The dance to which Sarah M'Gowan went after the conflict with her
step-mother, was but a miserable specimen of what a dance usually is in
Ireland. On that occasion, there were but comparatively few assembled;
and these few, as may be guessed, consisted chiefly of those gay and
frolicsome spirits whom no pressure of distress, nor anything short of
sickness or death, could sober down into seriousness. The meeting, in
fact, exhibited a painful union of mirth and melancholy. The season
brought with it none of that relief to the peasantry which usually makes
autumn so welcome. On the contrary, the failure of the potato crop,
especially in its quality, as well as that in the grain generally, was
not only the cause of hunger and distress, but also of the sickness
which prevailed. The poor were forced, as they too often are, to dig
their potatoes before they were fit for food; and the consequences were
disastrous to themselves in every sense. Sickness soon began to appear;
but then it was supposed that as soon as the new grain came in, relief
would follow. In this expectation, however, they were, alas! most
wofully disappointed. The wetness of the summer and autumn had soured
and fermented the grain so lamentably, that the use of it transformed
the sickness occasioned by the unripe and bad potatoes into a terrible
and desolating epidemic. At the period we are treating of, this awful
scourge had just set in, and was beginning to carry death and misery in
all their horrors throughout the country. It was no wonder, then, that,
at the dance we are describing, there was an almost complete absence of
that cheerful and light-hearted enjoyment which is, or at least which
was, to be found at such meetings. It was, besides, owing to the
severity of the evening, but thinly attended. Such a family had two
or three members of it sick; another had buried a fine young woman; a
third, an only son; a fourth, had lost the father, and the fifth, the
mother of a large family. In fact, the conversation on this occasion was
rather a catalogue of calamity and death, than that hearty ebullition of