Darby O’Gill and the Good People

Darby O’Gill and the Good People

Although only one living man of his own free will ever went among them there, still, any well-learned person in Ireland can tell you that the abode of the Good People is in the hollow heart of the great mountain Sleive-na-mon. That same one man was Darby O’Gill, a cousin of my own mother.

Right and left, generation after generation, the fairies had stolen pigs, young childher, old women, young men, cows, churnings of butter from other people, but had never bothered any of our kith or kin until, for some mysterious rayson, they soured on Darby, and took the eldest of his three foine pigs.

The next week a second pig went the same way. The third week not a thing had Darby left for the Balinrobe fair. You may aisly think how sore and sorry the poor man was, an’ how Bridget his wife an’ the childher carried on. The rent was due, and all left was to sell his cow Rosie to pay it. Rosie was the apple of his eye; he admired and rayspected the pigs, but he loved Rosie.

Worst luck of all was yet to come. On the morning when Darby went for the cow to bring her into market, bad scrans to the hoof was there; but in her place only a wisp of dirty straw to mock him. Millia murther! What a howlin’ and screechin’ and cursin’ did Darby bring back to the house!

Now Darby was a bould man, and a desperate man in his anger, as you soon will see. He shoved his feet into a pair of brogues, clapped his hat on his head, and gripped his stick in his hand.

“Fairy or no fairy, ghost or goblin, livin’ or dead, who took Rosie’ll rue this day,” he says.

With those wild words he bolted in the direction of Sleive-na-mon.

All day long he climbed like an ant over the hill, looking for a hole or cave through which he could get at the prison of Rosie. At times he struck the rocks with his blackthorn, cryin’ out challenge.

“Come out, you that took her,” he called. “If ye have the courage of a mouse, ye murtherin’ thieves, come out!”

No one made answer⁠—at laste, not just then. But at night, as he turned, hungry and footsore, toward home, who should he meet up with on the crossroads but the ould fairy doctor, Sheela Maguire. Well known she was as a spy for the Good People. She spoke up:

“Oh, then, you’re the foolish, blundherin’-headed man to be saying what you’ve said, and doing what you’ve done this day, Darby O’Gill,” says she.

“What do I care!” says he fiercely. “I’d fight the divil tonight for my beautiful cow.”

“Then go into Mrs. Hagan’s meadow beyant,” says Sheela, “and wait till the moon is up. By-an’-by ye’ll see a herd of cows come down from the mountain, and yer own’ll be among them.”

“What’ll I do then?” asked Darby, his voice thrembling with excitement.

“Sorra a hair I care what ye do! But there’ll be lads there, and hundreds you won’t see, that’ll stand no ill words, Darby O’Gill.”

“One question more, ma’am,” says Darby, as Sheelah was moving away. “How late in the night will they stay without?”

Sheelah caught him by the collar and, pulling his head close, whuspered:

“When the cock crows the Good People must be safe at home. After cockcrow they have no power to help or to hurt, and every mortal eye can see them plain.”

“I thank you kindly,” says Darby, “and I bid you good evening, ma’am.” He turned away, leaving her standing there alone, looking after him; but he was sure he heard voices talkin’ to her, and laughin’ and tittherin’ behind him.

It was dark night when Darby stretched himself on the ground in Hagan’s meadow; the yellow rim of the moon just tipped the edge of the hills.

As he lay there in the long grass amidst the silence there came a cowld shudder in the air, an’ afther it had passed the deep cracked voice of a nearby bullfrog called loudly an’ ballyraggin’:

“The Omadhaun! Omadhaun! Omadhaun!” it said.

From a sloe three over near the hedge an owl cried, surprised and thrembling:

“Who‑o‑o? who‑o‑o?” it axed.

At that every frog in the meadow⁠—an’ there must have been tin thousand of them⁠—took up the answer, an’ shrieked shrill an’ high together. “Darby O’Gill! Darby O’Gill! Darby O’Gill!” sang they.

“The Omadhaun! The Omadhaun!” cried the wheezy masther frog again. “Who-o? Who-o?” axed the owl. “Darby O’Gill! Darby O’Gill!” screamed the rollicking chorus; an’ that way they were goin’ over an’ over agin until the bould man was just about to creep off to another spot whin, sudden, a hundred slow shadows, stirring up the mists, crept from the mountain way toward him. First he must find was Rosie among the herd. To creep quiet as a cat through the hedge and raich the first cow was only a minute’s work. Then his plan, to wait till cockcrow, with all other sober, sensible thoughts, went clane out of the lad’s head before his rage; for cropping eagerly the long, sweet grass, the first baste he met, was Rosie.

With a leap Darby was behind her, his stick falling sharply on her flanks. The ingratitude of that cow almost broke Darby’s heart. Rosie turned fiercely on him, with a vicious lunge, her two horns aimed at his breast. There was no suppler boy in the parish than Darby, and well for him it was so, for the mad rush the cow gave would have caught any man the laste thrifle heavy on his legs, and ended his days right there.

As it was, our hayro sprang to one side. As Rosie passed, his left hand gripped her tail. When one of the O’Gills takes hould of a thing, he hangs on like a bull terrier. Away he went, rushing with her.

Now began a race the like of which was never heard of before or since. Ten jumps to the second, and a hundred feet to the jump. Rosie’s tail standing straight up in the air, firm as an iron bar, and Darby floating straight out behind; a thousand furious fairies flying a short distance after, filling the air with wild commands and threatenings.

Suddenly the sky opened for a crash of lightning that shivered the hills, and a roar of thunder that turned out of their beds every man, woman, and child in four counties. Flash after flash came the lightning, hitting on every side of Darby. If it wasn’t for fear of hurting Rosie, the fairies would sartenly have killed Darby. As it was, he was stiff with fear, afraid to hould on and afraid to lave go, but flew, waving in the air at Rosie’s tail like a flag.

As the cow turned into the long, narrow valley which cuts into the east side of the mountain, the Good People caught up with the pair, and what they didn’t do to Darby, in the line of sticking pins, pulling whiskers, and pinching wouldn’t take long to tell. In troth, he was just about to let go his hould, and take the chances of a fall, when the hillside opened and⁠—whisk! the cow turned into the mountain. Darby found himself flying down a wide, high passage which grew lighter as he went along. He heard the opening behind shut like a trap, and his heart almost stopped beating, for this was the fairies’ home in the heart of Sleive-na-mon. He was captured by them!

When Rosie stopped, so stiff were all Darby’s joints, that he had great trouble loosening himself to come down. He landed among a lot of angry-faced little people, each no higher than your hand, everyone wearing a green velvet cloak and a red cap.

“We’ll take him to the king,” says a red-whiskered wee chap. “What he’ll do to the murtherin’ spalpeen’ll be good and plenty!”

With that they marched our bould Darby, a prisoner, down the long passage, which every second grew wider and lighter, and fuller of little people.

Sometimes, though, he met with human beings like himself, only the black charm was on them, they having been stolen at some time by the Good People. He saw lost people there from every parish in Ireland, both commoners and gentry. Each was laughing, talking, and divarting himself with another. Off to the sides he could see small cobblers making brogues, tinkers mending pans, tailors sewing cloth, smiths hammering horseshoes, everyone merrily to his trade, making a divarsion out of work.

To this day Darby can’t tell where the beautiful red light he now saw came from. It was like a soft glow, only it filled the place, making things brighter than day.

Down near the centre of the mountain, was a room twenty times higher and broader than the biggest church in the world. As they drew near this room, there arose the sound of a reel played on bagpipes. The music was so bewitching that Darby, who was the gracefullest reel dancer in all Ireland, could hardly make his feet behave themselves.

At the room’s edge Darby stopped short and caught his breath, the sight was so entrancing. Set over the broad floor were thousands and thousands of the Good People, facing this way and that, and dancing to a reel; while on a throne in the middle of the room sat ould Brian Conners, King of the Fairies, blowing on the bagpipes. The little King, with a goold crown on his head, wearing a beautiful green velvet coat and red knee-breeches, sat with his legs crossed, beating time with his foot to the music.

There were many from Darby’s own parish; and what was his surprise to see there Maureen McGibney, his own wife’s sister, whom he had supposed resting dacintly in her grave in holy ground these three years. She had flowers in her brown hair, a fine colour in her cheeks, a gown of white silk and goold, and her green mantle raiched to the heels of her purty red slippers.

There she was, gliding back and forth, ferninst a little gray-whuskered, round-stomached fairy man, as though there was never a care nor a sorrow in the world.

As I told you before, I tell you again, Darby was the finest reel dancer in all Ireland; and he came from a family of dancers, though I say it who shouldn’t, as he was my mother’s own cousin. Three things in the world banish sorrow⁠—love and whisky and music. So, when the surprise of it all melted a little, Darby’s feet led him in to the thick of the throng, right under the throne of the King, where he flung care to the winds, and put his heart and mind into his two nimble feet. Darby’s dancing was such that purty soon those around stood still to admire.

There’s a saying come down in our family through generations which I still hould to be true, that the better the music the aisier the step. Sure never did mortal men dance to so fine a chune and never so supple a dancer did such a chune meet up with.

Fair and graceful he began. Backward and forward, sidestep and turn; cross over, then forward; a hand on his hip and his stick twirling free; sidestep and forward; cross over again; bow to his partner, and hammer the floor.

It wasn’t long till half the dancers crowded around admiring, clapping their hands, and shouting encouragement. The ould King grew so excited that he laid down the pipes, took up his fiddle, came down from the throne, and standing ferninst Darby began a finer chune than the first.

The dancing lasted a whole hour, no one speaking a word except to cry out, “Foot it, ye divil!” “Aisy now, he’s threading on flowers!” “Hooroo! Hooroo! Hooray!” Then the King stopped and said:

“Well, that bates Banagher, and Banagher bates the world! Who are you, and how came you here?”

Then Darby up and tould the whole story.

When he had finished, the King looked sayrious. “I’m glad you came, an’ I’m sorry you came,” he says. “If we had put our charm on you outside to bring you in, you’d never die till the end of the world, when we here must all go to hell. But,” he added quickly, “there’s no use in worrying about that now. That’s nayther here nor there! Those willing to come with us can’t come at all, at all; and here you are of your own free act and will. Howsomever, you’re here, and we daren’t let you go outside to tell others of what you have seen, and so give us a bad name about⁠—about taking things, you know. We’ll make you as comfortable as we can; and so you won’t worry about Bridget and the childher, I’ll have a goold sovereign left with them every day of their lives. But I wish we had the comeither on you,” he says, with a sigh, “for it’s aisy to see you’re great company. Now come up to my place an’ have a noggin of punch for friendship’s sake,” says he.

That’s how Darby O’Gill began his six months’ stay with the Good People. Not a thing was left undone to make Darby contented and happy. A civiler people than the Good People he never met. At first he couldn’t get over saying, “God keep all here,” and “God save you kindly,” and things like that, which was like burning them with a hot iron.

If it weren’t for Maureen McGibney, Darby would be in Sleive-na-mon at this hour. Sure she was always the wise girl, ready with her crafty plans and warnings. On a day when they two were sitting alone together, she says to him:

“Darby, dear,” says she, “it isn’t right for a dacint man of family to be spending his days cavortin’, and idlin’, and fillin’ the hours with sport and nonsense. We must get you out of here; for what is a sovereign a day to compare with the care and protection of a father?” she says.

“Thrue for ye!” moaned Darby, “and my heart is just splittin’ for a sight of Bridget an’ the childher. Bad luck to the day I set so much store on a dirty, ongrateful, threacherous cow!”

“I know well how you feel,” says Maureen, “for I’d give the whole world to say three words to Bob Broderick, that ye tell me that out of grief for me has never kept company with any other girl till this day. But that’ll never be,” she says, “because I must stop here till the Day of Judgment, and then I must go to ⸻,” says she, beginning to cry, “but if you get out, you’n bear a message to Bob for me, maybe?” she says.

“It’s aisy to talk about going out, but how can it be done?” asked Darby.

“There’s a way,” says Maureen, wiping her big gray eyes, “but it may take years. First, you must know that the Good People can never put their charm on anyone who is willing to come with them. That’s whay you came safe. Then, agin, they can’t work harm in the daylight, and after cockcrow any mortal eye can see them plain; nor can they harm anyone who has a sprig of holly, nor pass over a leaf or twig of holly, because that’s Christmas bloom. Well, there’s a certain evil word for a charm that opens the side of the mountain, and I will try to find it out for you. Without that word, the armies of the world couldn’t get out or in. But you must be patient and wise, and wait.”

“I will so, with the help of God,” says Darby.

At these words, Maureen gave a terrible screech.

“Cruel man!” she cried, “don’t you know that to say pious words to one of the Good People, or to one undher their black charm, is like cutting him with a knife?”

The next night she came to Darby again.

“Watch yerself now,” she says, “for tonight they’re goin’ to lave the door of the mountain open, to thry you; and if you stir two steps outside they’ll put the comeither on you,” she says.

Sure enough, when Darby took his walk down the passage, after supper, as he did every night, there the side of the mountain lay wide open and no one in sight. The temptation to make one rush was great; but he only looked out a minute, and went whistling back down the passage, knowing well that a hundred hidden eyes were on him the while. For a dozen nights after it was the same.

At another time Maureen said:

“The King himself is going to thry you hard the day, so beware!” She had no sooner said the words than Darby was called for, and went up to the King.

“Darby, my sowl,” says the King, in a sootherin’ way, “have this noggin of punch. A betther never was brewed; it’s the last we’ll have for many a day. I’m going to set you free, Darby O’Gill, that’s what I am.”

“Why, king,” says Darby, putting on a mournful face, “how have I offended ye?”

“No offence at all,” says the king, “only we’re depriving you.”

“No depravity in life!” says Darby. “I have lashins and lavings to ate and to drink, and nothing but fun an’ divarsion all day long. Out in the world it was nothing but work and throuble and sickness, disappointment and care.”

“But Bridget and the childher?” says the King, giving him a sharp look out of half-shut eyes.

“Oh, as for that, king,” says Darby, “it’s aisier for a widow to get a husband, or for orphans to find a father, than it is for them to pick up a sovereign a day.”

The King looked mighty satisfied and smoked for a while without a word.

“Would you mind going out an evenin’ now and then, helpin’ the boys to mind the cows?” he asked at last.

Darby feared to thrust himself outside in their company.

“Well, I’ll tell ye how it is,” replied my brave Darby. “Some of the neighbors might see me, and spread the report on me that I’m with the fairies, and that’d disgrace Bridget and the childher,” he says.

The King knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“You’re a wise man besides being the hoight of good company,” says he, “and it’s sorry I am you didn’t take me at my word; for then we would have you always, at laste till the Day of Judgment, when⁠—but that’s nayther here nor there! Howsomever, we’ll bother you about it no more.”

From that day they thrated him as one of their own.

It was one day five months after that Maureen plucked Darby by the coat and led him off to a lonely spot.

“I’ve got the word,” she says.

“Have you, faith! What is it?” says Darby, all of a thrimble.

Then she whispered a word so blasphaymous, so irrayligious, that Darby blessed himself. When Maureen saw him making the sign, she fell down in a fit, the holy emblem hurt her so, poor child.

Three hours after this me bould Darby was sitting at his own fireside talking to Bridget and the childher. The neighbours were hurrying to him, down every road and through every field, carrying armfuls of holly bushes, as he had sent word for them to do. He knew well he’d have fierce and savage visitors before morning.

After they had come with the holly, he had them make a circle of it so thick around the house that a fly couldn’t walk through without touching a twig or a leaf. But that was not all.

You’ll know what a wise girl and what a crafty girl that Maureen was when you hear what the neighbours did next. They made a second ring of holly outside the first, so that the house sat in two great wreaths, one wreath around the other. The outside ring was much the bigger, and left a good space between it and the first, with room for ever so many people to stand there. It was like the inner ring, except for a little gate, left open as though by accident, where the fairies could walk in.

But it wasn’t an accident at all, only the wise plan of Maureen’s; for nearby this little gap, in the outside wreath, lay a sprig of holly with a bit of twine tied to it. Then the twine ran along up to Darby’s house, and in through the window, where its end lay convaynient to his hand. A little pull on the twine would drag the stray piece of holly into the gap, and close tight the outside ring.

It was a trap, you see. When the fairies walked in through the gap, the twine was to be pulled, and so they were to be made prisoners between the two rings of holly. They couldn’t get into Darby’s house, because the circle of holly nearest the house was so tight that a fly couldn’t get through without touching the blessed tree or its wood. Likewise, when the gap in the outer wreath was closed, they couldn’t get out again. Well, anyway, these things were hardly finished and fixed, when the dusky brown of the hills warned the neighbours of twilight, and they scurried like frightened rabbits to their homes.

Only one amongst them all had courage to sit inside Darby’s house waiting the dreadful visitors, and that one was Bob Broderick. What vengeance was in store couldn’t be guessed at all, at all, only it was sure that it was to be more turrible than any yet wreaked on mortal man.

Not in Darby’s house alone was the terror, for in their anger the Good People might lay waste the whole parish. The roads and fields were empty and silent in the darkness. Not a window glimmered with light for miles around. Many a blaggard who hadn’t said a prayer for years was now down on his marrow bones among the dacint members of his family, thumping his craw, and roaring his Pather and Aves.

In Darby’s quiet house, against which the cunning, the power, and the fury of the Good People would first break, you can’t think of half the suffering of Bridget and the childher, as they lay huddled together on the settle-bed; nor of the strain on Bob and Darby, who sat smoking their dudeens and whispering anxiously together.

For some rayson or other the Good People were long in coming. Ten o’clock struck, then eleven, afther that twelve, and not a sound from the outside. The silence and then no sign of any kind had them all just about crazy, when suddenly there fell a sharp rap on the door.

“Millia murther,” whispered Darby, “we’re in for it. They’ve crossed the two rings of holly, and are at the door itself.”

The childher begun to cry and Bridget said her prayers out loud; but no one answered the knock.

“Rap, rap, rap,” on the door, then a pause.

“God save all here!” cried a queer voice from the outside.

Now no fairy would say, “God save all here,” so Darby took heart and opened the door. Who should be standing there but Sheelah Maguire, a spy for the Good People. So angry were Darby and Bob that they snatched her within the threshold, and before she knew it they had her tied hand and foot, wound a cloth around her mouth, and rolled her under the bed. Within the minute a thousand rustling voices sprung from outside. Through the window, in the clear moonlight, Darby marked weeds and grass being trampled by inwisible feet, beyond the farthest ring of holly.

Suddenly broke a great cry. The gap in the first ring was found. Signs were plainly seen of uncountable feet rushing through, and spreading about the nearer wreath. Afther that a howl of madness from the little men and women. Darby had pulled his twine and the trap was closed, with five thousand of the Good People entirely at his mercy.

Princes, princesses, dukes, dukesses, earls, earlesses, and all the quality of Sleive-na-mon were prisoners. Not more than a dozen of the last to come escaped, and they flew back to tell the king.

For an hour they raged. All the bad names ever called to mortal man were given free, but Darby said never a word. “Pickpocket,” “sheep stayler,” “murtherin’ thafe of a blaggard,” were the softest words trun at him.

By an’ by, howsumever, as it begun to grow near to cockcrow, their talk grew a great dale civiler. Then came beggin’, pladin’, promisin’, and enthratin’, but the doors of the house still stayed shut an’ its windows down.

Purty soon Darby’s old rooster, Terry, came down from his perch, yawned, an’ flapped his wings a few times. At that the terror and the screechin’ of the Good People would have melted the heart of a stone.

All of a sudden a fine, clear voice rose from beyant the crowd. The King had come. The other fairies grew still, listening.

“Ye murtherin’ thafe of the world,” says he King grandly, “what are ye doin’ wid my people?”

“Keep a civil tongue in yer head, Brian Connor,” says Darby, sticking his head out the window, “for I’m as good a man as you, any day,” says Darby.

At that minute Terry, the cock, flapped his wings and crowed. In a flash there sprang into full view the crowd of Good People⁠—dukes, earls, princes, quality, and commoners, with their ladies, jammed thick together about the house; every one of them with his head thrown back bawling and crying, and tears as big as pigeon-eggs rouling down his cheeks.

A few feet away, on a straw pile in the barnyard, stood the King, his goold crown tilted on the side of his head, his long green cloak about him, and his rod in his hand, but thremblin’ allover.

In the middle of the crowd, but towering high above them all, stood Maureen McGibney in her cloak of green an’ goold, her purty brown hair fallin’ down on her shoulders, an’ she⁠—the crafty villain⁠—cryin, an’ bawlin’, an’ abusin’ Darby, with the best of them.

“What’ll you have an’ let them go?” says the King.

“First an’ foremost,” says Darby, “take yer spell off that slip of a girl there, an’ send her into the house.”

In a second Maureen was standing inside the door, her both arms about Bob’s neck, and her head on his collarbone.

What they said to aich other, and what they done in the way of embracin’ an’ kissin’ an’ cryin’ I won’t take time in telling you.

“Next,” says Darby, “send back Rosie and the pigs.”

“I expected that,” says the king. And at those words they saw a black bunch coming through the air; in a few seconds Rosie and the three pigs walked into the stable.

“Now,” says Darby, “promise in the name of Ould Nick” (’tis by him the Good People swear) “never to moil nor meddle again with anyone or anything from this parish.”

The King was fair put out by this. Howsomever, he said at last, “You ongrateful scoundhrel, in the name of Ould Nick, I promise.”

“So far, so good,” says Darby, “but the worst is yet to come. Now you must raylase from your spell every soul you’ve stole from this parish; and besides, you must send me ten thousand pounds in goold.”

Well, the King gave a roar of anger that was heard in the next barony.

“Ye high-handed, hardhearted robber,” he says, “I’ll never consent!” he says.

“Plase yerself,” says Darby. “I see Father Cassidy comin’ down the hedge,” he says, “an’ he has a prayer for ye all in his book that’ll burn ye up like wisps of sthraw ef he ever catches ye here,” says Darby.

With that the roaring and bawling was pitiful to hear, and in a few minutes a bag with ten thousand goold sovereigns in it was trun at Darby’s threshold; and fifty people, young an’ some of them ould, flew over an’ stood beside the king. Some of them had spent years with the fairies. Their relatives thought them dead an’ buried. They were the lost ones from that parish.

With that Darby pulled the bit of twine again, opening the trap, and it wasn’t long until every fairy was gone.

The green coat of the last one was hardly out of sight when, sure enough, who should come up but Father Cassidy, his book in his hand. He looked at the fifty people who had been with the fairies standin’ there⁠—the poor crathures⁠—thremblin’ an’ wondherin’, an’ afeard to go to their homes.

Darby tould him what had happened.

“Ye foolish man,” says the priest, “you could have got out every poor prisoner that’s locked in Sleive-na-mon, let alone those from this parish.”

One could have scraped with a knife the surprise off Darby’s face.

“Would yer Reverence have me let out the Corkonians, the Connaught men, and the Fardowns, I ask ye?” he says hotly. “When Mrs. Malowney there goes home and finds that Tim has married the Widow Hogan, ye’ll say I let out too many, even of this parish, I’m thinkin’.”

“But,” says the priest, “ye might have got ten thousand pounds for aich of us.”

“If aich had ten thousand pounds, what comfort would I have in being rich?” asked Darby again. “To enjoy well being rich, there should be plenty of poor,” says Darby.

“God forgive ye, ye selfish man!” says Father Cassidy.

“There’s another rayson besides,” says Darby. “I never got betther nor friendlier thratement than I had from the Good People. An’ the divil a hair of their heads I’d hurt more than need be,” he says.

Some way or other the King heard of this saying, an’ was so mightily pleased that next night a jug of the finest poteen was left at Darby’s door.

After that, indade, many’s the winter night, when the snow lay so heavy that no neighbor was stirrin’, and when Bridget and the childher were in bed, Darby sat by the fire, a noggin of hot punch in his hand, argying an’ getting news of the whole world. A little man, with a goold crown on his head, a green cloak on his back, and one foot thrown over the other, sat ferninst him by the hearth.

Darby O’Gill and the Leprechaun

The news that Darby O’Gill had spint six months with the Good People spread fast and far and wide.

At fair or hurlin’ or market he would be backed be a crowd agin some convaynient wall, and there for hours men, women, and childher, with jaws dhroppin’, and eyes bulgin’d stand ferninst him listening to half-frightened questions or to bould mystarious answers.

Alway, though, one bit of wise adwise inded his discoorge: “Nayther make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies,” Darby’d say. “If you’re going along the lonely boreen at night, and you hear, from some fairy fort, a sound of fiddles, or of piping, or of sweet woices singing, or of little feet pattering in the dance, don’t turn your head, but say your prayers an’ hould on your way. The pleasures the Good People’ll share with you have a sore sorrow hid in them, an’ the gifts they’ll offer are only made to break hearts with.”

Things went this a-way till one day in the market, over among the cows, Maurteen Cavanaugh, the schoolmasther⁠—a cross-faced, argifying ould man he was⁠—contradicted Darby pint blank. “Stay a bit,” says Maurteen, catching Darby by the coat collar. “You forget about the little fairy cobbler, the Leprechaun,” he says. “You can’t deny that to catch the Leprechaun is great luck entirely. If one only fix the glance of his eye on the cobbler, that look makes the fairy a presner⁠—one can do anything with him as long as a human look covers the little lad⁠—and he’ll give the favours of three wishes to buy his freedom,” says Maurteen.

At that Darby, smiling high and knowledgeable, made answer over the heads of the crowd.

“God help your sinse, honest man!” he says. “Around the favors of thim same three wishes is a bog of thricks an’ cajoleries and con‑ditions that’ll defayt the wisest.

“First of all, if the look be taken from the little cobbler for as much as the wink of an eye, he’s gone forever,” he says. “Man alive, even when he does grant the favours of the three wishes, you’re not safe, for, if you tell anyone you’ve seen the Leprechaun, the favours melt like snow, or if you make a fourth wish that day⁠—whiff! they turn to smoke. Take my adwice⁠—nayther make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies.”

“Thrue for ye,” spoke up long Pether McCarthy, siding in with Darby. “Didn’t Barney McBride, on his way to early mass one May morning, catch the fairy cobbler sewing an’ workin’ away under a hedge. ’Have a pinch of snuff, Barney agra,’ says the Leprechaun, handing up the little snuffbox. But, mind ye, when my poor Barney bint to take a thumb an’ finger full what did the little villain do but fling the box, snuff and all, into Barney’s face. An’ thin, whilst the poor lad was winkin’ and blinkin’, the Leprechaun gave one leap and was lost in the reeds.

“Thin again, there was Peggy O’Rourke, who captured him fair an’ square in a hawthorn-bush. In spite of his wiles she wrung from him the favours of the three wishes. Knowing, of course, that if she towldt anyone of what happened to her the spell was broken, and the wishes wouldn’t come thrue, she hurried home, aching and longing to in some way find from her husband, Andy, what wishes she’d make.

“Throwing open her door, she said, ‘What would ye wish for most in the world, Andy dear. Tell me an’ your wish’ll come true,’ says she. A peddler was crying his wares out in the lane. ‘Lanterns, tin lanterns!’ cried the peddler. ‘I wish I had one of thim lanterns,’ says Andy, careless and bendin’ over to get a coal for his pipe, when, lo and behold, there was a lantern in his hand.

“Well, so vexed was Peggy that one of her fine wishes should be wasted on a palthry tin lantern that she lost all patience with him. ‘Why, thin, bad scran to you,’ says she⁠—not mindin’ her own words⁠—‘I wish the lantern was fastened to the ind of your nose.’

“The word wasn’t well out of her mouth till the lantern was hung swinging from the ind of Andy’s nose in a way that the wit of man couldn’t loosen. It took the third and last of Peggy’s wishes to relayse Andy.”

“Look at that now,” cried a dozen voices from the admiring crowd. “Darby said so from the first.”

Well, after a time people used to come from miles around to see Darby, and sit undher the shtraw-stack beside the stable to adwise with our hayro about their most important business⁠—what was the best time for the settin’ of hins and what was good to cure colic in childher, an’ things like that.

Any man so parsecuted with admiration an’ hayrofication might aisily feel his chest swell out a bit, so it’s no wondher that Darby set himself up for a knowledgeable man.

He took to talking slow an’ shuttin’ one eye whin he listened, and he walked with a knowledgeable twist to his chowldhers. He grew monsthrously fond of fairs and public gatherings, where people made much of him; and he lost every ounce of liking he ever had for hard worruk.

Things wint on with him in this way from bad to worse, and where it would have inded no man knows, if one unlucky morning he hadn’t rayfused to bring in a creel of turf his wife Bridget had axed him to fetch her. The unfortunate man said it was no work for the likes of him.

The last word was still on Darby’s lips whin he rayalised his mistake an’ he’d have give the worruld to have the sayin’ back agin.

For a minute you could have heard a pin dhrop. Bridget, instead of being in a hurry to begin at him, was crool dayliberate. She planted herself at the door, her two fists on her hips an’ her lips shut.

The look Julius Sayser’d trow at a sarvant girl he’d caught stealing sugar from the rile cupboard was the glance she waved up and down from Darby’s toes to his head and from his head to his brogues agin.

Thin she began an’ talked steady as a fall of hail that has now an’ then a bit of lightning an’ tunder mixed in it.

The knowledgeable man stood purtendin’ to brush his hat and tryin’ to look brave, but the heart inside of him was meltin’ like butther.

Bridget began aisily be carelessly mentioning a few of Darby’s best known wakenesses. Afther that she took up some of them not so well known, being ones Darby himself had sayrious doubts about having at all. But on these last she was more savare than on the first. Through it all he daren’t say a word⁠—he only smiled lofty and bitther.

’Twas but natural next for Bridget to explain what a poor crachure her husband was on the day she got him, an’ what she might have been if she had married aither one of the six others who had axed her. The step for her was a little one thin to the shortcomings and misfortunes of his blood relaytions, which she follyed back to the blaggardisms of his fourth cousin, Phelim McFadden.

Even in his misery poor Darby couldn’t but marvel at her wondherful memory.

By the time she began talking of her own family, and especially about her Aunt Honoria O’Shaughnessy, who had once shook hands with a bishop, and who in the rebellion of ninety-eight had trun a brick at a Lord Liftinant, whin he was riding by, Darby was as wilted and as forlorn-looking as a roosther caught out in the winther rain.

He lost more pride in those few minutes than it had taken months to gather an’ hoard. It kept falling in great drops from his forehead.

Just as Bridget was lading up to what Father Cassidy calls a pur-roar-ration⁠—that being the part of your wife’s discoorse whin, afther telling you all that she’s done for you, and all she’s stood from your relaytions, she breaks down and cries, and so smothers you entirely⁠—just as she was coming to that, I say, Darby scrooged his caubeen down on his head, stuck his fingers in his two ears, and making one grand rush through the door, bolted as fast as his legs could carry him down the road toward the Sleive-na-mon Mountains.

Bridget stood on the step looking after him too surprised for a word. With his fingers still in his ears, so that he couldn’t hear her commands to turn back, he ran without stopping till he came to the willow-tree near Joey Hooligan’s forge. There he slowed down to fill his lungs with the fresh, sweet air.

’Twas one of those warmhearted, laughing autumn days which steals for a while the bonnet and shawl of the May. The sun from a sky of feathery whiteness, laned over, telling jokes to the worruld an’ the goold harvest-fields and purple hills, lasy and continted, laughed back at the sun. Even the blackbird flying over the haw-tree looked down an’ sang to those below, “God save all here;” an’ the linnet from her bough answered back quick an’ sweet, “God save you kindly, sir.”

With such pleasant sights and sounds an’ twitterings at every side, our hayro didn’t feel the time passing till he was on top of the first hill of the Sleive-na-mon Mountains, which, as everyone knows, is called the Pig’s Head.

It wasn’t quite lonesome enough on the Pig’s Head, so our hayro plunged into the valley an’ climbed the second mountain⁠—the Divil’s Pillow⁠—where ’twas lonesome and desarted enough to shuit anyone.

Beneath the shade of a three, for the days was warm, he sat himself down in the long, sweet grass, lit his pipe, and let his mind go free. But, as he did, his thoughts rose together, like a flock of frightened, angry pheasants, an’ whirred back to the owdacious things Bridget had said about his relations.

Wasn’t she the mendageous, humbrageous woman, he thought, to say such things about as illigant stock as the O’Gills and the O’Gradys?

Why, Wullum O’Gill, Darby’s uncle, at that minute was head butler at Castle Brophy, and was known far an’ wide as being one of the foinest scholars an’ as having the most beautiful pair of legs in all Ireland.

This same Wullum O’Gill had tould Bridget in Darby’s own hearing, on a day when the three were going through the great picture gallery at Castle Brophy, that the O’Gills at one time had been kings in Ireland.

Darby never since could raymember whether this time was before the flood or after the flood. Bridget said it was durin’ the flood, but surely that sayin’ was nonsinse.

Howsumever, Darby knew his Uncle Wullum was right, for he often felt in himself the signs of greatness. And now, as he sat alone on the grass, he said out loud:

“If I had me rights I’d be doing nothing all day long but sittin’ on a throne, an’ playin’ games of forty-five with me Lord Liftenant an’ some of me generals. There never was a lord that liked good ating or dhrinking betther nor I or who hates worse to get up airly in the morning. That last disloike, I’m tould, is a great sign entirely of gentle blood the worruld over,” says he.

As for his wife’s people, the O’Hagans and the O’Shaughnessys, well⁠—they were no great shakes, he said to himself, at laste so far as looks were consarned. All the handsomeness in Darby’s childher came from his own side of the family. Even Father Cassidy said the childher took afther the O’Gills.

“If I were rich,” says Darby to a lazy ould bumble bee who was droning an’ tumbling in front of him, “I’d have a castle like Castle Brophy, with a great picture gallery in it. On one wall I’d put the pictures of the O’Gills and the O’Gradys, and on the wall ferninst thim I’d have the O’Hagans an’ the O’Shaughnessys.”

At that ideah his heart bubbled in a new and fierce deloight. “Bridget’s people,” he says agin, scowling at the bee, “would look four times as common as they raylly are, whin they were compared in that way with my own relations. An’ whenever Bridget got rampageous, I’d take her in and show her the difference betwixt the two clans, just to punish her, so I would.”

How long the lad sat that way warming the cowld thoughts of his heart with drowsy pleasant dhrames an’ misty longings he don’t rightly know, whin⁠—tack, tack, tack, tack, came the busy sound of a little hammer from the other side of a fallen oak.

“Be jingo!” he says to himself with a start, “ ’tis the Leprechaun that’s in it.”

In a second he was on his hands an’ knees, the tails of his coat flung across his back, an’ he crawling softly toward the sound of the hammer. Quiet as a mouse he lifted himself up on the mossy log to look over, and there, before his two popping eyes, was a sight of wondheration.

Sitting on a white stone, an’ working away like fury, hammering pegs into a little red shoe, half the size of your thumb, was a bald-headed ould cobbler of about twice the height of your hand. On the top of a round snub nose was perched a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, an’ a narrow fringe of iron-grey whuskers grew under his stubby chin. The brown leather apron he wore was so long that it covered his green knee-breeches an’ almost hid the knitted grey stockings.

The Leprechaun⁠—for it was he indade⁠—as he worked, mumbled an’ mutthered in great discontent.

“Oh, haven’t I the hard, hard luck!” he said. “I’ll never have thim done in time for her to dance in tonight. So, thin, I’ll be kilt intirely,” says he. “Was there ever another quane of the fairies as wearing on shoes an’ brogues an’ dancin’ slippers? Haven’t I the⁠—” Looking up, he saw Darby.

“The top of the day to you, dacint man,” says the cobbler, jumpin’ up. Giving a sharp cry, he pinted quick at Darby’s stomach. “But, wirra, wirra, what’s that woolly ugly thing you have crawlin’ an’ creepin’ on your weskit?” he said, purtendin’ to be all excited.

“Sorra thing on my weskit,” answered Darby, cool as ice, “or anywhere else, that’ll make me take my two bright eyes off’n you⁠—not for a second,” says he.

“Well! Well! Will you look at that, now?” laughed the cobbler. “Mark how quick an’ handy he took me up. Will you have a pinch of snuff, clever man?” he axed, houlding up the little box.

“Is it the same snuff you gave Barney McBride awhile ago?” axed Darby, sarcastic. “Lave off your foolishness,” says our hayro, growin’ fierce, “and grant me at once the favours of the three wishes, or I’ll have you smoking like a herring in my own chimney before nightfall,” says he.

At that the Leprechaun, seeing he but wasted time on so knowledgeable a man as Darby O’Gill, surrendhered and granted the favors of the three wishes.

“What is it you ask?” says the cobbler, himself turning on a sudden very sour an’ sullen.

“First an’ foremost,” says Darby, “I want a home of my ansisthers, an’ it must be a castle like Castle Brophy, with pictures of my kith an’ kin on the wall, and then facing them pictures of my wife Bridget’s kith an’ kin on the other wall.”

“That favour I give you; that wish I grant ye,” says the fairy, making the shape of a castle on the ground with his awl.

“What next?” he grunted.

“I want goold enough for me an’ my generations to enjoy in grandeur the place forever.”

“Always the goold,” sneered the little man, bending to dhraw with his awl on the turf the shape of a purse.

“Now for your third and last wish. Have a care!”

“I want the castle set on this hill⁠—the Divil’s Pillow⁠—where we two stand,” says Darby. Then sweeping with his arm, he says, “I want the land about to be my demesne.”

The Leprechaun struck his awl on the ground. “That wish I give you; that wish I grant you,” he says. With that he straightened himself up, and, grinning most aggravaytin’ the while, he looked Darby over from top to toe. “You’re a foine knowledgeable man, but have a care of the fourth wish,” says he.

Bekase there was more of a challenge than friendly warning in what the small lad said, Darby snapped his fingers at him an’ cried:

“Have no fear, little man! If I got all Ireland ground for making a fourth wish, however small, before midnight, I’d not make it. I’m going home now to fetch Bridget an’ the childher, and the only fear or unaisiness I have is that you’ll not keep your word, so as to have the castle here ready before us when I come back.”

“Oho! I’m not to be thrusted, amn’t I?” screeched the little lad, flaring into a blazing passion. He jumped upon the log that was betwixt them an’ with one fist behind his back, shook the other at Darby.

“You ignorant, auspicious-minded blaggard,” says he. “How dare the likes of you say the likes of that to the likes of me?” cried the cobbler. “I’d have you to know,” he says, “that I had a repitation for truth an’ voracity ayquil, if not shuperior to the best, before you were born,” he shouted. “I’ll take no high talk from a man that’s afraid to give words to his own wife whin she’s in a tantrum,” says the Leprechaun.

“It’s aisy to know you’re not a married man,” says Darby, mighty scornful, “bekase if you⁠—”

The lad stopped short, forgetting what he was going to say in his surprise an’ aggaytation, for the far side of the mountain was waving up an’ down before his eyes like a great green blanket that is being shook by two women; while at the same time high spots of turf on the hillside toppled sidewise to level themselves up with the low places. The enchantment had already begun to make things ready for the castle. A dozen foine threes that stood in a little groove bent their heads quickly together, and thin by some inwisible hand they were plucked up by the roots an’ dhropped aside, much the same as a man might grasp a handful of weeds an’ fling them from his garden.

The ground under the knowledgeable man’s feet began to rumble an’ heave. He waited for no more. With a cry that was half of gladness an’ half of fear, he turned on his heel an’ started on a run down into the walley, leaving the little cobbler standing on the log, shouting abuse after him an’ ballyraggin’ him as he ran.

So excited was Darby that, going up the Pig’s Head, he was nearly run over by a crowd of great brown building stones which were moving down slow an’ ordherly like a flock of driven sheep⁠—but they moved without so much as bruising a blade of grass or bendin’ a twig, as they came.

Only once, and that at the top of the Pig’s Head, he trew a look back.

The Divil’s Pillow was in a great commotion; a whirlwind was sweeping over it⁠—whether of dust or of mist he couldn’t tell.

After this, Darby never looked back agin, or to the right or the left of him, but kept straight on till he found himself, panting and puffing, at his own kitchen door. ’Twas tin minutes before he could spake, but at last, whin he tould Bridget to make ready herself and the childher to go up to the Divil’s Pillow with him, for once in her life that raymarkable woman, without axing, How comes it so? What rayson have you, or Why should I do it, set to work washing the childher’s faces.

Maybe she dabbed a little more soap in their eyes than was needful, for ’twas a habit she had; though this time, if she did, not a whimper broke from the little hayros. For the matther of that, not one word, good, bad, or indifferent, did herself spake till the whole family were trudging down the lane two by two, marching like sojers.

As they came near the first hill, along its sides, the evening twilight turned from purple to brown, and at the top of the Pig’s Head the darkness of a black night swooped suddenly down on them. Darby hurried on a step or two ahead, an’ resting his hand upon the large rock that crowns the hill, looked anxiously over to the Divil’s Pillow. Although he was ready for something foine, yet the greatness of the foineness that met his gaze knocked the breath out of him.

Across the deep walley, and on top of the second mountain, he saw lined against the evening sky the roof of an imminse castle, with towers an’ parrypets an’ battlements. Undher the towers a thousand sullen windows glowed red in the black walls. Castle Brophy couldn’t hould a candle to it.

“Behold!” says Darby, flinging out his arms and turning to his wife, who had just come up⁠—“Behold the castle of my ansisthers, who were my forefathers!”

“How,” says Bridget, quick and scornful⁠—“How could your aunt’s sisters be your four fathers?”

What Darby was going to say to her he don’t just raymember, for at that instant, from the right hand side of the mountain, came a cracking of whips, a rattling of wheels, an’ the rush of horses, and, lo and behold! a great dark coach with flashing lamps, and drawn by four coal-black horses, dashed up the hill and stopped beside them. Two shadowy men were on the driver’s box.

“Is this Lord Darby O’Gill?” axed one of them in a deep, muffled voice. Before Darby could reply, Bridget took the words out of his mouth.

“It is,” she cried, in a kind of a half cheer, “an’ Lady O’Gill an’ the childher.”

“Then hurry up,” says the coachman, “your supper’s gettin’ cowld.”

Without waiting for anyone, Bridget flung open the carriage-door, an’ pushin’ Darby aside, jumped in among the cushins. Darby, his heart sizzlin’ with vexation at her audaciousness, lifted in one after another the childher, and then got in himself.

He couldn’t undherstand at all the change in his wife, for she had always been the odherliest, modestist woman in the parish.

Well, he’d no sooner shut the door than crack went the whip, the horses gave a spring, the carriage jumped, and down the hill they went. For fastness there was never another carriage-ride like that before nor since. Darby hildt tight with both hands to the window, his face pressed against the glass. He couldn’t tell whether the horses were only flying, or whether the coach was falling down the hill into the walley. By the hollow feeling in his stomach he thought they were falling. He was striving to think of some prayers when there came a terrible joult, which sint his two heels against the roof, an’ his head betwixt the cushions. As he righted himself the wheels began to grate on a graveled road, an’ plainly they were dashing up the side of the second mountain.

Even so, they couldn’t have gone far whin the carriage dhrew up in a flurry, an’ he saw through the gloom a high iron gate being slowly opened.

“Pass on,” said a woice from somewhere in the shadows, “their supper’s getting cowld.”

As they flew undher the great archway Darby had a glimpse of the thing which had opened the gate, and had said their supper was getting cowld. It was standing on its hind legs⁠—in the darkness he couldn’t be quite sure as to its shape, but it was ayther a bear or a loin.

His mind was in a pondher about this when, with a swirl an’ a bump, the carriage stopped another time; an’ now it stood before a broad flight of stone steps which led up to the main door of the castle. Darby, half afraid, peering out through the darkness, saw a square of light high above him which came from the open hall door. Three sarvents in livery stood waiting on the thrashol.

“Make haste, make haste,” says one in a doleful voice, “their supper’s gettin’ cowld.”

Hearing these words, Bridget imagetly bounced out an’ was halfway up the steps before Darby could ketch her an’ hould her till the childher came on.

“I never in all my life saw her so owdacious,” he says, half cryin’ and linkin’ her arm to keep her back, an’ thin, with the childher follying, two by two, according to size, the whole family payraded up the steps till Darby, with a gasp of deloight, stopped on the thrashol of a splendid hall. From a high ceiling hung great flags from every nation an’ domination, which swung an’ swayed in the dazzlin’ light.

Two lines of men and maid servants, dhressed in silks an’ satins an’ brocades, stood facing aich other, bowing an’ smiling an’ wavin’ their hands in welcome. The two lines stretched down to the goold stairway at the far ind of the hall.

For half of one minute, Darby, every eye in his head as big as a tay-cup, stood hesitaytin’. Thin he said, “Why should it flutther me? Arrah, ain’t it all mine? Aren’t all these people in me pay? I’ll engage it’s a pritty penny all this grandeur is costing me to keep up this minute.” He trew out his chest. “Come on Bridget!” he says, “let’s go into the home of my ansisthers.”

Howandever, scarcely had he stepped into the beautiful place, whin two pipers with their pipes, two fiddlers with their fiddles, two flute-players with their flutes, an’ they dhressed in scarlet an’ goold, stepped out in front of him, and thus to maylodious music the family proudly marched down the hall, climbed up the goolden stairway at its ind, an’ thin turned to enter the biggest room Darby had ever seen.

Something in his sowl whuspered that this was the picture gallery.

“Be the powers of Pewther,” says the knowledgeable man to himself, “I wouldn’t be in Bridget’s place this minute for a hatful of money. Wait, oh just wait, till she has to compare her own relations with my own foine people! I know how she’ll feel, but I wondher what she’ll say,” he says.

The thought that all the unjust things, all the unraysonable things Bridget had said about his kith an’ kin were just going to be disproved and turned against herself made him proud an’ almost happy.

But wirrasthrue! He should have raymembered his own adwise not to make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies, for here he was to get the first hard welt from the little Leprechaun.

It was the picture-gallery sure enough, but how terribly different everything was from what the poor lad expected. There on the left wall, grand an’ noble, shone the pictures of Bridget’s people. Of all the well-dressed, handsome, proud-appearing persons in the whole worruld the O’Hagans an’ the O’Shaughnessys would compare with the best. This was a hard enough crack, though a crushinger knock was to come. Ferninst them, on the right wall, glowered the O’Gills and the O’Gradys, and of all the ragged, sheep-stealing, hangdog-looking villains one ever saw, in jail or out of jail, it was Darby’s kindred.

The place of honor on the right wall was given to Darby’s fourth cousin, Phelem McFadden, an’ he was painted with a pair of handcuffs on him. Wullum O’Gill had a squint in his right eye, and his thin legs bowed like hoops on a barrel.

If you have ever at night been groping your way through a dark room, and got a sudden hard bump on the forehead from the edge of the door, you can understand the feelings of the knowledgeable man.

“Take that picture out!” he said hoarsely, as soon as he could speak. “An’ will someone kindly inthrojuice me to the man who med it. Bekase,” he says, “I intend to take his life. There was never a crass-eyed O’Gill since the world began,” says he.

Think of his horror an’ surprise whin he saw the left eye of Wullum O’Gill twist itself slowly over toward his nose and squint worse than the right eye.

Purtending not to see this, an’ hoping no one else did, Darby fiercely led the way over to the other wall.

Fronting him stood the handsome picture of Honoria O’Shaughnessy, an’ she dhressed in a shuit of tin clothes, like the knights of ould used to wear⁠—armour I think they calls it.

She hildt a spear in her hand, with a little flag on the blade, an’ her smile was proud and high.

“Take that likeness out too,” says Darby, very spiteful. “That’s not a dacint shuit of clothes for any woman to wear.”

The next minute you might have knocked him down with a feather, for the picture of Honoria O’Shaughnessy opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue at him.

“The supper’s getting cowld, the supper’s getting cowld,” someone cried at the other ind of the picture gallery Two big doors were swung open, an’ glad enough was our poor hayro to folly the musicianers down to the room where the ateing an’ drinking were to be thransacted.

This was a little room with lots of looking-glasses, and it was bright with a thousand candles, and white with the shiningest marble. On the table was biled beef an’ reddishes an’ carrots an’ roast mutton an’ all kinds of important ateing an’ drinking. Beside these stood fruits an’ sweets an’⁠—but sure what is the use in talkin’?

A high-backed chair stood ready for aich of the family, an’ ’twas a lovely sight to see them all whin they were sitting there⁠—Darby at the head, Bridget at the foot, the childher⁠—the poor little paythriarchs⁠—sitting bolt upright on aich side, with a bewigged and befrilled serving man standing haughty behind every chair.

The ating and dhrinkin’ would have begun at once⁠—in troth there was already a bit of biled beef on Darby’s plate⁠—only that he spied a little silver bell beside him. Sure, ’twas one like those the quality keep to ring whin they want more hot wather for their punch, but it puzzled the knowledeable man, and ’twas the beginning of his misfortune.

“I wondher,” he thought, “if ’tis here for the same raison as the bell is at the Curragh races⁠—do they ring this one so that all at the table will start ating an’ drinking fair, an’ no one will have the advantage; or is it,” he says to himself agin, “to ring whin the head of the house thinks everyone has had enough? Haven’t the quality quare ways! I’ll be a long time learning them,” he says.

He sat silent and puzzling an’ staring at the biled beef on his plate, afeared to start in without ringing the bell, an’ dhreading to risk ringing it. The grand servants towered cowldly on every side, their chins tilted, but they kep’ throwing over their chowlders glances so scornful and haughty that Darby shivered at the thought of showing any uncultivaytion.

While our hayro sat thus in unaisy contimplaytion an’ smouldhering mortification an’ flurried hesitaytion, a powdhered head was poked over his chowlder, and a soft beguiling woice said, “Is there anything else you’d wish for?”

The foolish lad twisted in his chair, opened his mouth to spake, and gave a look at the bell; shame rushed to his, cheeks, he picked up a bit of the biled beef on his fork, an’ to consale his turpitaytion gave the misfortunit answer:

“I’d wish for a pinch of salt, if you plaze,” says he.

’Twas no sooner said than came the crash. Oh, tunderation an’ murdheration, what a roaring crash it was! The lights winked out together at a breath, an’ left a pitchy, throbbing darkness. Overhead and to the sides was a roaring, smashing, crunching noise, like the ocean’s madness when the winthry storm breaks agin the Kerry shore; an’ in that roar was mingled the tearing and the splitting of the walls and the falling of the chimneys. But through all this confusion could be heard the shrill laughing woice of the Leprechaun. “The clever man med his fourth grand wish,” it howled.

Darby⁠—a thousand wild woices screaming an’ mocking above him⁠—was on his back, kicking and squirming and striving to get up, but some load hilt him down an’ something bound his eyes shut.

“Are you kilt, Bridget asthore?” he cried; “where are the childher?” he says.

Instead of answer, there suddenly flashed a fierce an’ angry silence, an’ its quickness frightened the lad more than all the wild confusion before.

’Twas a full minute before he dared to open his eyes to face the horrors which he felt were standing about him; but when courage enough to look came, all he saw was the night-covered mountain, a purple sky, and a thin new moon, with one trembling goold star a hand’s space above its bosom.

Darby struggled to his feet. Not a stone of the castle was left, not a sod of turf but what was in its ould place; every sign of the little cobbler’s work had melted like April snow. The very threes Darby had seen pulled up by the roots that same afternoon now stood a waving blur below the new moon, an’ a nightingale was singing in their branches. A cricket chirped lonesomely on the same fallen log which had hidden the Leprechaun.

“Bridget! Bridget!” Darby called agin an’ agin. Only a sleepy owl on a distant hill answered.

A shivering thought jumped into the boy’s bewildered sowl⁠—maybe the Leprechaun had stolen Bridget an’ the childher.

The poor man turned, and for the last time darted down into the night-filled walley.

Not a pool in the road he waited to go around, not a ditch in his path he didn’t leap over, but ran as he never ran before, till he raiched his own front door.

His heart stood still as he peeped through the window. There were the childher croodled around Bridget, who sat with the youngest asleep in her lap before the fire, rocking back an’ forth, an’ she crooning a happy, continted baby-song.

Tears of gladness crept into Darby’s eyes as he looked in upon her. “God bless her,” he says to himself. “She’s the flower of the O’Hagans and the O’Shaughnessys, and she’s a proud feather in the caps of the O’Gills an’ the O’Gradys.”

’Twas well he had this happy thought to cheer him as he lifted the door-latch, for the manest of all the little cobbler’s spiteful thricks waited in the house to meet Darby⁠—nayther Bridget nor the childher raymembered a single thing of all that had happened to them during the day. They were willing to make their happydavitts that they had been no farther than their own petatie-patch since morning.

The Convarsion of Father Cassidy

“I tould you how on cowld winther nights whin Bridget and the childher were in bed, ould Brian Connors, King of the Fairies, used to sit visitin’ at Darby O’Gill’s own fireside. But I never tould you of the wild night whin the King faced Father Cassidy there.

Darby O’Gill sat at his own kitchen fire the night afther Mrs. Morrisey’s burying, studyin’ over a gr‑r‑reat daybate that was heldt at her wake.

Half-witted Red Durgan begun it be asking loud an’ sudden of the whole company, “Who was the greatest man that ever lived in the whole worruld? I want to know purtic’lar, an’ I’d like to know at once,” he says.

At that the dayliberations started.

Big Joey Hooligan, the smith, hildt out for Julius Sayser, bekase Sayser had throunced the widdy woman Clayopathra.

Maurteen Cavanaugh, the little schoolmaster, stood up for Bonyparte, an’ wanted to fight Dinnis Moriarity for disputin’ agin the Frenchman.

Howsumever, the starter of the rale excitement was ould Mrs. Clancy. She was not what you’d call a great histhorian, but the parish thought her a foine, sinsible woman. She said that the greatest man was Nebbycodnazer, the King of the Jews, who ate grass like a cow and grew fat on it.

“Could Julius Sayser or Napoleon Bonyparte do as much?” she axed.

Well, purty soon everyone was talking at once, hurling at aich other, as they would pavin’-stones, the names of poets an’ warriors an’ scholars.

But afther all was said an’ done, the mourners wint away in the morning with nothing settled.

So the night afther, while Darby was warming his shins before his own turf fire in deep meditaytion and wise cogitaytion and ca’m contemplaytion over these high conversations, the Master of the Good People flew ragin’ into the kitchen.

“Darby O’Gill, what do you think of your wife Bridget?” says he, fiercely.

“Faix, I don’t know what particular thing she’s done,” says Darby, rubbing his shins and lookin’ troubled, “but I can guess it’s something mighty disagrayable. She wore her blue petticoat and her brown shawl whin she went away this morning, and I always expect ructions whin she puts on that shuit of clothes. Thin agin, she looked so sour and so satisfied whin she came back that I’m worried bad in my mind; you don’t know how uncomfortable she can make things sometimes, quiet as she looks,” says he.

“And well you may be worried, dacint man!” says the ruler of Sleive-na-mon; “you’ll rage and you’ll roar whin ye hear me. She wint this day to Father Cassidy and slandhered me outrageous,” he says. “She tould him that you and Maureen were colloguing with a little ould, wicked, thieving fairy-man, and that if something wasn’t done at once agin him the sowls of both of ye would be desthroyed entirely.”

Whin Darby found ’twas not himself that was being bothered, but only the King, he grew aisier in his feelings. “Sure you wouldn’t mind women’s talk,” says he, waving his hand in a lofty way. “Many a good man has been given a bad name by them before this, and will be agin⁠—you’re not the first by any manes,” says he. “If Bridget makes you a bad repitation, think how many years you have to live it down in. Be sinsible, King!” he says.

“But I do mind, and I must mind!” bawled the little fairy-man, every hair and whusker bristling, “for this minute Father Cassidy is putting the bridle and saddle on his black hunter, Terror; he has a prayerbook in his pocket, and he’s coming to read prayers over me and to banish me into the say. Hark! listen to that,” he says.

As he spoke, a shrill little voice broke into singing outside the window.

“Oh, what’ll you do if the kittle biles over,
Sure, what’ll you do but fill it agin;
Ah, what’ll you do if you marry a sojer,
But pack up your clothes and go marchin’ with him.”

“That’s the signal!” says the King, all excited; “he’s coming and I’ll face him here at this hearth, but sorrow foot he’ll put over that threshol’ till I give him lave. Then we’ll have it out face to face like men ferninst this fire!”

Whin Darby heard those words great fright struck him.

“If a hair of his Riverence’s head be harmed,” he says, “ ’tis not you but me and my generation’ll be blamed for it. Plaze go back to Sleive-na-mon this night, for pace and quietness sake!” he begged.

While Darby spoke, the fairy-man was fixing one stool on top of another undher the window.

“I’ll sit at this window,” says the Master of the Good People, wagging his head threateningly, “and from there I’ll give me ordhers. The throuble he’s thrying to bring on others is the throuble I’ll throuble him with. If he comes dacint, he’ll go dacint; if he comes bothering, he’ll go bothered,” says he.

Faith, thin, your Honour, the King spoke no less than the truth, for at that very minute Terror, as foine a horse as ever followed hounds, was galloping down the starlit road to Darby’s house, and over Terror’s mane bent as foine a horseman as ever took a six-bar gate⁠—Father Cassidy.

On and on through the moonlight they clattered, till they came in sight of Darby’s gate, where, unseen and onwisible, a score of the Good People, with thorns in their fists, lay sniggering and laughing, waiting for the horse. Of course the fairies couldn’t harm the good man himself, but Terror was complately at their marcy.

“We’ll not stop to open the gate, Terror,” says his Riverence, patting the baste’s neck. “I’ll give you a bit of a lift with the bridle-rein, and a touch like that on the flank, and do you clear it, my swallow-bird.”

Well, sir, the priest riz in his stirrups, lifted the rein, and Terror crouched for the spring, whin, with a sudden snort of pain, the baste whirled round and started like the wind back up the road.

His Riverence pulled the horse to its haunches and swung him round once more facing the cottage. Up on his hind feet went Terror and stood crazy for a second, pawing the air, then with a cry of rage and pain in his throat, the baste turned, made a rush for the hedge at the roadside, and cleared it like an arrow.

Now, just beyant the hedge was a bog so thin that the geese wouldn’t walk on it, and so thick that the ducks couldn’t swim in it. Into the middle of that cowld pond Terror fell with a splash and a crash.

That minute the King climbed down from the window splitting with laughter. “Darby,” he says, slapping his knees, “Father Cassidy is floundhering about in the bog outside. He’s not hurt, but he’s mighty cowld and uncomfortable. Do you go and make him promise not to read any prayers this night, then bring him in. Tell him that if he don’t promise, by the piper that played before Moses, he may stay reading his prayers in the bog till morning, for he can’t get out unless some of my people go in and help him!” says the King.

Darby’s heart began hammerin’ agin his ribs as though it were making heavy horseshoes.

“If that’s so, I’m a ruined man!” he says. “I’d give tunty pounds rather than face him now!” says he.

The disthracted lad put his hat on to go out, an’ thin he took it off to stay in. He let a groan out of him that shook all his bones.

“You may save him or lave him,” says the King, turning to the window. “I’m going to lave the priest see in a minute what’s bothering him. If he’s not out of the bog be that time, I’d adwise you to lave the counthry. Maybe you’ll only have a pair of cow’s horns put on ye, but I think ye’ll be kilt,” he says. “My own mind’s aisy. I wash my hands of him!

“That’s the great comfort and adwantage of having your sowl’s salwation fixed and sartin one way or the other,” says the King, peering out. “Whin you do a thing, bad as it is or good as it may be, your mind is still aisy, bekase⁠—” he turned from the window to look at Darby, but the lad was gone out into the moonlight, and was shrinkin’ an’ cringin’ up toward the bog, as though he were going to meet and talk with the ghost of a man he’d murdhered. ’Twas a harsher an’ angrier woice than that of any ghost that came out of a great flopping and splashin’ in the bog.

Father Cassidy sat with his feet dhrawn up on Terror, and the horse was half sunk in the mire. At times he urged Terror over to the bank, an’ just as the baste was raising to step out, with a snort, it’d whirl back agin.

He’d thry another side, but spur as he might, and whip as he would, the horse’d turn shivering back to the middle of the bog.

“Is that you, Darby O’Gill, you vagebone?” cried his Riverence. “Help me out of this to the dhry land so as I can take the life of you!” he cried.

“What right has anyone to go trespassin’ in my bog, mussing it all up an’ spiling it?” says Darby, purtendin’ not to raycognise the priest; “I keep it private for my ducks and geese, and I’ll have the law on you, so I will⁠—Oh, be the powers of pewther, ’tis me own dear Father Cassidy!” he cried.

Father Cassidy, as an answer, raiched for a handful of mud, which he aimed and flung so fair an’ thrue that three days afther Darby was still pulling bits of it from his hair.

“I have a whip I’ll keep private for your own two foine legs!” cried his Riverence; “I’ll taich you to tell lies to the counthry-side about your being with the fairies, and for deludherin’ your own poor wife. I came down this night to eggspose you. But now that’s the laste I’ll do to you!”

“Faith,” says Darby, “if I was with the fairies, ’tis no less than you are this minute, an’ if you eggspose me, I’ll eggspose you!” With that Darby up and tould what was the cause of the whole botheration.

His Riverence, afther the telling, waited not a minute, but kicked the spurs into Terror, and the brave horse headed once more for shore. ’Twas no use. The poor baste turned at last with a cry and floundhered back agin into the mire.

“You’ll not be able to get out, Father acushla,” says Darby, “till you promise fair an’ firm not to read any prayers over the Good People this night, and never to hurt or molest meself on any account. About this last promise the King is very particular entirely.”

“You dundherheaded Booligadhaun!” says Father Cassidy, turning all the blame on Darby; “you mayandherin’ Mayrauder of the Sivin Says!” he says. “You big-headed scorpion of the worruld, with bowlegs!” cried he⁠—an’ things like that.

“Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, my!” says Darby, purtendin’ to be shocked, “to think that me own pasture should use sich terrible langwidge! That me own dear Father Cassidy could spake blaggard words like thim! Every dhrop of blood in me is biling with scandalation. Let me beg of you and implore your Riverence never agin to make use of talk like that. It breaks my heart to hear you!” says the villian.

For a few minutes afther that Darby was doin’ nothing but dodging handfuls of mud.

While this was going on, a soft red glow, like that which hangs above the lonely raths an’ forts at night when the fairies are dancin’ in thim, came over the fields. So whin Father Cassidy riz in his stirrups the soft glow was resting on the bog, and there he saw two score of little men in green jackets and brown caps waiting about the pond’s edge, and everyone houlding a switch in his hands.

The little lads knew well ’twas too dark for the clergyman to read from his book any banishing prayers, and barring having too much fun, the divil a thing they had to fear!

’Twas fresh anger that came to Father Cassidy afther the first rush of surprise and wondher. He thried now to get at the Good People, to lay his hands on thim. A dozen charges at the bank his Riverence made, and as many times a score of the Little People flew up to meet him and sthruck the poor baste over the soft nose with their wands till the horse was welted back.

Long afther the struggle was proved hopeless it wint on till at last the poor baste, thrembling and disheartened, rayfused to mind the spur.

At that Father Cassidy gave up. “I surrender,” he said, “an’ I promise for the sake of my horse,” said he.

The baste himself undherstood the worruds, for with that he waded ca’m an’ quiet to the dhry land and stood shaking himself there among the pack of fairies.

Mighty few words were passed betwixt Darby and Terror’s rider as the whole party went up to Darby’s stable, the little people follying behind quiet and ordherly.

It was not long till Terror was nibbling comfortably in a stall, Father Cassidy was dhrying himself before the kitchen fire, the King and Darby were sitting by the side of the hearth, and two score of the green-cloaked Little People were scatthered about the kitchen waiting for the great debate which was sure to come betwixt his Riverence and the head man of the Good People, now that the two had met.

So full was the room that some of the Good People sat on the shelves of the dhresser, others lay on the table, their chins in their fists, whilst little Phelim Beg was perching himself on a picture above the hearth. He’d no sooner touched the picture-frame than he let a howl out of him and jumped to the floor. “I’m burned to the bone!” says he.

“No wondher,” says the King, looking up; “ ’twas a picture of St. Patrick you were sitting on.”

Phadrig Oge, swinging his heels, balanced himself on the edge of a churn filled with buttermilk, but everyone of them kept wondhering eyes fastened on the priest.

And to tell the truth, Father Cassidy at first was more scornful and unpolite than he need be.

“I suppose,” says his Riverence, “you do be worrying a good deal about the place you’re going to afther the Day of Judgment?” he says, kind of mocking.

“Arrah, now,” says the King, taking the pipe from his mouth and staring hard at the clargyman, “there’s more than me ought to be studying that question. There’s a parish priest I knew, and he’s not far from here, who ate mate on a fast day, three years ago come next Michaelmas, who should be a good lot intherested in that same place,” says the King.

The laughing and tittering that follyed this hit lasted a minute.

Father Cassidy turned scarlet. “When I ate it I forgot the day!” he cried.

“That’s what you tould,” says the King, smiling sweet, “but that saying don’t help your chanst much. Maybe you failed to say your prayers a year ago last Ayster Monday night for the same rayson?” axed the King, very cool.

At this the laughing broke out agin, uproarious, some of the little men houlding their sides and tears rowling down their cheeks; two lads begun dancing together before the chiny dishes upon the dhresser. But at the height of the merriment there was a cry and a splash, for Phadrig Oge had fallen into the churn.

Before anyone could help him Phadrig had climbed bravely up the churn-dash, hand over hand like a sailor man, and clambered out all white and dripping. “Don’t mind me,” he says; “go on wid the discoorse!” he cried, shaking himself. The Ruler of the Good People looked vexed.

“I marvel at yez, an’ I am ashamed of yez!” he says. “If I’m not able alone for this dayludhered man, yer shoutin’ and your gallivantin’ll do me no good. Besides, fair play’s a jewel, even two agin one ain’t fair,” says the King. “If I hear another word from one of yez, back to Sleive-na-mon he’ll go, an’ lay there on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air, for a year and tin days!

“You were about to obsarve, Father Cassidy,” says his Majesty, bowing low⁠—“your most obaydient sir!”

“I was about to say,” cried his Riverence, “that you’re a friend of Sattin!”

“I’ll not deny that,” says the King; “what have you to say agin him?”

“He’s a rogue and a rapscallion and the inemy of mankind!” tundered Father Cassidy.

“Prove he’s a rogue!” cries the King, slapping one hand on the other; “and why shouldn’t he be the inemy of mankind? What has mankind iver done for him except to lay the blame of every mane, cowardly thrick of its own on his chowlders. Wasn’t it on their account he was put inside of the swine and dhrove into the say? Wasn’t it bekase of them he spint sivin days and sivin nights in the belly of a whale, wasn’t it⁠—”

“Stop there, now!” says Father Cassidy, pinting his finger; “hould where you are⁠—that was Jonah.”

“You’re working meracles to make me forget!” shouted the King.

“I’m not!” cried the priest, “and what’s more, if you’ll agree not to use charms of the black art to help yourself, I’ll promise not to work meracles agin you.”

“Done! I’ll agree,” says the King, “and with that bargain I’ll go on first, and I’ll prove that mankind is the inemy of Sattin.”

“Who begun the inmity?” intherrupted his Riverence; “who started in be tempting our first parents?”

“Not wishing to make little of a man’s relaytions in his own house or to his own face, but your first parents were a poor lot,” said the King. “Didn’t your first parent turn quane’s evidence agin his own wife? Answer me that!”

“Undher the sarcumstances, would ye have him tell a lie whin he was asked?” says the priest right back.

Well, the argyment got hotter and hotter until Darby’s mind was in splinthers. Sometimes he sided with Ould Nick, sometimes he was agin him. Half of what they said he didn’t undherstand. They talked Tayology, Conchology, and Distrology, they hammered aich other with Jayography, Orthography, and Misnography, they welted aich other with Hylosophy, Philosophy, and Thrimosophy. They bounced up and down in their sates, they shouted and got purple in the face. But every argyment brought out another nearly as good and twict as loud.

Through all this time the follyers of the King sat upon their perches or lay upon the table motionless, like little wooden images with painted green cloaks and brown caps.

Darby, looking from one to the other of them for help to undherstand the thraymendous argyment that was goin’ on, felt his brain growin’ numb. At last it balked like Shamus Free’s donkey, and urge as he would, the divil a foot his mind’d stir afther the two hayros. It turned at last and galloped back to Mrs. Morrisey’s wake.

Now, thin, the thought that came into Darby’s head as he sat there ferninst Father Cassidy an’ the King was this:

“The two wisest persons in Ireland are this minute shouting and disputing before me own turf fire. If I ax them those questions, I’ll be wiser than Maurteen Cavanaugh, the schoolmaster, an’ twict as wise as any other man in this parish. I’ll do it,” he says to himself.

He raised the tongs and struck them so loud and quick against the hearth that the two daybaters stopped short in their talk to look at him.

“Tell me,” he says⁠—“lave off and tell me who was the greatest man that ever lived?” says he.

At that a surprising thing happened. Brian Connors and Father Cassidy, aich striving to speak first, answered in the same breath and gave the same name.

“Dan’le O’Connell,” says they.

There was at that the instant’s silence an’ stillness which follys a great explosion of gunpowdher.

Thin every subject of the King started to his feet.

“Three cheers for Dan’le O’Connell!” cried little Roderick Dhue. Every brown cap was swung in the air. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooroo!” rang the cheers.

His Riverence and the fairy-chief turned sharp about and stared at each other, delighted and wondhering.

Darby sthruck agin with the tongs. “Who was the greatest poet?” says he.

Agin the two spoke together. “Tom Moore,” says they. The King rubbed his hands and gave a glad side look at the priest. Darby marked the friendly light that was stealing into Father Cassidy’s brown eyes. There was great excitement among the Good People up on the cupboard shelves.

On the table little Nial, the wise, was thrying to start three cheers for Father Cassidy, when Darby said agin: “Who was the greatest warrior?” he says.

The kitchen grew still as death, aich of the two hayros waiting for the other.

The King spoke first. “Brian Boru,” says he.

“No,” says Father Cassidy, half laughing; “Owen Roe O’Nale.”

Phadrig Oge jumped from the churn. “Owen Roe forever! I always said it!” cries he. “Look at this man, boys,” he says, pinting up to the priest. “There’s the making of the foinest bishop in Ireland!”

“The divil a much differ betwixt Owen Roe an’ Brian Boru! ’Tis one of them two, an’ I don’t care which!” says the King.

The priest and the King sank back in their chairs, eyeing aich other with admayration.

Darby powered something out of a jug into three brown stone noggins, and then turned hot wather from the kittle, on top of that agin.

Says the King to the clargyman, “You’re the cleverest and the knowingest man I’ve met in five thousand years. That joult you gave me about Jonah was a terror!”

“I never saw your ayquil! If we could only send you to Parliament, you’d free Ireland!” says Father Cassidy. “To think,” says he, “that once I used to believe there was no such thing as fairies!”

“That was bekase you were shuperstitious,” says the King. “Everyone is so, more or less. I am meself⁠—a little,” says he.

Darby was stirrin’ spoons in the three steaming noggins and Father Cassidy was looking throubled.

What would his flock say to see him dhrinking punch with a little ould pagin, who was the friend of Ould Nick?

“Your health!” says the King, houlding up the cup.

His Riverence took a bowl of the punch, for daycency’s sake, and stood quiet a minute. At last he says, “Happiness to you and forgiveness to you, and my heart’s pity folly you!” says he, raising the noggin to his lips.

He dhrained the cup thoughtful and solemn, for he didn’t know rightly whether ’twas a vaynial sin or a mortial sin he’d committed by the bad example he was giving Darby.

“I wisht I could do something for yez,” he says, putting on his cloak, “but I have only pity and kind wishes to give you!”

He turned agin when his hand was on the doorknob, and was going to say something else, but changed his mind, and wint out to where Darby was houlding the horse.

Manewhile, the Little People were consultin’ eager in a knot beside the fireplace, until the King broke away an’ follyed Father Cassidy out.

“Wait a minute!” the fairy says. “There’s somethin’ important your Riverence should know about,” he says. “There’s two speckled hins that sthrayed away from your own door over to the black pond, an’ they’ve been there this twelvemonth. I’m loathe to say it, but in yer own mind your honour a‑ccused Bothered Bill Donahue, the tinker, with takin’ thim. Well, they’ve raised two great clutches of chickens an’ they’re all yours. We thought we’d tell ye,” he says.

“An’ last Chewsday night Nancy Burke bate her husband Dicky for being ’toxicated. I think she bate him too scan’lous,” says little Nial, the fiddler, comin’ out. “An’ Dicky is too proud to complain of her to your honour. He says ’twould be makin’ a kind of informer out of himself. But maybe she’ll bate him agin, so I thought to mintion it,” he says. With that Phadrig Oge broke in from where he stood on the thrashol’:

“Tom Healy’s family, up the mountainy way, is all down with the faver; they have no one to send worrud!” cried Phadrig; “your honour ought to know about it,” he says.

Be this time the Good People were all outside, crowded about the horse, an’ aich one excited, shouting up some friendly informaytion.

Father Cassidy, from Terror’s back, sat smilin’ down kind, first on this one, then on that, an’ then on the other.

“Wisha!” says he, “ain’t ye the kindly crachures! I’ve heard more news of me own parish in the last foive minutes than I’d have learned in a twelvemonth. But there’s one thing I’d liked mighty well to know. Maybe yez could tell me,” says he, “who committed the mystarious crime in this parish a year ago last Christmas? Who stole the six shillin’s from ould Mrs. Frawley? She counted them at Mrs. McGee’s, an’ she felt them in her pocket at Mrs. Donovan’s; the crowd jostled her at the chapel door, an’ afther that they were gone,” he says.

Well, the fairies were splittin’ with laughter as he spoke.

“No one stole thim at all,” says Shaun Rhue, the tears of merriment rollin’ down his face. “The disraymemberin’ woman only aymagins she counted thim at Mrs. McGee’s an’ felt thim at Mrs. Donovan’s. She was only thinkin’ about the money at thim places, an’ that’s how she got the ideeh. She hid the shillin’s in the blue taypot with the broken spout, that stands in the left-han’ corner of the mayhogany dhresser, an’ thin forgot it entirely,” he says.

“Well, look at that, now,” says the priest, “an’ all the turmile there’s been about that same six shillin’s, an’ she afther hidin’ them in the taypot herself. Now isn’t there something I can do in rayturn for all your kindness?” he says.

“There’s one thing,” says King Brian Connors, lookin’ a good dale confuged. “If your Riverence could just as well⁠—if it’d be no positive inconvaynience⁠—we’d like mightilly for ye not to be singin’ pious hymns as you go riding along the highway afther dark. If you’d sing ballads, now, or Tom Moore’s melodies. You mane no harrum, of course, as it is, but last week you broke up a dance we were having at Murray’s rath, an’ Saturday night you put a scatther on a crowd of us as we were coming by McGrath’s meadow,” he says, anxious.

’Twas a quare bargain for a clargyman to make, an’ faix it wint agin his conscience, but he hadn’t the heart to rayfuse. So he bint down an’ shook the King’s hand. “I promise,” he says.

A wild, shrill cheer broke from the throng of Little People.

“Now I’ll go home an’ lave yez in peace,” says Father Cassidy, grippin’ his bridle-rein. “I came yer inemy, but I’m convarted. I’ll go back yer friend,” he says.

“Ye won’t go home alone, we’ll escorch ye!” shouted Phadrig Oge.

Wullum Fagin, the poacher, was sneakin’ home that night about one o’clock, with a bag full of rabbits undher his arrum, whin hearing behind him the bate of horse’s hoofs and the sound of maylodious music, he jumped into the ditch and lay close within the shadow.

Who should come canthering up the starlit road but Father Cassidy, on his big black hunter, Terror.

Wullum looked for the musicianers who were singing and playing the enthrancing music, but sorra one could he see, and what was more, the sounds came from the air high above Father Cassidy’s head.

“ ’Tis the angels guarding the good man,” says Wullum.

Sure ’twas only the Good People escorching his Riverence from Darby O’Gill’s house, and to cheer him on his way, singing the while, “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.”

How the Fairies Came to Ireland

The most lonesome bridle-path in all Ireland leads from Tom Healy’s cottage down the sides of the hills, along the edge of the valley, till it raiches the high road that skirts the great mountain, Sleive-na-mon.

One blusthering, unaisy night, Father Cassidy, on his way home from a sick call, rode over that same path. It wasn’t strange that the priest, as his horse ambled along, should be thinking of that other night in Darby O’Gill’s kitchen⁠—the night when he met with the Good People; for there, off to the left, towered and threatened Sleive-na-mon, the home of the fairies.

The dismal ould mountain glowered toward his Riverence, its dark look saying, plain as spoken words:

“How dare ye come here; how dare ye?”

“I wondher,” says Father Cassidy to himself, looking up at the black hill, “if the Good People are fallen angels, as some do be saying.

“Why were they banished from heaven? It must have been a great sin entirely they committed, at any rate, for at the same time they were banished the power to make a prayer was taken from them. That’s why to say a pious word to a fairy is like trowing scalding wather on him. ’Tis a hard pinnance that’s put on the poor crachures. I wisht I knew what ’twas for,” he says.

He was goin’ on pondherin’ in that way, while Terror was picking his steps, narvous, among the stones of the road, whin suddenly a frowning, ugly rock seemed to jump up and stand ferninst them at a turn of the path.

Terror shied at it, stumbled wild, and thin the most aggrewating of all bothersome things happened⁠—the horse cast a shoe and wint stone lame.

In a second the priest had leaped to the ground and picked up the horseshoe.

“Wirra! Wirra!” says he, lifting the lame foot, “why did you do it, allannah? ’Tis five miles to a smith an’ seven miles to your own warm stable.”

The horse, for answer, raiched down an’ touched with his soft nose the priest’s cheek; but the good man looked rayproachful into the big brown eyes that turned sorrowful to his own.

With the shoe in his hand the priest was standin’ fretting and helpless on the lonesome hillside, wondhering what he’d do at all at all, whin a sudden voice spoke up from somewhere near Terror’s knees.

“The top of the avinin’ to your Riverence,” it said, “I’m sorry for your bad luck,” says the voice.

Looking down, Father Cassidy saw a little cloaked figure, and caught the glint of a goold crown. ’Twas Brian Connors, the King of the Fairies, himself, that was in it.

His words had so friendly a ring in them that the clargyman smiled in answering, “Why, thin, good fortune to you, King Brian Connors,” says the good man, “an’ save you kindly. What wind brought you here?” he says.

The king spoke back free an’ pleasant. “The boys told me you were comin’ down the mountainy way, and I came up just in time to see your misfortune. I’ve sent for Shaun Rhue, our own farrier⁠—there’s no betther in Ireland; he’ll be here in a minute, so don’t worry,” says the King.

The priest came so near saying “God bless ye,” that the king’s hair riz on his head. But Father Cassidy stopped in the nick of time, changed his coorse, an’ steered as near a blessing as he could without hurting the Master of the Good People.

“Well, may you never hear of throuble,” he says, “till you’re wanted to its wake,” says he.

“There’s no throuble tonight at any rate,” says the king, “for while Shaun is fixing the baste we’ll sit in the shelter of that rock yonder; there we’ll light our pipes and divart our minds with pleasant discoorsin’ and wise convarsaytion.”

While the king spoke, two green-cloaked little men were making a fire for the smith out of twigs. So quick did they work, that by the time the priest and the fairy man could walk over to the stone and sit themselves in the shelther, a thousand goold sparks were dancin’ in the wind, and the glimmer of a foine blaze fought with the darkness.

Almost as soon, clear and purty, rang the cheerful sound of an anvil, and through the swaying shadows a dozen busy little figures were working about the horse. Some wore leather aprons and hilt up the horse’s hoof whilst Shaun fitted the red-hot shoe; others blew the bellows or piled fresh sticks on the fire; all joking, laughing, singing, or thrickin’; one couldn’t tell whether ’twas playing or workin’ they were.

Afther lighting their pipes and paying aich other an armful of complayments, the Master of Sleive-na-mon and the clargyman began a sayrious discoorse about the deloights of fox hunting, which led to the considheration of the wondherful wisdom of racing horses and the disgraceful day-ter-ray-roar-ation of the Skibberbeg hounds.

Father Cassidy related how whin Ned Blaze’s steeplechasin’ horse had been entered for the Connemarra Cup, an’ found out at the last minute that Ned feared to lay a bet on him, the horse felt himself so stabbed to the heart with shame by his master’s disthrust, that he trew his jockey, jumped the wall, an’, head in the air, galloped home.

The king then tould how at a great hunting meet, whin three magisthrates an’ two head excises officers were in the chase, that thief of the worruld, Let-Erin-Raymimber, the chief hound of the Skibberbeg pack, instead of follying the fox, led the whole hunt up over the mountain to Patrick McCaffrey’s private still. The entire counthry-side were dhry for a fortnit afther.

Their talk in that way dhrifted from one pleasant subject to another, till Father Cassidy, the sly man, says aisy ’an’ careless “I’ve been tould,” says he, “that before the Good People were banished from heaven yez were all angels,” he says.

The king blew a long thin cloud from betwixt his lips, felt his whuskers thoughtful for a minute, and said:

“No,” he says, “we were not exactly what you might call angels. A rale angel is taller nor your chapel.”

“Will you tell me what they’re like?” axed Father Cassidy, very curious.

“I’ll give you an idee be comparison what they’re like,” the king says. “They’re not like a chapel, and they’re not like a three, an’ they’re not like the ocean,” says he. “They’re different from a goint⁠—a great dale different⁠—and they’re dissembler to an aygle; in fact you’d not mistake one of them for anything you’d ever seen before in your whole life. Now you have a purty good ideeah what they’re like,” says he.

“While I think of it,” says the fairy man, a vexed frown wrinkling over his forehead, “there’s three young bachelors in your own parish that have a foolish habit of callin’ their colleens angels whin they’s not the laste likeness⁠—not the laste. If I were you, I’d preach ag’in it,” says he.

“Oh, I dunno about that!” says Father Cassidy, fitting a live coal on his pipe. “The crachures must say thim things. If a young bachelor only talks sensible to a sensible colleen he has a good chanst to stay a bachelor. An thin ag’in, a gossoon who’ll talk to his sweetheart about the size of the petatie crop’ll maybe bate her whin they’re both married. But this has nothing to do with your historical obserwaytions. Go on, King,” he says.

“Well, I hate foolishness, wherever it is,” says the fairy. “Howsumever, as I was saying, up there in heaven they called us the Little People,” he says; “millions of us flocked together, and I was the King of them all. We were happy with one another as birds of the same nest, till the ruction came on betwixt the black and the white angels.

“How it all started I never rightly knew, nor wouldn’t ask for fear of getting implicayted. I bade all the Little People keep to themselves thin, because we had plenty of friends in both parties, and wanted throuble with nayther of them.

“I knew ould Nick well; a civiler, pleasanter spoken sowl you couldn’t wish to meet⁠—a little too sweet in his ways, maybe. He gave a thousand favors and civilities to my subjects, and now that he’s down, the devil a word I’ll say agin him.”

“I’m agin him,” says Father Cassidy, looking very stern; “I’m agin him an’ all his pumps an’ worruks. I’ll go bail that in the ind he hurt yez more than he helped yez.”

“Only one thing I blame him for,” says the king; “he sajooced from the Little People my comrade and best friend, one Thaddeus Flynn be name. And the way that it was, was this. Thaddeus was a warmhearted little man, but monsthrous high-spirited as well as quick-tempered. I can shut me eyes now, and in me mind see him thripping along, his head bent, his pipe in his mouth, his hands behind his back. He never wore a waistcoat, but kept always his green body-coat buttoned. A tall caubeen was set on the back of his head, with a sprig of green shamrock in the band. There was a thin rim of black whiskers undher his chin.”

Father Cassidy, liftin’ both hands in wondher, said: “If I hadn’t baptized him, and buried his good father before him, I’d swear ’twas Michael Pether McGilligan of this parish you were dayscribin’,” says he.

“The McGilligans ain’t dacint enough, nor rayfined enough, nor proud enough to be fairies,” says the king, wavin’ his pipe scornful. “But to raysume and to continue,” he says.

“Thaddeus and I used to frayquint a place they called the battlements or parypets⁠—which was a great goold wall about the edge of heaven, and which had wide steps down on the outside face, where one could sit, pleasant avenings, and hang his feet over, or where one’d stand before going to take a fly in the fresh air for himself.

“Well, agra, the night before the great battle, Thady and I were sitting on the lowest step, looking down into league upon league of nothing, and talking about the world, which was suxty thousand miles below, and hell, which was tunty thousand miles below that ag’in, when who should come blusthering over us, his black wings hiding the sky, and a long streak of lightning for a spear in his fist, but Ould Nick.

“ ‘Brian Connors, how long are you going to be downthrodden and thrajooced and looked down upon⁠—you and your subjects?’ says he.

“ ‘Faix, thin, who’s doing that to us?’ asks Thady, standing up and growing excited.

“ ‘Why,’ says Ould Nick, ‘were you made little pygmies to be the laugh and the scorn and the mock of the whole world?’ he says, very mad; ‘why weren’t you made into angels, like the rest of us?’ he says.

“ ‘Musha,’ cries Thady, ‘I never thought of that.’

“ ‘Are you a man or a mouse; will you fight for your rights?’ says Sattin. ‘If so, come with me and be one of us. For we’ll bate them black and blue tomorrow,’ he says. Thady needed no second axing.

“ ‘I’ll go with ye, Sattin, me dacent man,’ cried he. ‘Wirra! Wirra! To think of how downthrodden we are!’ And with one spring Thady was on Ould Nick’s chowlders, and the two flew away like a hummingbird riding on the back of an aygle.

“ ‘Take care of yerself, Brian,’ says Thady, ‘and come over to see the fight; I’m to be in it. And I extind you the inwitation,’ he says.

“In the morning the battle opened; one line of black angels stretched clear across heaven, and faced another line of white angels, with a walley between.

“Everyone had a spaking trumpet in his hand, like you see in the pictures, and they called aich other hard names across the walley. As the white angels couldn’t swear or use bad langwidge, Ould Nick’s army had at first in that way a great adwantage. But when it came to hurling hills and shying tunderbolts at aich other, the black angels were bate from the first.

“Poor little Thaddeus Flynn stood amongst his own, in the dust and the crash and the roar, brave as a lion. He couldn’t hurl mountains, nor was he much at flinging lightning bolts, but at calling hard names he was aquil to the best.

“I saw him take off his coat, trow it on the ground, and shake his pipe at a thraymendous angel. ‘You owdacious villain,’ he cried. ‘I dare you to come halfway over!’ he says.”

“My, oh my, whin the armies met together in the rale handy grips, it must have been an illigent sight,” says Father Cassidy. “ ’Tis a wondher you kep’ out of it,” says he.

“I always belayved,” says the King, “that if he can help it, no one should fight whin he’s sure to get hurted, onless it’s his juty to fight. To fight for the mere sport of it, when a throuncin’ is sartin, is wasting your time and hurtin’ your repitation. I know there’s plenty thinks different,” he says, p’inting his pipe. “I may be wrong, an’ I won’t argyfy the matther. ’Twould have been betther for myself that day if I had acted on the other principle.

“Howsumever, be the time that everybody was sidestepping mountains and dodging tunderbolts, I says to myself, says I, ‘This is no place fer you or the likes of you.’ So I took all me own people out to the battlements and hid them out of the way on the lower steps. We’d no sooner got placed whin⁠—whish! a black angel shot through the air over our heads, and began falling down, down, and down, till he was out of sight. Then a score of his friends came tumbling over the battlements; imagetly hundreds of others came whirling, and purty soon it was raining black wings down into the gulf.

“In the midst of the turmile, who should come jumping down to me, all out of breath, but Thady.

“ ‘It’s all over, Brian; we’re bate scandalous,’ he says, swinging his arms for a spring and balancing himself up and down on the edge of the steps. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t think it of me, Brian Connors; but I’m a fallen angel,’ says he.

“ ‘Wait a bit, Thaddeus Flynn!’ says I. ‘Don’t jump,’ I says.

“ ‘I must jump,’ he says, ‘or I’ll be trun,’ says he.

“The next thing I knew he was swirling and darting and shooting a mile below me.

“And I know,” says the King, wiping his eyes with his cloak, “that when the Day of Judgment comes I’ll have at laste one friend waiting for me below to show me the coolest spots and the pleasant places.

“The next minute up came the white army with presners⁠—angels, black and white, who had taken no side in the battle, but had stood apart like ourselves.

“ ‘A man,’ says the Angel Gabriel, ‘who, for fear of his skin, won’t stand for the right when the right is in danger, may not desarve hell, but he’s not fit for heaven. Fill up the stars with these cowards and throw the lavin’s into the say,’ he ordhered.

“With that he swung a lad in the air, and gave him a fling that sent him ten miles out intil the sky. Every other good angel follyed shuit, and I watched thousands go, till they faded like a stretch of black smoke a hundred miles below.

“The Angel Gabriel turned and saw me, and I must confess I shivered.

“ ‘Well, King Brian Connors,’ says he, ‘I hope you see that there’s such a thing as being too wise and too cute and too ticklish of yourself. I can’t send you to the stars, bekase they’re fun, and I won’t send you to the bottomless pit so long as I can help it. I’ll send yez an down to the world. We’re going to put human beans on it purty soon, though they’re going to turn out to be blaggards, and at last we’ll have to burn the place up. Afther that, if you’re still there, you and yours must go to purdition, for it’s the only place left for you.

“ ‘You’re too hard on the little man,’ says the Angel Michael, coming up⁠—St. Michael was ever the outspoken, friendly person⁠—‘sure what harm, or what hurt, or what good could he have done us? And can you blame the poor little crachures for not interfering?’

“ ‘Maybe I was too harsh,’ says the Angel Gabriel, ‘but being saints, when we say a thing we must stick to it. Howsumever, I’ll let him settle in any part of the world he likes, and I’ll send there the kind of human beans he’d wish most for. Now, give your ordher,’ he says to me, taking out his book and pencil, ‘and I’ll make for you the kind of people you’d like to live among.’

“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’d like the men honest and brave, and the women good.’

“ ‘Very well,’ he says, writing it down; ‘I’ve got that⁠—go on.’

“ ‘And I’d like them fun of jollity and sport, fond of racing and singing and hunting and fighting, and all such innocent divarsions.’

“ ‘You’ll have no complaint about that,’ says he.

“ ‘And,’ says I, ‘I’d like them poor and parsecuted, bekase when a man gets rich, there’s no more fun in him.’

“ ‘Yes, I’ll fix that. Thrue for you,’ says the Angel Gabriel, writing.

“ ‘And I don’t want them to be Christians,’ says I; ‘make them Haythens or Pagans, for Christians are too much worried about the Day of Judgment.’

“ ‘Stop there! Say no more!’ says the saint. ‘If I make as fine a race of people as that I won’t send them to hell to plaze you, Brian Connors.’

“ ‘At laste,’ says I, ‘make them Jews.’

“ ‘If I made them Jews,’ he says, slowly screwing up one eye to think, ‘how could you keep them poor? No, no!’ he said, shutting up the book; ‘go your ways; you have enough.’

“I clapped me hands, and all the Little People stood up and bent over the edge, their fingers pointed like swimmers going to dive. ‘One, two, three,’ I shouted; and with that we took the leap.

“We were two years and tunty-six days falling before we raiched the world. On the morning of the next day we began our sarch for a place to live. We thraveled from north to south and from ayst to west. Some grew tired and dhropped off in Spain, some in France, and others ag’in in different parts of the world. But the most of us thraveled ever and ever till we came to a lovely island that glimmered and laughed and sparkled in the middle of the say.

“ ‘We’ll stop here,’ I says; ‘we needn’t sarch farther, and we needn’t go back to Italy or Swizzerland, for of all places on the earth, this island is the nearest like heaven; and in it the County Clare and the County Tipperary are the purtiest spots of all.’ So we hollowed out the great mountain Sleive-na-mon for our home, and there we are till this day.”

The king stopped a while, and sat houldin’ his chin in his hands. “That’s the thrue story,” he says, sighing pitiful. “We took sides with nobody, we minded our own business, and we got trun out for it,” says he.

So intherested was Father Cassidy in the talk of the king that the singing and hammering had died out without his knowing, and he hadn’t noticed at all how the darkness had thickened in the valley and how the stillness had spread over the hillside. But now, whin the chief of the fairies stopped, the good man, half frightened at the silence, jumped to his feet and turned to look for his horse.

Beyond the dull glow of the dying fire a crowd of Little People stood waiting, patient and quiet, houlding Terror, who champed restless at his bit, and bate impatient with his hoof on the hard ground.

As the priest looked toward them, two of the little men wearing leather aprons moved out from the others, leading the baste slow and careful over to where the good man stood beside the rock.

“You’ve done me a faver this night,” says the clargyman, gripping with his bridle hand the horse’s mane, “an’ all I have to pay it back with’d only harry you, an’ make you oncomfortable, so I’ll not say the words,” he says.

“No faver at all,” says the king, “but before an hour there’ll be lyin’ on your own threshold a faver in the shape of a bit of as fine bacon as ever laughed happy in the middle of biling turnips. We borryed it last night from a magisthrate named Blake; who lives up in the County Wexford,” he says.

The clargyman had swung himself into the saddle.

“I’d be loath to say anything disrayspectful,” he says quick, “or to hurt sensitive feelings, but on account of my soul’s sake I couldn’t ate anything that was come by dishonest,” he says.

“Bother and botheration, look at that now!” says the king. “Every thrade has its drawbacks, but I never rayalized before the hardship of being a parish priest. Can’t we manage it some way? Couldn’t I put it some place where you might find it, or give it to a friend who’d send it to you?”

“Stop a minute,” says Father Cassidy. “Up at Tim Healy’s I think there’s more hunger than sickness, more nade for petaties than for physic. Now, if you sent that same bit of bacon⁠—”

“Oh, ho!” says the king, with a dhry cough, “the Healy’s have no sowls to save, the same as parish priests have.”

“I’m a poor, wake, miserable sinner,” says the priest, hanging his head; “I fall at the first temptation. Don’t send it,” says he.

“Since you forbid me, I’ll send it,” says the king, chucklin’. “I’ll not be ruled by you. Tomorrow the Healy’s’ll have five tinder-hearted heads of cabbage, makin’ love in a pot to the finest bit of bacon in Tipperary⁠—that is, unless you do your juty an’ ride back to warn them. Raymember their poor sowls,” says he, “an’ don’t forget your own,” he says.

The priest sat unaisy in the saddle. “I’ll put all the raysponsibility on Terror,” he says. “The baste has no sowl to lose. I’ll just drop the reins on his neck; if he turns and goes back to Healy’s I’ll warn them; if he goes home let it be on his own conscience.”

He dhropped the reins, and the dishonest baste started for home imagetly.

But afther a few steps Father Cassidy dhrew up an’ turned in the saddle. Not a sowl was in sight; there was only the lonely road and the lonesome hillside; the last glimmer of the fairy fire was gone, and a curtain of soft blackness had fallen betwixt him an’ where the blaze had been.

“I bid you good night, Brian Connors,” the priest cried. From somewhere out of the darkness a woice called back to him, “Good night, your Riverence.”

The Adventures of King Brian Connors

The Banshee’s Comb