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away and left us; and our horse had eaten so many coals,
that it was wanton, and cantered up with one end up and down
with the other: I turned as sick as a peat (8) and
vomited all that ever was in me. Oh! wounds I was ill, and
thought I should have died: I vomited all colours. The day
after we set forward an island met us, they called it Man; I
would gladly have seen it come close to us, but it slipt
away by and left us: but some more land met us next day
after; it ws very shy, but we followed it up, because they
said Dublin was upon it. I persuaded the man with the
three-cornered hat to overtake it if he burst his horse; and
he told a fellow to twist (9) the tail of it, as they do
swine or bulls when they carry them to bait at Keswick and
they will not go forward; then we got to Dublin presently.
But I had like to have forgot to tell thee such great black
fishes we saw; they snored, when they came out of the great
pool, like thunder, and they swallow land-horses as hens do
barley; (perhaps swallow sea-horses when they die.) It was a
fine bright morning when we got into Dublin bay, as they
call it, where the sea goes up to the land as a dog does to
the head of a bull. Two men in one of their boats came to
our horse side, they called them Paddies; one could not tell
their language from geese. They drunk heartily of our water
too; it stunk too, but we had nothing better to drink, for
the great pool is as salt as brine; it would poison thee if
thou tasted it. We gave the two fellows in the boat a
halter, and they led our horse into Dublin, as wild as it
was. But Oh! man what a fine country there was on the other
side of us; houses as white as snow (10), and as close as
mice: Dublin town looked like a great fold full of sheep,
that one could but just see the heads of: chimneys looked
like horns, and church-steeples and spires, as they call
them, like as many goat-horns amongst the others. Sea-horses
are as numerous in Dublin river (11) as if thou was looking
at ten thousand geese in a gutter (12); they have not folds
for them as we have in England, (the town keeps them warm in
winter,) but they feed them with sand, as they do at
Whitehaven with coals, only not out of rack-hurries; they
have a mouth in their side, in at which men feed them with
great iron spoons. But Oh! man it was lucky I lighted upon a
man that went to school with me when I was a little boy; we
were devilish kind, and he said he would let me see all
things. If I had gone into Dublin by myself, I might have
gone fifty miles a-day and seen nothing but house after
house, and (the streets) like our lanes for length; one
cannot see the earth for pavement any where. I should never
have seen Old England again if I had been by myself, I dare
say, for they are the devil for setting one wrong if one ask
them. There are houses they call public buildings, that are
so fine I cannot tell thee what they are like: the
Parliament-House, where gentlemen go to bait one another,
there are a number of great stone props at the foreside of
it; there is a room with red benches in it, where they
fight, I suppose it may be blood. There was a little woman
let us see that house; she was about four feet high, and was
as thick as three old mares twined together: I wonder that
she did not grow higher by living in a house twenty or
thirty feet high, but she was as broad as a haycock.
Opposite to this, and about a stone-throw from the
Parliament-House is Collership-House; it is a larger place
than the other. If thou was ever in a place where great
rocks hang over on all sides of thee; it would be like the
square in the middle of the college: the people that I saw
there was most of them as black as devils: it certainly is
not hell, but they say they get dead people out of their
graves; I think it is true, for I saw a great number of dead
peoples bones, and some lock'd up in glass coffins with
flesh on; and there were children and bits of flesh
preserved in bottles as people do berries. There was a
fellow with a bunch of keys opened locks and doors as quick
as sight: it made me think of Revelations where
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(8) Sick as peat; an old phrase denoting extreme sickness,
which I cannot explain. (9) Twining bull-tails; a method
used to give the animal pain, and the resource of butchers
in driving obstinate cattle. (10) White as snow, in the
original white as drip, another proverbial expression I
cannot explain. (11) Dublin river, the original Dublin beck;
beck is a stream of water not large enough to be called a
river, yet larger than what is called a Brook. (12) Gutter,
a ditch. (13) Collership, a blunder for scholarship, meaning
the college.
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