satisfaction, at prices that reminded one of the time when fresh
meat was sold for threepence a pound. At the further end of the
green there were one or two rough shooting galleries, and a number
of women--not very rigid, one could see--selling, or appearing to
sell, all kinds of trifles: a set that come in, I am told, from
towns not far away. At the end of the green I turned past the
chapel, where a little crowd had just carried in a man who had been
killed or badly wounded by a fall from a horse, and went down to the
bridge of the river, and then back again into the main slope of the
town. Here there were a number of people who had come in for
amusement only, and were walking up and down, looking at each
other--a crowd is as exciting as champagne to these lonely people,
who live in long glens among the mountains--and meeting with cousins
and friends. Then, in the three-cornered space in the middle of the
town, I came on Puck himself a magnificent he-goat (Irish puc),
raised on a platform twenty feet high, and held by a chain from each
horn, with his face down the road. He is kept in this position, with
a few cabbages to feed on, for three days, so that he may preside
over the pig-fair and the horse-fair and the day of winding up.

At the foot of this platform, where the crowd was thickest, a young
ballad-singer was howling a ballad in honour of Puck, making one
think of the early Greek festivals, since the time of which, it is
possible, the goat has been exalted yearly in Killorglin.

The song was printed on a green slip by itself. It ran:

A NEW SONG ON THE GREAT PUCK FAIR.

By JOHN PURCELL.