down the road on their way home together, and the ministher and Methodist praicher cuttin' the buckle as they went along in the opposite direction. To make short work of it, they all danced home at last, wid scarce a puff of wind in them; the bride and bridegroom danced away to bed; an' now, boys, come an' let us dance the Horo Lheig in the barn 'idout. But you see, boys, before we go, an' in ordher that I may make every thing plain, I had as good tell you, that Harry, in crossing the bridge of Ballyboulteen, a couple of miles below Squire Bragshaw's demesne-wall, saw the puddin' floaten down the river-the thruth is he was waitin' for it; but be this as it may, he took it out, for the wather had made it as clane as a new pin, and tuckin' it up in the tail of his big coat, contrived, as you all guess, I suppose, to change it while Paddy Scanlon an' the wife were examinin' the sky; an' for the other, he contrived to bewitch it in the same manner, by gettin' a fairy to go into it, for, indeed, it was purty well known that the same Harry was hand an' glove wid the good people. Others will tell you that it was half a pound of quicksilver he put into it; but that doesn't stand to raison. At any rate, boys, I have tould you the adventures of the Mad Pudden of Ballyboulteen; but I don't wish to tell you many other things about it that happened for fraid I'd tell a lie.”*

This superstition of the dancing or bewitched pudding has not, so far as I have been able to ascertain, ever been given to the public before. The singular tendency to saltation is attributed to two causes, both of which are introduced in the tale. Some will insist that a fairy-man or fairy-woman has the power to bewitch a pudding by putting a fairy into it; whilst others maintain that a competent portion of quicksilver will make it dance over half the parish.

BARNEY BRADY'S GOOSE;

OR,

DARK DOINGS AT SLATHBEG.

BARNEY BRADY was a good-natured, placid man, and never lost his temper, unless, as he said himself, when he got "privication;" he was also strict in attending his duty; a fact which Mrs., or rather, as she was called, Ailey Brady, candidly and justly admitted, and to which the priest himself bore ample testimony. Barney, however, had the misfortune to be married at a time when a mystery was abroad among women. Mysteries, resembling the Elusinian in nothing but the exclusion of men, were then prevalent among the matrons in all parts of the country. Of the nature of these secret rites it would be premature now to speak; in time the secret will be revealed; suffice it to say, that the mysteries were full of alarm to the husbands, and held by them to be a grievous offence against their welfare and authority. The domestic manners of my beloved country women were certainly in a state of awful and deplorable transition at the time, and many a worthy husband's head ached at a state of things which no viligance on his part could alter or repress. Many a secret consultation was held among the good men of the respective villages throughout the country at large, as to the best mode of checking this disastrous epidemic, which came home to their very beds and bosoms, and many a groan was vainly uttered from hearts that grew heavy in proportion as the evil, which they felt but could not see, spread about through all directions of the kingdom.

Nay, to such a height did this terrible business rise, that the aggrieved parties had notions of petitioning the king to keep their wives virtuous; but this, upon second consideration, was given up, inasmuch as the king himself, with reverence be it spoken, was at the bottom of the evil, and what was still worse, even the queen was not ashamed to corrupt their wives by her example. How then could things be in a healthy state when the very villany of which the good broken-hearted men complained descended from the court to the people? A warning this to all future sovereigns not without good forethought, and much virtuous consideration, to set a bad precedent to their subjects. What then could the worthy husbands do unless to put their hands dolorously to their heads and bear their grievances in silence; which, however, the reader perceives they did not. After mutually, but with great caution, disclosing their injuries, they certainly condoled with each other; they planned means of redress, sought out the best modes of detection, and having entered into a general confederacy against their respective wives, each man solemnly promised to become a spy and informer in his own family. To come to this resolution was as much as they could do under such unhappy circumstances, and of course they did it.

Their wives, on the other hand, were anything but idle. They also sat in secret council upon their own affairs, and discussed their condition with an anxiety and circumspection which set the vigilance of their husbands at complete defiance. And it may be observed here, just to show the untractable obstinacy of women when bent on gratifying their own wills, that not one of them ever returned home to her husband from these closed-door meetings, without having committed the very act of which she was suspected. Not that these cautious good women were, after all, so successful in every instance as to escape detection. Some occasional discoveries were actually made in consequence of the systematic espionage of their hus