"Sure such a man," and they would name one
in the time of the mendicant's grandfather, "was once going to a fair to
sell a horse--well and good; the time was the dawn of morning, a little
before daylight: he met a man who undertook to purchase his horse; they
agreed upon the price, and the seller of him followed the buyer into
a Bath, where he found a range of horses, each with an armed soldier
asleep by his side, ready to spring upon him if awoke. The purchaser
cautioned the owner of the horse as they were about to enter the
subterraneous dwelling, against touching either horse or man; but the
countryman happening to stumble, inadvertently laid his hand, upon a
sleeping soldier, who immediately leaped up, drew his sword, and asked,
'Wuil anam inh?' 'Is the time in it? Is the time arrived?' To which the
horse-dealer of the Bath replied, '_Ha niel. Gho dhee collhow areesht_.'
'No: go to sleep again.' Upon this the soldier immediately sank down in
his former position, and unbroken sleep reigned throughout the cave."
The influence on the warm imaginations of an ignorant people, of such
fictions concocted by vagrant mendicants, is very pernicious. They fill
their minds with the most palpable absurdities, and, what is worse, with
opinions, which, besides being injurious to those who receive them, in
every instance insure for those who propagate them a cordial and kind
reception.
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