Tipperary Read Online Free PDF

speak of me to others. (This being Ireland, I hear such remarks not long after they are uttered—even if they were spoken at the opposite end of the country.)
    Some parental characteristics have landed upon me. My father too had hair the color of hay; now his head resembles an egg; and my mother has grave, gray eyes that lit up when she and my father engaged in one of their jostling talks.
    “Amelia, your eyes rob me of my arguments,” he would say, and he'd touch her cheeks with those huge hands of his, which I have inherited. (Many ladies have spoken to me of my own gray eyes, and I have my mother's laugh-crinkles.)
    Neither parent had the blessing of excellent teeth; nor have I. My father long thought about acquiring false teeth, of the kind sported by his friend the Bishop of Cloyne, who drank much port—but that gentleman had to learn to smile with his lips closed. I have a pair of feet that seem to go out of true too easily; my toes look like small hammers and cannot be as prehensile as I would wish. And I am a creature built for pleasure, I think, in the general arena between my upper and lower extremities.
    As to my appearance, people in general often remarked my wild mop of yellow-blond hair, and my height of six feet three inches, and my wide shoulders. Not that I am perfect; I have a small birthmark on my right hip, which, I have been told, looks like a dragonfly. Mother has assured me that it manifested itself at my arrival into the world and she interpreted it as a sign of good luck, of which the dragonfly has always been an omen.
    My father talked all the time, as though he feared silence and what it might bring in on its quiet wings. He talked for the sake of talking, for the sound of words. In his head he carried much knowledge, and when he required to know something that he did not already know, he in-vented it. Very early in my life I heard him call out the Seven Wonders of the World—and I heard them many times more.
    “Let us always be alphabetical where we can,” he would begin. “It preserves order.” And off he would go: “The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Temple of Artemis. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Pyramids of Giza. The Tomb of Halicarnassus. The Statue of Zeus. The Colossus of Rhodes.” As many times as I heard it I would puzzle at his system of alphabetization—and then he would launch into his next list, “The Seven Wonders of Tipperary”: “The Rock of Cashel. The Devil's Bit. The Weir at Golden. Tipperary Castle. The Shores of Lough Derg. The Glen of Aherlow. Kitty Cahill's legs.”
    By Father's side I saw these local marvels—all but one; the legs depended from a lady whom I never met, and whose character my mother disparaged. Memories of our other county “wonders” have constantly delighted my mind, and one of them, Tipperary Castle, came to dominate my existence. I am most pleased, however, by the fact that I learned of them through my father; their flavors and moods count among the many gifts he gave me.
    Here is a small tale of my father: As a young man he delighted in practical jokes until he found them too cruel; however, the memory of a certain escapade still tickles him. In the village nearby lived a solitary and very cranky little gentleman, who barked at one and all. He had an Achilles' heel, though, and the local boys, including Father, soon discovered this vulnerability. The little gentleman, when wages had been paid on a Saturday, tackled his pony to its cart, set off to the next village, and in the hostelry there imbibed until midnight. Then, drunk to insensibility almost, he came out, mounted the cart, said “Hup” to the pony, who then trotted him home, and the little gentleman fell asleep on the cart.
    One summer night, the local boys waited until the pony drew to a halt outside the little gentleman's door—which, in common with all our houses, was never locked. They gently took the sleeping man from the cart and carried him indoors. Next they