"I don't care," replied I, "If you were even a great grandfather. As it cannot concern you there is no need for such excitement."
"Look you here," hissed he through his gnashing teeth, "So sure as I am a living man, should you give effect to your stated intention, and publish the facts just mentioned, the morning after its appearance I will pounce upon you at your office, and kill you on the spot. The Parliament House will be no sanctuary for you, for no matter what the consequences—even were I to swing for it—I'll murder you as sure as my name is what it is. Be warned, therefore, for your life depends on how you act."
"Shut up your bounce," I retorted in a pretended scoffing tone. "I care no more about your insane threats than I do of that," (snapping my fingers). "On this evening week (D.V.) the Queen Street fracas will appear in the Herald; and at eleven next morning, should you so wish 'We shall meet again at Philippi.' So until then
'Fare thee well, and if for ever,
Still for ever fare thee well.'"
I had not the slightest intention of doing what I had jocularly intimated. My threat was simply to reduce his "tall talk," but I learned that he had passed through a harrowing ordeal during the suspense week, for he believed I meant to gibbet him, and we rarely have a talk without reference to the terrible "rise" I took out of him.
The Nomenclative Origin of "Garryowen."
The pseudonym of "Garryowen," the curiosity as to its derivation and meaning, and the phases of mispronunciation through which it was squeezed, were sources of intense amusement to me. Irishmen, as a rule, were equal to both difficulties, but in English, Scotch, Welsh, and other European mouths the unoffending tri-syllable fared roughly. From "Garryowen" it was twisted into "Grioune," "Girone," "Groan," "Gron," "Groin" and "Grun," at all of which I laughed; but when a most particular friend once, in Collins Street, sang out, "Well, Grin, my boy, how long are we to be without seeing the end of your Sketches?" the best thing I could do was to "grin" and bear it. Included in my friendly circle is a worthy Frenchman, who had acquired a taste for English literature. He read my Chronicles as they appeared, and felt an interest in them which I appreciated much, as emanating from an "enlightened foreigner." But the term "Garryowen" he could not master, and it underwent several grotesque lacerations in his efforts to articulate it. In its course of transformations it became "Garringyong," "Grayiyong," "Carry-on," until finally it was "Carrion' on his tongue. I promised that I would explain it to his satisfaction, and, so as to keep my word, I worked up the following little fable. With a serio-comic face I told him that my ancestry in the male line sprang from an unit of the hardy Border Frenchmen once located on a spur of the Pyrenees, not far from where the famed river, the Garonne, rushes along en route to the Atlantic. In the course of time one of them found his way to Ireland amongst the Norman invaders, and having secured a large confiscated estate on the banks of the Shannon, and, what was better, a winsome Irish wife, and by becoming "more Irish than the Irish themselves," contributed towards the coinage of the historic adage, ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. The territory so acquired he named "Garonne," as a memento of his birthplace, and in the course of time the term got to be so softened by the contact of centuries with Celtic tongues, that it was imperceptibly modulated into "Garryowen," which could be simply regarded as the Hibernicised nomenclature of the French river. Ergo, as a Franco-Irishman by descent, and proud of my mixed extraction, I held the designation in such high esteem that I brought it with me from the Emerald Isle, resolved to do all in my power to transplant it in the country of my adoption. Such was the Why and Wherefore of "Garryowen." Monsieur, though in many respects as canny as the proverbial Scotchman, was unconsciously trapped, and thenceforth he was as well pleased with both title and story as one could possibly be. The term was no longer "carrion" to his palate, and he succeeded in mastering its orthodox pronunciation as well as the most undiluted
