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lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their
spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth
to bring brenningly biddeth.
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of
an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a
bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with
turf saying the seed won’t sprout, fields athirst, very sadc-
oloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard to
breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without
sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be
without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs
and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would
catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew,
the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land
so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and
by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in
the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night in-
creased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some
sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one
great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes
all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower,
the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or ker-
chief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon
as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn,
thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash
of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair
or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that
first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon’s door
(that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college