"Why, sure, every one knows you didn't ever hear of anything of good."

"I say you lie, Tim, you rascal."

Tim was on his legs in a few moments, and a general battle was about
to begin; but the appetite was too strong, and the quarrel was
settled; Tim having been appeased by being allowed to explain a
priest's oath. According to him, a priest's oath was this:--He was
surrounded by books, which were gradually piled up until they reached
his lips. He then kissed the uppermost, and swore by all to the
bottom. As soon as the admiration excited by his explanation, in those
who were capable of hearing Tim, had ceased, all fell to work; and
certainly, if the tripes had been of ordinary texture, drunk as was
the party, they would soon have disappeared. After gnawing at them for
some time, "Well," says Owen Connor, "that I mightn't!--but these are
the quarest tripes I ever eat. It must be she was very ould."

"By ----," says Andy, taking a piece from his mouth to which he had
been paying his addresses for the last half hour, "I'd as soon be
eating leather. She was a bull, man; I can't find the soft end at all
of it."

"And that's true for you, Andy," said the man of the gun; "and 'tis
the greatest shame they hadn't a bull-bait to make him tinder. Paddy,
was it from Jack Clifford's bull you got 'em? They'd do for wadding,
they're so tough."

"I'll tell you, Tim, where I got them--'twas out of Lord Shannon's
great cow at Cork, the great fat cow that the Lord Mayor bought for
the Lord Lieutenant--_Asda churp naur hagushch_."[14]