THE WAKE;

OR,

TEDDY O'RAFFERTY'S LAST APPEARANCE.

A SCENE IN THE HOLY LAND.

'Twas at Teddy O'Rafferty's wake,

Just to comfort ould Judy, his wife,
The lads of the hod had a frake,

And kept the thing up to the life.

There was Father O'Donahoo, Mr. Delany,
Pat Murphy the doctor, that rebel O'Shaney,
Young Terence, a nate little knight o' the hod,
And that great dust O'Sullivan just out o' quod;
Then Florence the piper, no music is riper,
To all the sweet cratures with emerald fatures
Who came to drink health to the dead.

Not Bryan Baroo had a louder shaloo

When he gave up his breath, to that tythe hunter death,
Than the howl over Teddy's could head :

'Twas enough to have rais'd up a saint.

All the darlings with whiskey so faint,

And the lads full of fight, had a glorious night,
When ould Teddy was wak'd in his shed.

ORIGINAL.

HE who has not travelled in Ireland should never presume to offer an opinion upon its natives. It is not from the wealthy absentees, who since the union have abandoned their countrymen to wretchedness, for the advancement of their own ambitious views, that we can form a judgment of the exalted Irish: nor is it from the lowly race, who driven forth by starving penury, crowd our more prosperous shores,

that we can justly estimate the true character of the peasantry of that unhappy country. The Memoirs of Captain Rock may have done something towards removing the national prejudices of Englishmen ; while the frequent and continued agitation of that important question, the Emancipation of the Catholics, has roused a spirit of inquiry in every worthy bosom that will much advantage the oppressed, and, eventually, diffuse a more general and generous feeling towards the Irish throughout civilized Europe. I have been led into this strain of contemplation, by observing the ridiculous folly and wasteful expenditure of the nobility and fashionables of Great Britain; who, neglecting their starving tenantry and kindred friends, crowd to the shores of France and Italy in search of scenery and variety, without having the slightest knowledge of the romantic beauties and delightful landscapes, which abound in the three kingdoms of the Rose, the Shamrock, and the Thistle. How much good might be done by the examples of a few illustrious, noble, and wealthy individuals, making annual visits to Ireland and Scotland! what a field does it afford for true enjoyment! how superior, in most instances, the accommodations and security; and how little, if at all inferior, to the scenic attractions of foreign countries. Then too the gratification of observing the progress of improvement in the lower classes, of administering to their wants, and consoling with them under their patient sufferings from oppressive laws, rendered perhaps painfully necessary by the political temperature of the times or the unforgiving suspicions of the past. But I am becoming sentimental when I ought to be humorous, contemplative when I should be characteristic, and seriously sententious when I ought to be playfully satirical. Forgive me, gentle reader, if from the collapse of the spirit, I have for a moment turned aside from the natural gaiety of my

style, to give utterance to the warm feelings of an eccentric but generous heart. But, allons to the wake.

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"Plaze ye'r honor," said Barney O'Finn (my groom of the chambers), "may I be axing a holiday tonight?" "It will be very inconvenient, Barney; but'But, your honor's not the jontleman to refuse a small trate o' the sort," said Barney, anticipating the conclusion of my objection. There was some thing unusually anxious about the style of the poor fellow's request that made me hesitate in the refusal. "It's not myself that would be craving the favor, but a poor dead cousin o' mine, heaven rest his soul!" “And how can the granting of such a request benefit your departed relation, Barney?" quoth I, not a little puzzled by the strangeness of the application. "Sure, that's mighty clare of comprehension, your honor. Teddy O'Rafferty was my own mother's brother's son, and devil o' like o' him there was in all Kilgobbin : we went to ould Father O'Rourke's school together when we were spalpeens, and ate our paraters and butter-milk out o' the same platter; many's the scrape we've been in together: bad luck to the ould schoolmaster, for he flogged all the larning out o' poor Teddy, and all the liking for't out of Barney O'Finn, that's myself, your honor-so one dark night we took advantage of the moon, and having joined partnership in property put it all into a Limerick silk handkerchief, with which we made the best of our way to Dublin, travelling stage arter stage by the ould-fashioned conveyance, Pat Adam's ten-toed machine. Many's the drap we got on the road to drive away care. All the wide world before us, and all the fine family estate behind,-pigs, poultry, and relations, divil a tenpenny did we ever touch since. It's not your honor that will be angry to hear a few family misfortins," said Barney, hesitating to proceed with his narration. "Give me my hat, fellow," said

I, "and don't torture me with your nonsense.""May be it an't nonsense your honor means?" "And why not, sirrah?"—" Bekase it's not in your nature to spake light o' the dead." Up to this point, my attention had been divided between the Morning Chronicle which lay upon my breakfast table, and Barney's comical relation; a glance at the narrator, however, as he finished the last sentence, convinced me that I ought to have treated him with more feeling. He was holding my hat towards me, when the pearly drop of affliction burst uncontrollably forth, and hung on the side of the beaver, like a sparkling crystal gem loosed from the cavern's roof, to rest upon the jasper stone beneath. I would have given up my Mastership of Arts to have recalled that word nonsense: I was so touched with the poor fellow's pathos. "Shall I tell your onor the partikilars?" "Ay, do, Barney, proceed."-" Well, your onor, we worked our way to London togither-haymaking and harvesting Taste fashions the man' was a saw of ould Father O'Rourke's; 'though divil a taste had he, but for draining the whiskey bottle and bating the boys, bad luck to his mimory! 'Is it yourself?' said I, to young squire O'Sullivan, from Scullanabogue, whom good fortune threw in my way the very first day I was in London. Troth, and it is, Barney,' said he 'What brings you to the sate of government?' 'I'm seeking sarvice and fortune, your onor,' said I. 'Come your ways, then, my darling,' said he; and, without more to do, he made me his locum tenens, first clerk, messenger, and man of all work to a Maynooth Milesian. There was onor enough in all conscience for me, only it was not vary profitable. For, altho' my master followed the law, the law wouldn't follow him, and he'd rather more bags than briefs :--the consequence was, I had more banyan days than the man in the wilderness. Divil a'care, I got a character by my conduct, and a good place when I left him, as your

onor can testify. As for poor Teddy, divil a partikle of taste had he for fashionable life, but a mighty pratty notion of the arts, so he turned operative arkitekt; engaged himself to a layer of bricks, and skipped nimbly up and down a five story ladder with a longtailed box upon his shoulder-pace be to his ashes! He was rather too fond of the crature-many's the slip he had for his life—one minute breaking a jest, and the next breaking a joint; till there wasn't a sound limb to his body. Arrah, sure, it was all the same to Teddy-only last Monday, he was more elevated than usual, for he had just reached the top of the steeple of one of the new churches with a three gallon can of beer upon his knowledge-box, and, perhaps a little too much of the crature inside o' it. 'Shout, Teddy, to the honour of the saint,' said the foreman of the works (for they had just completed the job). Poor Teddy's religion got the better of his understanding, for in shouting long life to the dedicatory saint, he lost his own-missed his footing, and pitched over the scaffold like an odd chimney-pot in a high wind, and came down smash to the bottom with a head as flat as a bump. Divil a word has he ever spake since ; for when they picked him up, he was dead as a Dublin bay herring and now he lies in his cabin in Dyotstreet, St. Giles, as stiff as a poker,—and to-night, your onor, we are going to wake him, poor soul! to smoke a pipe, and spake an horashon over his corpse before we put him dacently to bed with the shovel. Then, there's his poor widow left childless, and divil a rap to buy paraters wid—bad luck to the eye that wouldn't drap a tear to his mimory, and could be the heart that refuses to comfort his widow!" Here poor Barney could no longer restrain his feelings, and having concluded the family history, blubbered outright. It was a strange mixture of the ludicrous and the sorrowful; but told with such an artless simplicity and genuine traits of feeling, that I would have defied the most