And now, kind reader, I behold
Before me, as in days of old,
Bold Paddy Whelan, Wexford Paddy
Surely of noisy men the daddy;
A man of most Herculean form,
Who roamed through sunshine and through storm,
And sounded loud in other days
His notes in Hamnett Pinhey's praise--
And well he might sing with loud swell,
"The Lamb of March" deserved it well!
A man of learning, wit, and sense,
No shallow thing of vain pretence,
The true stamp of the current guinea
Bore March's Father, Hamnett Pinhey.
To "Muddy Little York" went he,
The Independent and the Free
To represent with power effective
Amid the wisdom most collective,
In the old days of Compact Rule
Ere Grittism yet had gone to school;
Dalhousie District's Archives too,
Can show what he was wont to do.
Paddy, though not of _genus feræ,_
Was yet a queer _lusus naturæ_;
His vital organs played beneath
A shield of solid bone 'till death,
Without a yielding space between,
Where ribs in other men are seen,
Though not a feathered bird, his toes
Were web'd as well the writer knows,