Note 13 — ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS

There are full grounds for this assertion. Classical learning has flourished in Kerry (under a hedge) from time immemorial. I recollect an illustrative anecdote. Two poor scholars who were travelling through Kerry, came to a farm-house, when faint with hunger, and foot-sore with walking; they went in, and modestly wanted "a drink of water," which was given them. On leaving the house, where they had expected something better than this scant hospitality, one of them exclaimed, "Ah, Pat, that's not the way that a farmer's wife would trate a poor scholar in our part of the world. 'Tis the good bowl of milk she'd give him, and not the piggin of cold water. She's a malus mulier." The other responded, "Say mala—it must be so to agree with the feminine mulier. Don't you know that malus mulier is bad Latin?" "Hold your tongue," was the answer: "whatever it is, it is only too good for a niggard like her."