"That's more than I can say of the ale, which, like all the ale in these parts, is bitter. Well, what part of Ireland do you come from?""From no part at all. I never was in Ireland in my life. I am from Scotland Road, Manchester.""Why, I thought you were Irish?"
"And so I am; and all the more from being born where I was.
There's not such a place for Irish in all the world as Scotland Road.""Were your father and mother from Ireland?""My mother was from Ireland: my father was Irish of Scotland Road, where they met and married.""And what did they do after they married?""Why, they worked hard, and did their best to get a livelihood for themselves and children, of which they had several besides myself, who was the eldest. My father was a bricklayer, and my mother sold apples and oranges and other fruits, according to the season, and also whiskey, which she made herself, as she well knew how; for my mother was not only a Connacht woman, but an out-and-out Connamara quean, and when only thirteen had wrought with the lads who used to make the raal cratur on the islands between Ochterard and Bally na hinch. As soon as I was able, I helped my mother in ****** and disposing of the whiskey and in selling the fruit. As for the other children, they all died when young, of favers, of which there is always plenty in Scotland Road. About four years ago - that is, when I was just fifteen - there was a great quarrel among the workmen about wages. Some wanted more than their masters were willing to give; others were willing to take what was offered them.
Those who were dissatisfied were called bricks; those who were not were called dungs. My father was a brick; and, being a good man with his fists, was looked upon as a very proper person to fight a principal man amongst the dungs. They fought in the fields near Salford for a pound a side. My father had it all his own way for the first three rounds, but in the fourth, receiving a blow under the ear from the dung, he dropped, and never got up again, dying suddenly. A grand wake my father had, for which my mother furnished usquebaugh galore; and comfortably and dacently it passed over till about three o'clock in the morning, when, a dispute happening to arise - not on the matter of wages, for there was not a dung amongst the Irish of Scotland Road - but as to whether the O'Keefs or O'Kellys were kings of Ireland a thousand years ago, a general fight took place, which brought in the police, who, being soon dreadfully baten, as we all turned upon them, went and fetched the military, with whose help they took and locked up several of the party, amongst whom were my mother and myself, till the next morning, when we were taken before the magistrates, who, after a slight scolding, set us at liberty, one of them saying that such disturbances formed part of the Irish funeral service; whereupon we returned to the house, and the rest of the party joining us, we carried my father's body to the churchyard, where we buried it very dacently, with many tears and groanings.""And how did your mother and you get on after your father was buried?""As well as we could, yere hanner; we sold fruit, and now and then a drop of whiskey, which we made; but this state of things did not last long, for one day my mother seeing the dung who had killed my father, she flung a large flint stone and knocked out his right eye, for doing which she was taken up and tried, and sentenced to a year's imprisonment, chiefly it was thought because she had been heard to say that she would do the dung a mischief the first time she met him. She, however, did not suffer all her sentence, for before she had been in prison three months she caught a disorder which carried her off. I went on selling fruit by myself whilst she was in trouble, and for some time after her death, but very lonely and melancholy. At last my uncle Tourlough, or, as the English would call him, Charles, chancing to come to Scotland Road along with his family, I was glad to accept an invitation to join them which he gave me, and with them I have been ever since, travelling about England and Wales and Scotland, helping my aunt with the children, and driving much the same trade which she has driven for twenty years past, which is not an unprofitable one.""Would you have any objection to tell me all you do?""Why I sells needles, as I said before, and sometimes I buys things of servants, and sometimes I tells fortunes.""Do you ever do anything in the way of striopachas?""Oh no! I never do anything in that line; I would be burnt first.
I wonder you should dream of such a thing.""Why surely it is not worse than buying things of servants, who no doubt steal them from their employers, or telling fortunes, which is dealing with the devil.""Not worse? Yes, a thousand times worse; there is nothing so very particular in doing them things, but striopachas - Oh dear!""It's a dreadful thing I admit, but the other things are quite as bad; you should do none of them.""I'll take good care that I never do one, and that is striopachas;them other things I know are not quite right, and I hope soon to have done wid them; any day I can shake them off and look people in the face, but were I once to do striopachas I could never hold up my head""How comes it that you have such a horror of striopachas?""I got it from my mother, and she got it from hers. All Irish women have a dread of striopachas. It's the only thing that frights them; I manes the wild Irish, for as for the quality women I have heard they are no bit better than the English. Come, yere hanner, let's talk of something else.""You were saying now that you were thinking of leaving off fortune-telling and buying things of servants. Do you mean to depend upon your needles alone?""No; I am thinking of leaving off tramping altogether and going to the Tir na Siar.""Isn't that America?"
"It is, yere hanner; the land of the west is America.""A long way for a lone girl."
"I should not be alone, yere hanner; I should be wid my uncle Tourlough and his wife.""Are they going to America?"
