bound him out apprentice to another giant, who lived in a castle up the country, at some distance from the bay.