The avowed fact that lunacy is largely on the increase in Ireland has been pronounced by the committee which sat on the question in Dublin to be mainly due, not only to excessive drinking, but to the assimilation of adulterated spirits.

Though the foregoing recipe furnishes a pretty fair example, I certainly would not wager that it could not be beaten elsewhere in Ireland.

For a long time the priests were entirely apathetic on the subject, but latterly they are bestirring themselves, and are doing their best to put down wakes, which simply mean one or more nights of disgusting intemperance in the immediate vicinity of the corpse.

Keening, by the way, is dying out, and what remains of this curious, mournful waiting is now almost entirely in the hands of old women who are experts in the art, and get remunerated not only in drink but also in cash.

It is, however, possible that when I am deploring the alcoholic tendencies of the Irishman, that these may be due to his more vegetarian dietary, and not to any undue natural craving for alcohol.  This is borne out by the fact that no Irishman will willingly drink alone, and that his potations are in the shops where whisky and porter are sold for consumption on the premises, or at fairs, markets, weddings, or wakes, to the diminishing number of which I have just called attention.

The parish priest of Dingle recently stated in court that in a population of seventeen hundred there were over fifty licensed houses, and he rightly declared that all dealings in licences should for the present be only by transfer, and that for five years at least no new licences should be granted.  The argument so often heard against stopping licences is that then more illicit drinking will ensue, but this does not convince me that the redundant licences should be renewed.

My remedy would be to increase all renewals of licences to fifty pounds apiece, and to apply the difference as compensation to unrenewed licences.  If a man fits up his house as a shebeen, and has conducted it tolerably, he ought to receive just compensation when his licence is cancelled owing to there being too many in a district.

If this is not done, he would be the victim of as great a robbery as was perpetrated on the unfortunate landlords by the Land Act.

I have a yarn or two on the subject of drink which may be appropriately related here.

Old David Burus, the steward at Ardrum, County Cork, was a great character who had got inextricably confused between the Council of Trent and the Trant family in the vicinity, and no amount of explanation could ever enlighten him.  Directly he had begun to be jovial, he used to say:—­

’My blessing on Councillor Trent, who put a fast on meat, but not on drink.’

And he proved the devoutness of his gratitude by conscientiously getting drunk every Friday.

That recalls to my mind the case of the illustrious gentleman—­also a fellow-countryman, I regret to say—­who committed burglary and murder when there was an opportunity, but religiously refrained from eating meat on Friday.