the stone, wrestling, leaping, foot-ball, and every other description
of athletic exercise filled up the measure of my early happiness. I
attended every wake, dance, fair, and merry-making in the neighborhood,
and became so celebrated for dancing hornpipes, jigs, and reels, that I
was soon without a rival in the parish.

This kind of life, though very delightful to a boy of my years, was not,
however, quite satisfactory, as it afforded me no ultimate prospect, and
the death of my father had occasioned the circumstances of the family
to decline. I heard, about this time, that a distant relative of mine,
a highly respectable priest, had opened a classical school near
Glasslough, in the county of Monaghan. To him I accordingly went,
mentioned our affinity, and had my claims allowed. I attended his school
with intermission for about two years, at the expiration of which period
I once more returned to our family, who were then very much reduced.

I was now about nineteen, strong, active, and could leap two-and-twenty
feet on a dead level; but though thoroughly acquainted with Irish life
among my own class, I was as ignorant of the world as a child. Ever
since my boyhood, in consequence of the legends which I had heard from
my father, about the far-famed Lough-derg, or St. Patrick's Purgatory, I
felt my imagination fired with a romantic curiosity to perform a station
at that celebrated place. I accordingly did so, and the description of
that most penal performance, some years afterwards, not only constituted
my debut in literature, but was also the means of preventing me from
being a pleasant, strong-bodied parish priest at this day; indeed, it
was the cause of changing the whole destiny of my subsequent life.

"The Loughderg Pilgrim" is given in the present edition, and may be
relied on, not so much as an ordinary narrative, as a perfect transcript