Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/246

 184 anyone, what he ought to do is to shake a pinchful of the ashes of the airc-luachra upon the wound, and he will be cured thereby; and so, if worldly prosperity wounds the conscience, what you ought to do is to put a poultice of the same prosperity to cure the wound which the covetousness by which you have amassed it has made in your conscience, by distributing upon the poor of God all that remains over your own necessity." The practice which the fourth-century Latin alludes to, is in Ireland to-day transferred to the dar-daol, or goevius olens of the naturalists, which is always burnt as soon as found. I have often heard people say:—"Kill a keerhogue (clock or little beetle); burn a dar-dael."

Page 59. Boccuch, literally a lame man, is, or rather was, the name of a very common class of beggars about the beginning of this century. Many of these men were wealthy enough, and some used to go about with horses to collect the "alms" which the people unwillingly gave them. From all accounts they appear to have been regular black-mailers, and to have extorted charity partly through inspiring physical and partly moral terror, for the satire, at least of some of them, was as much dreaded as their cudgels. Here is a curious specimen of their truculence from a song called the, now nearly forgotten:—

i.e.,

I am a boccugh who goes on one foot, I will travel airily, I will buy frize in Kilkenny for the breeches(?) I will put a well-ordered prepared coat and yellow buckles on my one foot, And isn't it good, my way of getting food and clothes since my feet lost their walk. There is no boccuch or bagman from Sligo to Kinsale And from Ballina to Ballybwee (Athboy) in Meath, That I have not under high rent to me--a crown every quarter from them-- Or I'd pound their bones small with a green oak stick.