Broadside entitled '1599 Newly Invented Neat Irish Lies'

Transcription

1599 Newly Invented
Neat Irish Lies.

The particular account of old Mother Clifton's door, that was
locked by the roasted rib of a chew of tobacco, and burst open
by gale of wind from sow gelder's horn, and blew the old
woman seven hundred and seventy-seven miles beyoad the moon.
I went in search of her, and ran five days and nights as fast as ,
I could, with my two shin bones in my pocket, and my head
under my arm, by order of Joe Buck, a pensioner, who lost his
middle eye at the battle of pea-soup, when eating half boiled
stir-about.   I then got upon a buck flea's back, and rode over
the rocks of Skilligallee and mountains of Butter-milk, where I
met Jarvis the coachman, driving three dead horses under an
empty post chaise, laden with thirty-six fustain cutters, eighteen
spinners, and six magpies, all drinking tea till as black as snow
in the face.    I then asked him if he could tell me where one
Mother Clifton was.    He said he could not; but told me to go
to Jenny Broadside's house, at the hen's foot and cut's feathers,
in the parish of no place.    It was a little black white straight
crooked house, built all alone by itself, with five or six house
next door to it, and not a house within a thousand miles of the
place.    I thanked him; then set out running as fast as I could
sit by n ditch side, with my head under my arms, and my two
shin bones in my po cet, till I met with a poor man.    I asked
what ailed him; he said he had got the horn cholic in his big
toe, the head-ache in his belly, the tooth-ache behind his neck,
and the roger-gum-stnmble in his bread-bags, Dublin Custom-
house on his back, the Exchange in his pocket, and the New
Builey, where they dig for day-light, stuck in his near eye for
If waling cane,    I said " Lord help you, poor man ! and the
devil's cure to you ; why hadn't you better luck?"    So I put
him in a coach, and drove him, coach and all, into a doctor's
shop, and ordered three dozea of pigs' eggs, three quarts of
pigeons' milk, three ounce of grass-hoppers' blood, two-quarts
of cels' basting, the head and pluck of a buck flea, the ribs of
a roasted chew of tobacco, the lights and liver of a cobler's lap-
stone, boiled together separately in a leather wooden iron pot.
After ta ing this dose, he was brought to bed of two monkies,
a pair of blacs miths' bellows, a jack-ass, hamper of greens,
elerenteen regiments of royal Irish dragoons, that fired a royal
salute of forty-one, in honour of King Daniel O'Connell.    After
this cure I went to Johnny Ironside's,   and the only people I
met were three dead dogs playing at ball against a brick wall
made of paper. I found Johnny in health, and asked him if
he had heard of Mother Clifton, that was drowned last night
about six weeks ago, in a shower of feathers.    He said " Yes,
I wrote to her to-morrow three weeks since, when fast asleep
with my two eyes open in the middle of broad day-light and
as dark as pitch.    I thanked him for his intelligence, and was
going to bid him good, bye, but he told me I should not go til
I had dined.    And what should he put before ma but a dish of
stewed paving stones, well mixed with the lights and 1iver of a
cobler's lap-stone, and two quarts of a lamp-lighter's snuff box;
the next dish was full of wooden dumpling, stufted with eighteen
pounds of wax, three yards of tripe, two pounds of rosin, and
twelve fat bags.    After eating a hearty bally-full, I was ready
to burst with hunger, and paid for my dinner with the third
part of a farthing.   I was again going, but not permitted till I
saw some of him wonders;    He showed ma a small cabbage   
which covered ten acres of land, and under it ware ten regi-
ments of artillery and fourteen regiment of Irish bog-trotters
in a bloody engagement, firing lamp-lighters' wigs and pigs'
eggs at each other.   The new wonder was a big man in a scar-
let black coat, standing on a small heath table, preaching a
long sermon, but nothing spoke; when a north country buck
flea bit him by the pole of the neck and made him roar murder.
He began to scratch himself, and catched the unfortunate devil
by the hair of his head, then took him before a fidler's clerk
and swore his life against him, and afterwards dashed his brains
out against a sack of water.    He then showed me a little boy
thrashing tobacco into pease, when a pea went snack through
a wall eighteen feet thick, killed a dead dog on the other side,
and drowned him in a dry ditch.    Then I saw the London
privateer and the channel royal mail-coach in a desperate en-
gagement, firing at each other boiled oyster shells,   stewed
pavement stones, and roasted wigs.    One of the stones hit old
Mother Clifton over the right eye, and delivered her of an old
woman of Radcliffe highway, who was her sister, and had nine
rows of wax teeth, and a three cocked hat made of the right
side of crab's nostril.    I ,tock the old hag and made a leap
with her from Liverpool to the north of Ireland   where I saw
a French frigate with Nelson's monument on her mast;-------
To conclude, this old woman stepped out of the ship into the
sea, then I made my escape, but the old woman was always
tipsy by the drinking of chandlers' tobacco, so she sank into
the bottom ; and if you will be at the trouble to go here, you
will find her making straw hats of deal boards.

Sanderson, printed,High street, Edenburgh.

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