“Silence, gintlemen,” said he; “legite, perlegite, et relegite—­study, gintlemen, study—­pluck the tree of knowledge, I say, while the fruit is in season.  Denny O’Shaughnessy, what are you facetious for? Quid rides, Dionysi And so, Pether—­is Pettier your pronomen—­quo nomine gowdes?  Silence, boys!—­perhaps he was at Latin before, and we’ll try him—­quo nomine gowdes, Pethre?”

A stare of awkward perplexity was the only reply he could get from the colossus he addressed.

“And so you’re fished up from the Streights (* Alluding to the Colossus of Rhodes) at last, Pether?”

“Sir, my name’s not Pether.  My father’s name is Paddy Doorish, but my own is Franky.  I was born in Lisnagh; but we lived double as long as I can mind in the Mountain Bar.”

“And, Franky, what put Latin into your head?”

“There was no Latin put into my head; I’m comin’ to you for that.”

“And, you graceful sprig of juvenility, have you the conscience to think that I’d undhertake to fill what you carry on your showlders on the same terms that I’d take for replenishing the head of a rasonable youth?  Would you be so unjust in all the principles of correct erudition as to expect that, my worthy Man-mountain?”

“I don’t expect it,” said Frank; “all that’s in your head wouldn’t fill the corner of mine, if you go accordin’ to size; but I’ll pay you for tachin’ me as much as you know yourself, an’ the more I larn the less pains you’ll have wid me.”

Franky, however, made an amazing progress—­so very rapid, indeed, that in about three years from that day he found himself in Maynooth, and in three years more was an active curate, to whom that very teacher appeared as slavishly submissive as if he had never ridiculed his vulgarity or ungainly dimensions.  Poor Frank, however, in consequence of the rapid progress he made, and of the very short interval which elapsed from the period of his commencing Latin until that of his ordination, was assigned by the people the lowest grade in learning.  The term used to designate the rank which they supposed him to hold, was both humorous and expressive.

“Franky,” they would say, “is no finished priest in the larnin’; he’s but a scowdher.”

Now a scowdher is an oaten cake laid upon a pair of tongs placed over the greeshaugh, or embers, that are spread out for the purpose of baking it.  In a few minutes the side first laid down is scorched:  it is then turned, and the other side is also scorched; so that it has the appearance of being baked, though it is actually quite raw within.  It is a homely, but an exceedingly apt illustration, when applied to such men as Frank.

“Poor Frank,” they would observe, “is but a scowdher—­the sign of the tongs—­No. 11, is upon him; so that it is asy known he never was laid to the muddha arran,"*—­that is to say, properly baked—­or duly and thoroughly educated.