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                        THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.

       NUMBER 27.       SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1841.       VOLUME I.

[Illustration: THE IRISH MIDWIFE.--PART II.

BY WILLIAM CARLETON.]

The village of Ballycomaisy was as pleasant a little place as one
might wish to see of a summer’s day. To be sure, like all other Irish
villages, it was remarkable for a superfluity of “pigs, praties, and
childre,” which being the stock in trade of an Irish cabin, it is to be
presumed that very few villages either in Ireland or elsewhere could go
on properly without them. It consisted principally of one long street,
which you entered from the north-west side by one of those old-fashioned
bridges, the arches of which were much more akin to the Gothic than the
Roman. Most of the houses were of mud, a few of stone, one or two of
which had the honour of being slated on the front side of the roof, and
rustically thatched on the back, where ostentation was not necessary.
There were two or three shops, a liberal sprinkling of public-houses, a
chapel a little out of the town, and an old dilapidated market-house
near the centre. A few little bye-streets projected in a lateral
direction from the main one, which was terminated on the side opposite to
the north-west by a pound, through which, as usual, ran a shallow stream,
that was gathered into a little gutter as it crossed the road. A crazy
antiquated mill, all covered and cobwebbed with grey mealy dust, stood
about a couple of hundred yards out of the town, to which two straggling
rows of houses, that looked like an abortive street, led you. This mill
was surrounded by a green common, which was again hemmed in by a