Curiosities and wonders > Sleeping beauty of the wood

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ust the more readily the more marvellous they
were.—His master having gone one day to Bel¬
fast, he went to old Brien Sollaghan’s wake,
where a lad just come home from a foreign voy¬
age was telling stories out of the course of nature,
improbable. Paddy believed all he was relating
but something about blackamoors; for he swore
“ ’twas impossible for one man to be black, and
another man white, for he could not be naturally
black without he was paintedbut,” says he,
‘ 1 11 ask the master in the morning, when he
comes home, and then I’ll know all about it.’ So
he says in the morning, ‘ Master, is there any
such a thing as a blackamoor ?’ ‘ To be sure there
is, as many as would make regiments of them,
but they’re all abroad.’ ‘ And what makes them
black ?’ ‘ Why, it’s the climate, they say.’ ‘ And
what’s the climate ?’ ‘ Why I don’t know : I be¬
lieve it’s something they rub upon them when
they’re very young.’ ‘ They must have a deal of
it, and very cheap, if there’s as many of them as
you say.—The next time you’re in Belfast, I wish
you’d get a piece of it, and we’ll rub little Barney
over with it and then we can have a blackamoor
of our own. But as I'm going in the Irish Vol¬
unteer, from Larne to America, in the spring,
I’ll see them there. Paddy went over as a re-
demptioner and had to serve a time for his pass¬
age. One day he was sent by his master six