‘I know, honest Thady,’ says he, to comfort me, ’what I’m about better than you do; I’m only selling to get the ready money wanting to carry on my suit with spirit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin.’

He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin.  He could have gained it, they say, for certain, had it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been at the least a plump two thousand a year in his way; but things were ordered otherwise—­for the best to be sure.  He dug up a fairy-mount against my advice, and had no luck afterwards. [These fairy-mounts are called ant-hills in England.  They are held in high reverence by the common people in Ireland.  A gentleman, who in laying out his lawn had occasion to level one of these hillocks, could not prevail upon any of his labourers to begin the ominous work.  He was obliged to take a Loy from one of their reluctant hands, and began the attack himself.  The labourers agreed that the vengeance of the fairies would fall upon the head of the presumptuous mortal who first disturbed them in their retreat [See glossary 11].] Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters.  I warned him that I heard the very Banshee that my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick’s window a few days before his death. [The Banshee is a species of aristocratic fairy, who, in the shape of a little hideous old woman, has been known to appear, and heard to sing in a mournful supernatural voice under the windows of great houses, to warn the family that some of them are soon to die.  In the last century every great family in Ireland had a Banshee, who attended regularly; but latterly their visits and songs have been discontinued.] But Sir Murtagh thought nothing of the Banshee, nor of his cough, with a spitting of blood, brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending the courts, and overstraining his chest with making himself heard in one of his favourite causes.  He was a great speaker with a powerful voice; but his last speech was not in the courts at all.  He and my lady, though both of the same way of thinking in some things, and though she was as good a wife and great economist as you could see, and he the best of husbands, as to looking into his affairs, and making money for his family; yet I don’t know how it was, they had a great deal of sparring and jarring between them.  My lady had her privy purse; and she had her weed ashes [See glossary 12], and her sealing money [See glossary 13] upon the signing of all the leases, with something to buy gloves besides; and, besides, again often took money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for them to Sir Murtagh about abatements and renewals.  Now the weed ashes and the glove money he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when he saw her in a new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to my face (for he could say a sharp thing) that she should not put on her weeds before