When O'Kelly returned home, he did not annihilate M'Carthy in the body--he did so in spirit: he lampooned him. Finally, the plagiarist made a public apology; and an armistice was effected by the aid of copious libations of the "mountain-dew," the favourite Hippocrene of Irishmen.
The Bard's trip to the Giant's Causeway gave him a wonderful inclination for travelling. As itinerary rhyme-spinner, he continued to keep body and soul together ever since, in a manner which nothing but the brilliant invention of a verse-making Milesian could have dreamed of. Under the face of the sun no people so keenly appreciate, and so undeniably dread, satire as the Irish do. Few, it may be added, have greater powers in that line--and this without being imbued with less good-nature or more malice than other people. They particularly shrink from any imputation on their open-handed and open-hearted hospitality. The Bard O'Kelly knew that this sensitive feeling was the blot which he was to hit. And on the results of this knowledge, he contrived to live well--to obtain raiment, money, lodging, food, and drink, during the vicissitudes of about forty years.
He committed himself to a pilgrimage from place to place, through Ireland, always fixing his headquarters at the residence of some country gentleman. Here he would abide for a week--a fortnight--or even a month, if he liked his quarters, and thought his intrusion would be tolerated so long. During his stay, his two horses, his son (for, being Irish, he had got married very soon), and himself, always lived "in clover." His valedictory acknowledgment, by which he considered that he repaid the hospitality extended to him, was a laudatory couplet! If there were, or if there seemed to be, the slightest want of cordiality in his reception or entertainment, he would immediately depart, giving the delinquent to immortal infamy in a stinging couplet. When he had written a few score of these rhymes he used to get them printed (ballad-wise) on octavo slips of whity-brown paper, and each new page was added to its predecessor, by being pasted into a sort of scrap-book. This collection he called his "Poetic Tour," and he had only a single copy of it; and to this, which he promised to have printed in a regular book, at some future period, every one who entertained him was expected to subscribe from a crown to a guinea--_subscriptions payable in advance_. To this rule he had permitted only one exception. This was early in the present century, when the Chevalier Ruspini, (a tooth and corn extractor,) who travelled in Ireland as "Dentist to the Prince of Wales," subscribed, in the name of his Royal master, for fifty copies of the work; and, on the strength of this, managed to dine, on three several occasions, with O'Kelly--being the only instance on record of his Bardship having ever played the host.