professional mourners, called keeners (from Caorne, á funeral elegy), to lament over the dead. The chorus by which the effusions of Erin's elegiac muse are supported is termed, by Mr. Twiss, "the Irish howl."

I am a young fellow

Who loves to be mellow,

To drink and be merry is all my delight;
I often get frisky,

By tippling good whisky,

With jovial companions from morning to night.
I never took pleasure

In hoarding up treasure;

The sight of a miser I cannot endure,

Who always is griping,

And sharping, and biting,

And laying out schemes for to plunder the poor.
Ri fal-da-riddle lah, &c.

Of the beggarly miser

I am a despiser;

The fruit of his labour he never enjoys;

His heirs for his money,

Impatient of honey,

Are waiting and hate him, while with it he toys.
His frame is complaining,

For want of sustaining;

His limbs are decrepit, from hunger and cold;

Instead of good liquor

To make his pulse quicker,

He's gloating and doating on that idol called gold.

Ri fal, &c.

As for me, while I'm able,

At the head of a table,

Set me down of good whisky a full water stand,
Where each clever toper

May drink like the pope, or

May toast to his friends with a bumper in hand.
By the side of that jorum,

Like a Justice of Quorum,

I'll preside full of state in my holyday clothes;
In winter or summer,

With a rollocking rummer,

A pipe for to smoke, and a jug at my nose.

Ri fal, &c.

"Come, drawer, this spirit

Of yours has some merit.

Sweet piper, come squeeze up your leather and play ; And hand him the pitcher,

It makes music richer,"

Thus we'll drink and carouse to the dawning of day. I hold them but asses

Who wait to fill glasses,

Such muddling and fuddling 's unworthy of man ;
It only is wasting

The time that is hasting,—

Commend me to those that will fugle the can.

Ri fal, &c.

When stopped in my toddy

By death seizing my body,

No crocodile tears shall be shed at my wake;
While there I am lying

No counterfeit crying,

No moans, I desire, shall be made for my sake. I've no taste for squalling,

Or old women's bawling,

Who string nonsense together and call it a keen; Who only are selling

Their yelping and yelling

For some one, perhaps, that they never have seen.

But of whisky a cruiskeen

To fill up each loose skin,

Let all have to toast to my journey up

And three jolly pipers

To tune up for the swipers,

hill;

While each boy honestly swallows his fill.
Then a blackthorn cudgel

For each, should they grudge ill,

To anoint one another, and none to control.
Nor let them be down-hearted

For him that's departed,

But end their disputes in a full flowing bowl.

The next morning early,

When daylight 'tis fairly,

My trunk shall be nailed quite close to my back; Four stout lads so civil

Will bear it up level,

Whilst I ride on their shoulders instead of a sack.

Now let them all sing,

And the valleys will ring,

Raising up a fine chorus, both gallant and brave; Then lay me down flat,

Like a sieve-woman's hat,

And away goes the merry man into his grave.

6 and 7. Substitutes for ditto; viz. a clusheen shell and an egg shell.

Hamlet, i. 2.

THE IRISH OAK,

FIGURATIVELY termed "a sprig of Shillelah," is so called from Shillelah, a district in the county of Wicklow, formerly celebrated for its oak woods. "And who has not heard of Irish oak?" vehemently inquires the amusing essayist upon national emblems, in "The Dublin Penny Journal.”

"And who has not heard of Irish oak? For, though our hills and plains are now so bare of trees that they excite the admiration of all timber-hating Yankees as they sail along our improved shores, yet formerly it was not So. No! It is said that Westminster Hall is roofed with oak, brought from the wood of Shillelah; and a great many of our common names are significant of oak woods. As Kildare, the wood of oak; Londonderry, the oakwood planted by Londoners; Ballinderry, the town in the oak-wood. At the bottom of all our bogs, and on the tops of our highest hills, roots of oak of immense size are found; and we may fairly conclude, that though Ireland is now a denuded country, it was once the most umbrageous of the British isles. The customs of our country shew that our people once dwelt under the greenwood tree; for an Irishman cannot walk or wander, sport or fight, buy or sell, comfortably, without an oak stick in