Page 382 (14.612-651) "island with a printed... appeared in the"

editions: [1922] [html] [archv]
notes: [Th] [G&S] [Dent] [∞] [wbks] [rw] [images] [hyper]
Delaney: [0] Useen: [] [cp] maps: [other] [*]

<



island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground.




And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders.




There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me.




But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show.




After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name.




Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it up on what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat.




In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt.




They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island, seeing no help was toward as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the Jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America.




Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:

— Pope Peter's but a pissabed.
    A man's a man for a' that.

Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the

>

mysteries:


[DD]
[IM]
[LV1]
[LV2]




oxen: 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407