In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance.

Everything that is bad, the falling sickness - God save the mark - or the like, should be at its worst at the full moon. I suppose because it is the leader of the stars.

It takes madness to find out madness.

Our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth?

What are prophecies? Don't we hear them every day of the week? And if one comes true there may be seven blind and come to nothing.

If the past year were offered me again, And choice of good and ill before me set Would I accept the pleasure with the pain Or dare to wish that we had never met?

I was told in many places of Osgar's bravery and Goll's strength and Conan's bitter tongue, and the arguments of Oisin and Patrick. And I have often been given the story of Oisin's journey to Tir-nan-Og, the Country of the Young, that is, as I am told, a fine place and everything that is good is in it.