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accommodated in their travels as much as any local person might be.

    They waited until the flow of people had risen up once more and the keeper was busier than he had been all morning. Paudge stepped forward and asked a question of the toll taker. ‘Do you charge anything, Sir, for luggage, or for what a man may carry over on his back?’ he asked. The keeper looked at the well-built man in front of him. Paudge was festooned with all the tools of his trade, and held the sharpening wheel in a maw of a hand. The wheel looked like the plaything of a privileged child in a nursery in one of the big houses of Dublin. The keeper responded saying that there was no extra charge for luggage over and above the half-penny toll, but that it must be paid. ‘Thank you Sir’, said Paudge and he stepped back a little to hunch down. To the toll taker’s astonishment he saw Johnny come running along the path to leap up on the back of the crouching man. Paudge straightened up. His thick arms held Johnny’s skinny legs as safely as if they were bolted together. Hishands held their tools and equipment, Johnny’s hands held the rest and away they went for the toll bridge like that.
    When the toll taker tried to stop them, Paudge reminded him that he had said there was no charge for luggage and poor Johnny, having taken faint, was now his burden to carry across the bridge. As he moved on Johnny dropped the single ha’penny piece into the hand of the astonished toll taker. ‘God bless you Sir,’ said a contented Johnny as the pair crossed the bridge. ‘We’ll see you the next time we are in Dublin. It surely is a fine bridge you have, God bless it and all who cross over it.’ And with that they were gone.

6
B ILLY-IN-THE -B OWL
    Nowadays, Dublin City sprawls out into the surrounding counties, but these areas were once fields, farms and small villages, where the inhabitants lived a rustic life, within sight of the city. You would not have suspected that a killer once waited for his victims in the quietness of the leafy lanes that led into the city.
    There was great interaction between the urban and rural lifestyles, with many of the farm and big-house workers of County Meath and Dublin travelling back and forth to the city on business both social and personal. Life had a slower pace in eighteenth-century Dublin, with public transport very much a thing of the future; people walked, rode on horses, or travelled on carts and coaches drawn by horses, donkeys, or asses. The houses they passed were not new dwellings; they were dwellings of an older stock, some well maintained and some with weathered and peeling fascias in need of attention and repair. Their sagging slate roofs sported tufts of errant green grass hanging over and from rain gullies. Moss spread across old thatch as it willed. Shop floors, in the many small premises along the way, were sprinkled with sawdust, to absorb the muck of a journey.
    A journey experienced many times can tire the imagination. Anything that entertains or excites the traveller on the road is to be welcomed. If there is a storyteller, a singer orsomeone who would play a tune or two along the way they are greeted warmly and listened to. This attraction to diversion was a flaw that some vagabonds used to their advantage. One such character in the north city used a birth defect to his advantage, in enticing maid servants to halt and to listen to him.
    Billy-in-the-Bowl was an unusual man in that he had been born without legs. Since everyone finds their own way of moving about, he developed great strength in his upper body to help him travel around in a large bowl fortified with iron. He was to be seen in the Oxmantown neighbourhood, where, with his personality and his soft demeanour, he charmed maid servants, in particular, coming in from County Meath to the city. Billy-in-the-Bowl found that hanging about the quiet streets of Stoneybatter and the green lanes of adjoining