’Well, it was this way, I married a dacent girl from the North, and all went well with us until her mother came along, and she had the divil’s own tongue, and nothing could get her out of the house.  I would say “the North has fine air, would not a change back there get you your health?”

’To which the old Biddy would reply:—­

’"Where would I live except with my only daughter and her husband?”

’And this sort of thing made me desperate, and I promised the “bhoys” five shillings if they would fire round the house on a certain night.  On the evening that had been agreed upon, I began reading on the paper how farms in Castleisland were being fired into, and the old woman said that if these things were so, County Kerry was worse than County Cork, and I thought to myself “maybe you’ll find it so, you ould divil.”

’Well, they came and did their work in grand style after we had gone to bed, and there was the mother-in-law screeching and bawling, and every hour too long for her until daylight, when I put her in the cart and drove her to the station.’

The sequel is that the couple left to themselves lived happily ever after, a thing more likely to happen to people in England and Ireland, if it was no one’s business to make bad blood between them.

CHAPTER XXII

COMMISSIONS

I have probably given evidence to as many Commissions as any living man, for I have been before seven, and never once was asked a question that posed me.

I enjoyed the experience of being asked about what I knew by those who knew nothing on the subject, and if the legal mind was a little more obtuse than the civil, well, it was only the choice between a grey donkey and a black.

The earliest Commission I gave evidence before was one on Agriculture.  Professor Bohnamy Price was one of the Commissioners, and he knew what he was talking about, others being Lord Carlingford, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who presided.  The peers were all used to big parks, obsequious bailiffs, and huge demesnes.  I think they metaphorically picked up their coat tails and stepped carefully away from the Irish potato patches and acres of turf.

It was alleged that prosperity of nations was a good deal owing to tenant-right.

‘I do not think so,’ said I, ’because Donegal and Kerry have approximately the same value and area, same number of miles of road and sea frontage.  There is extreme tenant-right in Donegal and none in Kerry, yet the prosperity of the farmers in Kerry is extremely superior to those of Donegal.’

‘There is too much tenant-right in Donegal,’ said Mr. Chichester Fortescue, who was examining me.

‘Not if it is a good thing,’ I replied, ’for then you could not have too much.’