Chapter I

Ay, her people an’ mine we lived next door at the end o’ the long boreen,
Afore it runs out on the breadth o’ the bog where the black land bates the green;
An’ Nelly’s mother ’ud always give me a pleasant word passin’ thim by,
As I dhruv out our cow of a mornin’, an’ meself scarce her showlder high.
An’ Nelly she’d crawl up the step, an’ stump afther me into the lane,
An’ she’d throt, callin’: ‘’Top, Dimmy, ’top!’ for she couldn’t run sthraight, or spake plain;
And her mother’d say, ‘Jimmy, me lad, if I trust her along wid ye, thin,
Keep your eye on her; mind the big hole; for your life don’t be lettin’ her in.’
So it’s many a day I’d be keepin’ me eye on the child an’ the baste,
That had mostly a mind to be goin’ wherever ye wanted thim laste;
An’ th’ ould cow’d sthray away thro’ the bog, if she couldn’t find mischief to do
Thramplin’ fences an’ fields; but it’s Nelly herself was the worst o’ the two.
For ere ever ye’d know, there she’d be like a scut of a rabbit a-creep--
She’d creep faster thim whiles than she’d walk--down the bank where the hole’s lyin’ deep;
An’ it’s thin I’d the work o’ the world to be catchin’ her an’ coaxin’ her back,
Such a fancy she’d tuk to the place, an’ it lookin’ so ugly an’ black,
Wid its sides cut wall-sthraight wid the spade, an’ the wather like midnight below,
Lyin’ far out o’ reach; overhead all the storm-winds may blusther an’ blow,
But ’tis still as a floor o’ stone flags, an’ its depth ye can’t measure noways;
Sure if Nelly had crep’ o’er the edge, she’d ha’ crep’ to the end of her days.

II

But the years wint till Nelly’d more wit than to dhrown of herself in a hole,
An’ meself was a size to git work in the fields; yit, fair weather or foul,
Whin a holiday come we’d be out rovin’ round on the bog, she an’ me,
For we always kep’ frinds; and it’s lonesome was Nell, since the mother, ye see,
Tuk an’ died wan hard winter, worse luck--a bad job for the little colleen--
And her brothers had gone to the States, and her father was fond o’ potheen,
And ’ud bide dhrinkin’ dhrops down at Byrne’s till he hadn’t a thought in his head;
So that, barrin’ ould Granny an’ me, all her company’d quit or was dead.