Did your honour ever hear how Anthony Sullivan’s goat came to join the fairies?

Well, it’s a quare story and a wandhering, quarrelsome story, as a tale about a goat is sure to be. Howsumever, in the home of the Good People⁠—which, as you know, is the hollow heart of the great mountain Sleive-na-mon⁠—Anthony Sullivan’s goat lives and prospers to this day, a pet and a hayro among the fairies.

And this is the way it came about:

All the world knows how for months Darby O’Gill an’ his purty sister-in-law, Maureen McGibney, were kept presners by the Good People; an’ how, afther they were relaysed by the King, that same little fairy, King Brian Connors, used often to visit thim an’ sit with thim colloguin’ and debaytin’ an’ considherin’ in Darby O’Gill’s kitchen.

One lonesome Decimber night, when Bridget and the childher were away visiting Bridget’s father at Ballingher, and the angry blast was screaming and dhrifting the first white flakes of winther around Darby’s house, thin it was that Darby O’Gill, Brian Connors, the King of the Good People, and Maureen McGibney sat with their heads together before the blazing hearth. The King, being not much higher than your two hands, sat on the child’s stool betwixt the other two, his green cloak flung back from his chowlders, and the goold crown on his head glistening in the firelight.

It was a pleasant sight to watch them there in the flickering hearth glow. From time to time, as he talked, the ould King patted Maureen’s hands and looked smiling up into her purty gray eyes. They had been discoursing on the subject of Throubles and Thribulations.

“Arrah! You ought to be the happy man, King,” Darby says, sipping his noggin of punch, “with no silly woman to ordher you or to cross you or to belittle you. Look at meself. Afther all the rayspect I’ve climbed into from being with the fairies, and afther all the knowledge I’ve got from them, there’s one person in this parish who has no more riverence for me now than she had the first day she met me⁠—sometimes not so much, I’m thinking,” he says, hurt-like.

“I’ve seen the workings of families during more than five thousand years,” says the little King, “so you needn’t tell me who that one person is, me poor man⁠—’tis your own wife, Bridget.”

“Thrue for you! Whin it’s the proud woman she ought to be this day to have the likes of me for a husband,” says Darby. “Ah, then, you ought to be the happy man, whatever wind blows,” he sighed again; “when you see a fat pig you like, you take it without so much as saying by your lave; if you come upon a fine cow or a good horse, in a twinkling you have it in Sleive-na-mon. A girl has a good song with her, a boy has a nimble foot for a jig, or an ould woman a smooth tongue for a tale, and, whisk! they’re gone into the heart of the mountain to sing or dance for you, or to beguile you with ould tales until the Day of Judgment.”

The King shook his head slowly, and drew a long face.

“Maybe we ought to be happy,” says he. “ ’Tis thrue there’s no sickness in Sleive-na-mon, nor worry for tomorrow, nor fret for one’s childher, nor parting from friends, or things like that, but throuble is like the dhrifting snow outside, Darby; it falls on the cottage and it covers the castle with the same touch, and once in a while it sifts into Sleive-na-mon.”

“In the name of goodness!” cries Darby, surprised, “is there anything in the whole world you can’t have for the wishing it?”

The King took off his goold crown and began polishing it with his sleeve to hide his narvousness. “I’ll tell you a saycret,” he whuspered, bending over toward Darby, and speaking slow. “In Sleive-na-mon our hearts are just breaking for something we can’t get; but that’s one thing we’d give the worruld for.”

“Oh, King, what in the livin’ worruld can it be?” cried Maureen.

“I’d give the teeth out of me head if I could only own a goat,” says the King, looking as though he were going to cry.

“Man alive!” says Darby, dhropping the poker, “the counthry-side is full of goats, and all you have to do is to take your pick and help yourself. You’re making game of us, King.”

The King shook his head. “The Good People have been thrying for years to capture one,” says he. “I’ve been bunted into ditches by the villains; I’ve been trun over hedges by them; I had to leap on the back of Anthony Sullivan’s goat, and with two hundred of me subjects in full cry behind, ride him all night long, houlding by his horns to kape him from getting at me and disthroying me entirely. The jumps he took with me that night were thraymendous. It was from the cowshed to the sthraw-stack, from the sthraw-stack to the housetop, and from there down to the ground agin, and then hooraying an’ hoorooing, a race up the mountainside. But,” says the King, kind o’ sniffling an’ turning to the fire, “we love the ground he walks upon,” says he.

“Tare an’ ouns!” says Darby, “why don’t you put your spell on one of them?”

“You don’t know them,” says the King. “We can’t put the black spell on thim⁠—they’re not Christian bastes, like pigs or cows. Whin it comes to animals, we can only put our come ’ither on cattle and horses, and such as are Christian animals, ye know. In his mind and in his heart a goat is a pagen. He wouldn’t ask any betther divarsion than for me to thry and lay me hands on him,” says the King, wiping his eyes.

“But,” says he agin, standing up on the stool and houlding his pipe over his head, “Anthony Sullivan’s goat is the gallusest baste that roams the fields! There’s more fun in him, and no more fear in him, than in a yallow lion. He’d do anything for sport; he’d bunt the King of Russia, he’d ba-a at a parish priest, out of pure, rollicking divilment,” says the King. “If the Good People had a friend, a rale friend,” says he, looking hard at Darby, “that wouldn’t be afeard to go into our home within the mountain once more, just once, and bring with him that goat⁠—”

“Say no more,” says Darby, hoarsely, and turning white with fear⁠—“say no more, Brian Connors! Not all the goold in Sleive-na-mon would tempt me there agin! It’s make a presner of me forever you would. I know your thricks.”

The look of scorn the little man flung at Darby would have withered the threes.

“I might have known it,” he says, sitting down disgusted. “I was a fool for hoping you would,” says he. “There’s no more spirit in ye nor sinse of gratichude than in a hin. Wait till!⁠—” and he shook his fist.

“Don’t blame the lad,” cried Maureen, patting the King’s head, sootheringly; “sure, why should the like of a wondherful man, such as you, who has lived five thousand years, and knows everything, compare your wit or your spirit or your sinse with the likes of us poor crachures that only stay here a few hours and thin are gone forever?” This she cried, craftily, flatthering the ould man. “Be aisy on him, King, acushla!” says she, coaxing.

Well, the little man, being soothered, sat down agin. “Maybe I was too hard,” he says, “but to tell the truth, the life is just bothered out of me, and my temper is runed these days with an omadhaun we’ve taken lately; I don’t know what to do with him. Talk of throuble! He mopes and mourns and moothers in spite of all we can do. I’ve even tould him where the crocks of goold are hid⁠—”

“You haven’t tould me that,” cries Darby, quickly.

“No,” says the King, looking at him sideways.

“At laste not yit,” says Darby, looking sideways at the King.

“Not yit, nor will I fer a long time yitter, you covetous, ungrateful spalpeen!” snapped the fairy.

“Well,” said he, paying no more attention to Darby, “this young omadhaun is six feet high in his stockings, and as foine a looking lad as you’ll see in a day’s walk. Now what do you think he’s mourning and crooning for?”

“Faix, I dunno,” answered Darby. “Maybe it’s a horse or a dog or a cow, or maybe a pair of pigs.”

“You’ve not hit it,” said the Ruler of the Good People; “it’s a colleen. And him having a college education, too.”

“Troth, thin,” said Darby, with a knowledgeable wag of his head, “some of them larned students are as foolish in that way as ignorant people. I once met a tinker named Larry McManus, who knew the jography from cover to cover, and still he had been married three times.”

“Poor gossoon! Who is the omadhaun?” asked Maureen, not minding Darby.

“He’s no less,” said the King, “than Roger O’Brien, a son of ould Bob O’Brien, who was the richest and proudest man in the County Tipperary. Ould Bob thraces his ancestors for five hundhred years, and he owns a mile of land and has forty tenants. He had no child but this omadhaun.”

“And who is the colleen? Some grand Princess, I suppose,” said Maureen.

“There was the whole throuble,” answered the little man. “Why, she’s no one at all, but a little white-cheeked, brown-eyed, black-haired girl named Norah Costello, belonging to one of his own tenants on the domain. It all came from eddicatin’ people above their station.”

“Faix,” Darby says, “there’s Phelem Brady, the stonecutter, a fine, dacint man he was till he made up his mind to larn the history of Ireland from ind to ind. When he got so far as where the Danes killed Brian Boru he took to dhrink, and the divil a ha’porth’s good he’s been ever since. But lade on with your discoorse, King,” says he, waving his noggin of punch.

At this the King filled his pipe, Maureen threw fresh turf on the fire, and the wind dhrew the sparks dancing up the chimney. Now and thin while the King talked, some of the fairies outside rapped on the windowpanes and pressed their little faces against the glass to smile and nod at those within, thin scurried busily off agin intil the darkness. Once the wail of a child rose above the cry of the storm, and Maureen caught the flash of a white robe against the windowpane.

“It’s a child we’ve taken this night from one Jude Casey down in Mayo,” says King Brian Connors. “But fill my noggin with fresh punch, Maureen, and dhraw closter till I tell you about the omadhaun.” And the Master of the Good People crossed his legs and settled into telling the story, comfortable as comfortable could be.

“The way the throuble began was foine and innocent as the day is long,” said the King. “Five or six years ago⁠—it was on the day Roger was first sent to college at Dublin⁠—Misther and Misthress O’Brien, mighty lonesome an’ downhearted, were dhriving over the estate whin who should they spy standing, modest and timid, at her own gate, but purty little Norah Costello. Though the child was only fourteen years old, Misthress O’Brien was so taken with her wise, gentle ways that Norah next day was sint for to come up to the big house to spind an hour amusing the Misthress. There was the rock they all split on.

“Every day afther for a month the little girl went visiting there. At the end of that time Misthress O’Brien grew so fond of her that Norah was brought to the big house to live. Ould Bob liked the little girl monsthrous well, so they put fine clothes on her until in a couple of years one couldn’t tell her from a rale lady, whether he met her in the house or at the crossroad.

“Only every Saturday night she’d put on a little brown poplin dhress and go to her father’s cottage, and stay there helping her mother till Monday or maybe Chewsday. ‘For I mustn’t get proud-hearted,’ she’d say, ’or lose the love I was born to, for who can tell whin I’ll need it,’ says she.”

“A wise girl,” says Darby.

“A dear colleen,” says Maureen.

“Well, every summer me brave Roger came home from college, and the two rode together afther the hounds, or sailed his boat or roved the woods, and the longest summer days were too short entirely to suit the both of them.

“Although she had a dozen young fellows courting her⁠—some of them gentlemen’s sons⁠—the divil an eye she had for anyone except Roger; and although he might pick from twinty of the bluest-blooded ladies in Ireland any day he liked, Norah was his one delight.

“Every servant on the place knew how things were going, but the ould man was so blind with pride that he saw nothing at all; stranger than all, the two childher believed that ould Bob guessed the way things were with them an’ was plazed with them. A worse mistake was never made. He never dhramed that his son Roger would think of any girl without a fortune or a title.

“Misthress O’Brien must have known, but, being tendher-hearted and loving and, like all women, a trifle weak-minded, hoped, in spite of rayson, that her husband would consint to let the childher marry. Knowing ould Bob as she knew him, that was a wild thought for Misthress O’Brien to have; for if ever there was a stiffer, bittherer, prouder, more unforgiving, boistherous man I haven’t seen him, and I’ve lived five thousand years.”

Darby, scowling mighty important, raised his hand. “Whist a bit,” he says; “you raymind me of the ballad about Lord Skipperbeg’s lovely daughter and the farmer’s only son.” Stretching his legs an’ wagging his head, he sang:

“Her cheeks were like the lily white,
Her neck was like the rose.”

“Oh, my! oh, my!” said the King, surprised, “was her neck as red as that?”

“By no manes,” said Darby. “I med a mistake; ’twas this away:

“Her neck was like the lily white,
Her cheeks were like the rose,
She quickly doffed her silk attire
And donned a yeoman’s clothes.

“ ‘Rise up, rise up, my farmer’s son,
Rise up thrue love,’ says she,
‘We’ll fly acrost the ragin’ main
Unto Amer-i⁠—’ ”

“Have done you’re fooling, Darby,” says Maureen; “you have the King bothered.”

“I wisht you hadn’t shtopped him, agra,” says the King. “I niver heard that song before, an’ it promised well. I’m fond of love songs,” he says.

“But the omadhaun,” coaxed the colleen.

“I forgot where I was,” the King says, scratching his head. “But, spaking of ould Bob,” he wint on, “no one ever thought how evil and bitther he could be, until his son, the foolish lad, a few days before the ind of his schooling, wrote to the father that he wanted to marry Norah whin he came home, and that he would be home in a few days, he thought. He was breaking the news aisy to the family, d’ye see!

“ ‘Whew! Hullabaloo! Out of the house with her⁠—the sly, conniving hussy!’ shouted ould Bob, whin he read the letter. ‘Into the road with all we’ve given her! Pull the roof off Costello’s house and dhrive off the place his whole brood of outraygeous villians!’

“So they packed Norah’s boxes⁠—faix, an’ many a fine dhress was in them, too⁠—and bade her begone. The Misthress slipped a bag of goold sovereigns with a letther into one of the chests. Norah took the letther, but she forbade them sending so much as a handkerchief afther her.

“She wouldn’t even ride in the coach that the Misthress had waiting for her outside the grand gate; and all alone, in her brown poplin dhress, she marched down the gravel path, proud, like a queen going to be crowned. Nor did she turn her head when the servants called blessings afther her; but oh, asthore, her face was marble white; and whin she was on her way down the lonely high road how she cried!

“ ’Twas a bitther time entirely, the night young Roger came home, and, hearing of all this, rushed up the stairs to face his father. What happened betwixt them there no one knows, only they never passed aich other a friendly look nor gave one to the other a pleasant word from that good hour to this.

“To make matthers worse, that same night young Roger wint and axed Norah Costello to marry him. But all the counthry-side knows how the girl rayfused him, saying she wouldn’t beggar and rune the man she loved.

“Well, he took her at her word, but disbelieved and mocked at the raysons she gave⁠—the omadhaun!

“He wasn’t much good afther that, only for galloping his horse over the counthry like a madman, so I said to meself, says I, that we might as well take him with us into the Sleive-na-mon. I gave the ordhers, and there he is.”

“Oh, the poor lad!” says Maureen; “does ould Bob suspect the boy is with the fairies?”

“Not in the laste,” says the King. “You know how it is with us; whinever we take a person we lave one of our own in his place, who looks and acts and talks in a way that the presner’s own mother can’t tell the differ. By-and-by the fairy sickens and purtends to die, and has his wake and his burial. When the funeral’s over he comes back to us hale and spiling for more sport. So the lad the O’Briens put into their tomb was one of our own⁠—Phadrig Oge be name.

“Many a time Phadrig has taken the place of the genthry and quality in every county of Ireland, and has been buried more than a hundhred times, but he swears he never before had a dacinter funeral nor a rattliner wake.”

“And the girl!” cried Maureen⁠—“Norah, where is she?”

“Faith, that’s strange, too,” says the King. “She was the first person ould Bob axed for afther the funeral. He begged her to come back to them and forgive him, and the poor girl went agin to live at the big house.”

“He’ll get her another good husband yet,” said Darby.

“Oh, never!” says Maureen, crying like a child. “She’ll die of a broken heart.”

“I’ve seen in me time,” says the King, “people die from being pushed off houses, from falling in wells, and every manner of death you can mention, and I saw one ould woman die from ating too much treacle,” he says, “but never a person die from a broken heart.”

This he said to make light of what he had been telling, because he saw by Maureen’s face that she was growing sick with pity. For Maureen was thinking of the black days when she herself was a presner in Sleive-na-mon.

For an answer to the jest, the girl, with her clasped hands held up to the King, moaned, “Oh, King, King, lave the poor lad go! lave him go. Take the black spell off him and send him home. I beg you lave him go!”

“Don’t bother him,” says Darby; “what right have we to interfere with the Good People?” Though at the same time he took the pipe from his mouth and looked kind of wistful at the little man.

But Maureen’s tears only fell faster and faster.

“I can’t do what you ask, avick,” says the King, very kindly. “That day I let you and Darby go from us the power to free anyone was taken away from me by my people. Now every fairy in Sleive-na-mon must give his consent before the spell can be taken away entirely from anyone; and, well, you know they’ll never consent to that,” he says.

“But what I can do, I will do. I can lift the spell from the omadhaun for one hour, and that hour must be just before cockcrow.”

“Is that the law now?” asked Darby, curiously. Maureen was sobbing, so she couldn’t spake.

“It is,” says the Master of the Good People. “And tonight I’ll sind our spy, Sheelah Maguire, to Norah Costello with the message that if Norah has love enough and courage enough in her heart to stand alone at her thrue lover’s grave in Kilmartin churchyard, tomorrow night an hour before cockcrow, she’ll see him plain and talk with him. And let you two be there,” he says, “to know that I keep me word.”

At that he vanished and they saw him no more that night, nor until two hours afther the next midnight, whin as they were tying the ould horse and cart to the fence outside Kilmartin church, thin they heard him singing. He was sitting on the wall, chanting at the top of his woice a sthrange, wild song, and houlding in his hand a silver-covered noggin. On a fallen tombstone near by lay a white cloth, glimmering in the moonlight, and on the cloth was spread as fine a supper as heart could wish.

So beside the white rows of silent tombs, under the elm-trees and willows, they ate their fill, and Darby would have ate more if close to them they hadn’t heard a long, deep sigh, and caught a glimpse of a tall man, gliding like a shadow into the shadows that hung around the O’Briens’ family vault.

At the same time, standing on the top of the stile which led into the graveyard, a woman’s form was seen wavering in the moonlight.

They watched her coming down the walk betwixt the tombs, her hand on her breast, clutching tight the cloak. Now and thin she’d stand, looking about the while, and shivering in mortal terror at the cry of the owls, and thin she’d flit on and be lost in the shadows; and thin they’d see her run out into the moonlight, where she’d wait agin, gathering courage. At last she came to a strip of soft light before the tomb she knew. Her strength failed her there, and she went down on her knees.

Out of the darkness before her a low, pleading woice called, “Norah! Norah! Don’t be frightened, acushla machree!”

Slowly, slowly, with its arm spread, the dim shape of a man glided out of the shadows. At the same instant the girl rose and gave one cry, as she flung herself on his breast. They could see him bending over her, thin, pouring words like rain into her ears, but what he said they couldn’t hear⁠—Darby thinks he whuspered.

“I wondher, oh, I wondher what he’s telling her in this last hour!” says Maureen.

“It’s aisy to know that,” says Darby; “what should he be telling her but where the crocks of goold are hid.”

“Don’t be watching them, it ain’t dacint,” says the King; “uncultayvation or unpoliteness is ojus; come over here; I’ve a pack of cayrds, Darby,” says he, “and as we have nearly an hour to wait, I challenge you to a game of forty-five.”

“Sure we may as well,” says Darby. “What can’t be cured must be endured.”

With that, me two bould hayroes sat asthride the fallen stone, and hammering the rock hard with their knuckles, played the game. Maureen went and, houlding on to the ivy, knelt at the church wall⁠—it’s praying an’ cryin’, too, I think she was. Small blame to her if she was. All through that hour she imagined the wild promisings of the two poor crachures over be the tomb, and this kept burning the heart out of her.

Just as the first glow of gray broke behind the hills the King stood up and said: “It’s your game, Darby, more be good luck than be good shooting; ’tis time to lave. You know if I’m caught out afther cockcrow I lose all me spells for the day, and besides I’m wisible to any mortal eye. I’m helpless as a baby then. So I think I’ll take the omadhaun and go. The roosthers may crow now any minute,” says he.

The omadhaun, although he couldn’t hear, he felt the charm dhrawing him. He trew a frightened look at the east and held the girl closer. ’Twas their last minute.

“King! King!” says Maureen, running up, “if I brought Sullivan’s goat into Sleive-na-mon, would ye swear to let me out safe agin?”

“Troth, I would indade, I swear be Child Nick!” (’Tis be him the Good People swear.) “I’ll do that same.”

“Then let the omadhaun go home. Get the Good People’s consent and I’ll bring you the goat,” says Maureen.

The King thrembled all over with anxiety and excitement. “Why didn’t you spake sooner? I’m afeard I haven’t time to go to Sleive-na-mon and back before cockcrow,” he stutthered, “and at cockcrow, if the lad was undher the say or in the stars, that spell’d bring him to us, and then he could never agin come out till the Day of Judgment. Howsumever, I’ll go and thry,” he says, houlding tight on to his crown with both hands; and with thim words he vanished.

Be this and be that, it wasn’t two minutes till he was back and wid not a second to spare, ayther.

“Phadrig Oge wants Mrs. Nancy Clancy’s nanny-goat, too. Will ye bring the both of them, Maureen?” he screamed.

“You’re dhriving a hard bargain, King,” cried Darby. “Don’t promise him, Maureen.”

“I will!” cried she.

“Then it’s a bargain!” the fairy shouted, jumping to the top of a headstone. “We all consent,” he says, waving the noggin.

He yelled to the omadhaun. “Go home, Roger O’Brien! Go back to your father’s house and live your life out to its natural ind. The curse is lifted from you, the black spell is spint and gone. Pick up the girl, ye spalpeen; don’t ye see she’s fainted?”

When O’Brien looked up and saw the Master of the Fairies he staggered like a man that had been sthruck a powerful blow. Thin he caught up the girl in his arms and ran with her down the gravelled path and over the stile.

At that minute the sorest misfortune that can happen to one of the Good People came to pass. As the lad left the churchyard every cock in the parish crowed, and, tare and ’ounds! there on a tombstone, caught by the cockcrow, stood the poor, frightened little King! His goold crown was far back on his head, and his green cloak was twisted behind his back. All the power for spells and charms was gone from him until the next sunset.

“I’m runed entirely, Darby!” he says. “Trow your shawl about me, Maureen alannah, and carry me in your arms, purtending I’m an infant. What’ll I do at all at all?” says he, weakly.

Taking him at his word, Maureen wrapped the King in her shawl, and carrying him in her arms to the cart, laid him in the sthraw at the bottom, where he curled up, still and frightened, till they were on their way home.

Omadhaun, a foolish fellow.

Five miles down the road from Kilmartin churchyard, and thin two miles across, lived Barney Casey with Judy, his wife⁠—known far and wide as the Couple without Childher.

Some foolish people whuspered that this lack of family was a punishment for an ould saycret crime. But that saying was nonsense, for an honester couple the sun didn’t shine on. It was only a pinance sint from Heaven as any other pinance is sint; ’twas⁠—like poverty, sickness, or as being born a Connaught man⁠—just to keep them humble-hearted.

But, oh, it was the sore pinance!

Many an envious look they gave their neighbour, Tom Mulligan, the one-legged ballad-maker, who lived half a mile up the road, for, twelve purty, red-haired innocents sported and fought before Tom’s door. The couple took to going through the fields to avoid passing the house, for the sight of the childher gave them the heartache.

By-and-by the two began conniving how on-beknownst they might buy a child, or beg or even steal one⁠—they were that lonesome-hearted.

Howsumever, the plan at last they settled on was for Judy to slip away to a far part⁠—Mayo, I think⁠—where she would go through the alms-houses till she found a gossoon that suited her. And they had the cute plan laid by which it was to pass before the neighbours as their own⁠—a Casey of the Caseys. “Lave it to me, Barney darling,” said Judy, with tears in her eyes, “and if the neighbours wondher where I am, tell them I’ve gone to spind a few months with my ould mother,” says she.

Well, Judy stole off sly enough, and ’twas well intil the cowld weather when Barney got word that she had found a parfect angel, that it was the picture of himself, and that she would be home in a few days.

With a mind like thistledown he ran to Father Scanlan to arrange for the christening. On his way to the priest’s house he inwited the first woman he met, Ann Mulligan, the ballad-maker’s wife, to be godmother; he picked bashful Ted Murphy, the bachelor, to be godfather; and on his way home he was that excited and elayted that he also inwited big Mrs. Brophy, the proud woman, to be the boy’s godmother, forgetting altogether there was sich a parson in the world as Ann Mulligan. The next day the neighbours made ready a great bonfire to celebrayte the dispositious occasion.

But ochone! Midnight before the day of the christening poor Judy came home with empty arms and a breaking heart. The little lad had died suddenly and was buried. Maybe the Good People had taken him⁠—’twas hard to tell which.

Tare and ages, there was the throuble! For two hours the couple sat in their desolate kitchen houlding hands and crying and bawling together till Barney could stand it no longer. Snatching his caubeen, he fled from the coming disgrace and eggsposure out into the fields, where he wandhered aimless till after dawn, stamping his feet at times and wagging his head, or shaking his fist at the stars.

At that same unlucky hour who should be joulting in their cart along the high road, two miles across, on their way home from Kilmartin churchyard, but our three hayroes, Maureen, the King, and Darby O’Gill!

Their ould white horse bobbed up and down through the sticky morning fog, Darby and Maureen shivering on the front sate. The Ruler of the Fairies, Maureen’s shawl folded about him, was lying cuddled below in the sthraw. When they saw anyone coming, the fairy-chief would climb into Maureen’s lap, and she’d hould him as though he were a baby.

Small blame to him to be sour and sullen!

“Here I am,” he says to himself, “his Majesty, Brian Connors, King of all the Good People in Ireland, the Master of the Night Time, and having been King for more than five thousand years, with more power after sunset than the Emperor of Greeze or the Grand Turkey of barbayrious parts⁠—here am I,” he says, “disguised as a baby, wrapped in a woman’s shawl, and depending for my safety on two simple counthry people⁠—” Then he groaned aloud, “Bad luck to the day I first saw the omadhaun!”

Those were the first words he spoke. But it wasn’t in the little man to stay long ill-natured. At the first shebeen house that they found open Maureen bought for him a bottle of spirits, and this cheered him greatly. The first dhrink warmed him, the second softened him, the third put a chune to the ind of his tongue, and by the time they raiched Tom Grogan’s public-house, which was straight two miles across from Barney Casey’s, the liquor set him singing like a nightingale.

Maureen and Darby slipped into Grogan’s for a bit of warmth and a mouthful to ate, laving the Master of Sleive-na-mon well wrapped up at the bottom of the cart⁠—his head on a sack of oats and his feet against the cart-side⁠—and as I said, him singing.

He had the finest, liftenest way for a ballad you ever heard! At the end of every verse he eleywated the last word and hildt it high, and put a lonesome wobble into his woice that would make you cry.

Peggy Collins, the tall, thieving ould beggar-woman who used to wear the dirty red cloak, an’ looked like a sojer in it, was sleeping inside the hedge as the cart came along; but when it stopped she peeped out to see who had the good song with him.

When she saw it was an infant not much longer than your two hands, “God presarve us and save us!” she gasped, and began to say her prayers. The King went on singing, clear and doleful and beautiful, the ballad of Donnelly and Cooper.

“Come all ye thrue-born Irishmen wherever you may be,
I hope you’ll pay attintion and listen unto me‑e‑e,
And if you’ll pay attintion the truth I will declare
How Donnelly fought Cooper on the Curraah of Kildare”

Prayers were never from Peggy’s heart, so as she listened to the enthrancing song she turned from praying to plotting.

“If I had that child,” she says, “I could go from fair to fair and from pathron to pathron, and his singing’d fill my apron with silver.”

The King turned to another ditty, and you’d think he was a thrush.

“They’ll kiss you, they’ll car‑r‑ress you,” he sang.
“They’ll spind your money free,
But of all the towns in Ire-eland Kilkenny for me‑e‑e‑e.”

The gray-haired ould rascal, Peggy, by this was creeping ever and ever till she raiched the cart. Up then she popped, and the first thing me poor Captain knew the shawl was slapped fast on his face, and two long, thin arms were dragging him out over the wheel. He thried to cry out, but the shawl choked him, and scrambling and kicking did him no good.

Over the nearest stile bounced Peggy, and into the nearest field she flew, her petticoat lifted, her white hair streaming, and her red cloak fluttering behind. She crunched the chief man of the fairies undher her left elbow, his head hanging behind, with as little riverence as if, saving your presence, he were a sthray gander.

Well, your honour, Peggy ran till there wasn’t a breath in her before she slowed down to a walk, and then she flung the King over her right chowldher, his face on her back in that way some careless women carry childher. This set his head free.

When he saw who it was had stolen him, oh, but he was vexed; for all that he didn’t say a word as they went, but lay there on her collarbone, bobbing up and down, blinking his eyes, and thinking what he should do to her. At last he quietly raiched over with his teeth and took a bite at the back of her neck that she felt to her toes. Wow! Your honour should have heard the screech Peggy let out of her!

Well, as she gave that screech she gave a jerk at the King’s legs, pulling him down. As he flopped intil her arms he took a wisp of her hair with him. For a second’s time the spiteful little eyes in the ould weazened face, looking up at her own from undher the goold crown, froze her stiff with terror, and then, giving a yell that was ten times louder than the first screech, she flung his Majesty from her down upon the hard ground. Leaping a ditch, she went galloping wildly across the meadow. The King fell flat on his back with an unraysonable joult.

That wasn’t the worst of his bad luck. If Peggy had dhropped him at any other place in the field he might have crawled off into the ditch and hid till sunset, but oh, asthore, there not ten rods away, with eyes bulging and mouth gaping, stood Barney Casey, the Man without Childher!

Barney looked from the little bundle on the ground to Peggy as she went skimming, like a big red bird, over the low-lying morning fog. Through his surprise a foine hope slowly dawned for him.

He said: “Good fortune folly you, and my blessing rest on you wherever you go, Peggy Bawn, for the throuble you’ve lifted this day; you’ve given me a Moses in the bull rushers or a Pharyoah’s daughter, but I disremember which, God forgive me for forgetting my rayligion!”

He stood for a minute slyly looking to the north, and the south and the ayst and the west. But what he saw, when he turned to look again for the baby, would have made any other man than one in Barney Casey’s mind say his prayers and go on his way.

The baby was gone, but in its place was a little ould man with a goold crown on his head, a silver-covered noggin in his hand, and the most vexed expression in the world on his face, and he thrailing a shawl and throtting toward the ditch.

’Twas a hard fall for the Man without Childher, and hard he took it.

When Barney was done with bad langwidge, he says: “A second ago, me ould lad, you were, or you purtended to be, an innocent child. Well, then, you’ll turn back again every hair and every look of you; you’ll be a smiling, harmless, purty baby agin, or I’ll know the rayson why,” he says, gritting his teeth.

With that he crept over and scooped up the King. There was the struggling and wiggling!

“Lave me down! Lave me down! You murthering spalpeen!” shouted the King, kicking vicious at Barney’s chist. “I’m Brian Connors, the King of the Good People, and I’ll make you sup sorrow in tay-cups for this!” cries he.

Well, Casey, his lips shut tight and his eyes grim and cowld, hildt in his two hands, out at arm’s-length, the little man, who was kicking furious. For a minute Barney studied him.

“I believe in my sowl,” says the Man without Childher, mighty rayproachful, “you’re only a fairy! But if that’s what you are, you must have charms and spells. Now, turn yourself into a purty, harmless infant this minute⁠—have red hair, like the Mulligan childher at that⁠—or I’ll break every bone in your body!”

There was blazing anger in the King’s eye and withering scorn in his woice.

“Ignorant man,” he cried, “don’t you know that betwixt cockcrow in the morning and sunset the Good People can work no spell or charm. If you don’t lave me down I’ll have a mark on you and on all your relaytions the world’ll wondher at!”

But the divil a bit frightened was Casey.

He started in to help the charm along as one would thry to make a watch go. He shook the King slowly from side to side, thin joggled him softly up and down, mutthering earnestly betwixt his teeth, “Go on, now, you little haythen, change this minute, you scorpion of the world; come, come, twisht yourself!”

What the little King was saying all this time you must guess at, for I’m not bitther-tongued enough to repayt it.

Seeing that not a hair changed for all his work, Barney wrapped Maureen’s shawl about the King and started for home, saying: “Hould your whist! It’s a child I must have to be baptised this day. It’ll be hard to manage, but I have a plan! You came as a child, and you’ll be thrated as such⁠—and look, if you don’t quit kicking me in the stomach, I’ll strangle you!”

As you know, to say pious words to one of the Good People is worse than cutting him with a knife, to show him pious pictures is like burning him, but to baptise a fairy is the most turrible punishment in the whole worruld.

As they went along, the King argyed, besought and threatened, but he talked to stone.

At last, although he had but the strength of a six-year-old child, the Captain of the Good People showed what high spirit was in him.

“Set me down, you thief,” he says. “I challenge you! If you have a dhrop of your mother’s blood in you, set me ferninst you with sticks in our hands, so we can fight it out like men!”

“No, it’s not needful,” says Barney, cool as ice; “but in a few minutes I’ll shave every hair from your head, and afther that make a fine Christian out of you. It’s glad and thankful for it you ought to be, you wicious, ugly little pagan scoundhrel!”

Well, the King let a roar out of him: “You bandy-legged villain!” he cried⁠—and then whirled in to abuse the Man without Childher. He insulted him in English, he jeered him in Irish, he thrajooced him in Latin and Roosian, but the most awful crash of blaggarding that was known in Ireland since the world began was when the King used the Chinayse.

Casey looked wonder and admiraytion, but made no answer till the little man was out of breath, when he spoke up like a judge.

“Well, if there’s any crather within the earth’s four corners that needs baptising it’s you, little man. But I’ll not thrajooce you any more, for you’re me own little Romulus or Raymus,” he says, scratching his head. Then of a sudden he broke out excitedly, “Now may four kinds of bad luck fall on your proud head this day, Mrs. Brophy, and four times heavier ones on you, Ann Mulligan, and may the curse of Cromwell light on you now and forever, Ted Murphy, the bachelor, for pushing yerselves here at this early hour in the morning!”

For the sight that met his eyes knocked every plan out of his head.

Long before the time she was expected, sailing down the road to his own house, happy and slow, came Ann Mulligan, carrying in her arms her two-weeks-old baby, Patsy Mulligan. With motion like a two-masted schooner, tacking in her pride from side to side, up the road came big Mrs. Brophy, the proud woman, carrying her little Cornaylius; behind Mrs. Brophy marched bashful Ted Murphy, the bachelor, his hands behind his back, his head bent like a captive, but stepping high. Not with the sheep-stealing air men are used to wear at christenings and weddings did Ted Murphy hop along, but with the look on his face of a man who had just been thried, convicted, sentenced, and who expects in few minutes to be hung for sheep-stealing.

They were come an hour before the time to bring the child to the church.

Beside the door stood Judy, straining her eyes to know what Barney had hiding in the bundle, and with an awful fear in her heart that he had robbed some near neighbour’s cradle.

Well, Barney at once broke into a run so as to get inside the house with the King, and to close the door before the others got there, but as luck would have it, the whole party met upon the threshold and crowded in with him.

“Oh, the little darling; give us a sight of the poor crachure,” says Mrs. Mulligan, laying Patsy on the bed.

“He’s mine first, if you plaze,” says Mrs. Brophy, the proud woman.

“He’s sick,” says Barney⁠—“too sick to be uncovered.”

“Is he too sick to go to church?” broke in Ted Murphy, eagerly, hoping to get rid of his job.

“He is,” says Barney, catching at a chance for delay.

“Then,” says Ted, with joy in his woice, “I’ll run and bring Father Scanlan to the house. I’ll be back with him in tunty minutes,” says he.

Before anyone could stop the gawk, he was flying down the road to the village. Casey felt his bundle shiver.

“I’ll have your life’s blood for this!” the King whuspered, as Barney laid him on the bed betwixt the two childher.

“Come out! come out!” cries Casey, spreading his arms and pushing the three women over the threshold before they knew it.

Then he stood outside, holding the door shut against the three women, thrying to think of a plan, and listening to more blisthering talk than he ever heard on any day before that day, for the three women talked at the same time, aich striving to be more disagreeable than the other. What dhrove him crazy was that his own wife, Judy, was the worst. They threatened him, they wheedled, and they stormed. The priest might ride up at any minute. The sweat rained from Barney’s forehead.

Once in desperaytion he opened the door to let the women pass, but shut it quick agin whin he saw the King standin’ up on the bed and him changing his own clothes for those of little Patsy Mulligan.

Well, the women coaxed till Mrs. Mulligan lost all patience and went and sat sullen on the bench. At that Mrs. Brophy suddenly caught Barney around the waist, and whirling him aside, she and Judy rushed in. Barney, with the fierceness of a tiger, swung shut the door to keep Mrs. Mulligan at bay.

The other women inside were hopping with joy. Dhressed in Maureen’s shawl, but divil a thing else, lay on the outside edge of the bed poor little Patsy Mulligan. The King, almost smothered, dhressed in Patsy’s clothes, was scrooged in to the wall with a cloth about his head wrapped round and round.

“Oh, the little jewel,” says Mrs. Brophy, picking up little Patsy Mulligan, and setting herself on the bed; “he’s the dead cut of his father.”

In that quare way women have Judy already had half a feeling that the child by some kind of magic was her own. So she spoke up sharp and said that the child was the image of her brother Mike.

While they were disputing, Mrs. Brophy turned her head and saw the legs of the King below the edge of little Patsy’s dhress⁠—the dhress that he’d stole an’ put on.

“For the love of God, Mrs. Casey!” says she, laying her hand on Judy’s chowlder, “did you ever before see feet on a child of two weeks old like them on Patsy Mulligan?”

Well, at this they laughed and titthered and doubled backward and forward on the bed, sniggering at the King and saying funny things about him, till, mad with the shame of the women looking at his bare knees, and stung be the provoking things they said, he did a very foolish thing;⁠—he took a pin from his clothes and gave Mrs. Brophy so cruel a prod that, big as she was, and proud as she was, it lifted her in three leaps across the floor. “Whoop! whoop!” she says, as she was going. Now, though heavy and haughty, Mrs. Brophy was purty nimble on her feet, for, red and indignant, she whirled in a twinkling. “Judy Casey,” says she, glowering and squaring off, “if that’s your ideeah of a good, funny joke, I’ll taiche you a betther!” she says.

When Barney, outside listening with his heart in his mouth, heard the angry woices within, a great wakeness came into his chist, for he thought everything was over. Mrs. Mulligan pushed past him⁠—he lost the power to prevent her⁠—and he follyed her into the house with quaking knees. There was the uproar!

While the three was persuading the furious Mrs. Brophy that it must have been a pin in the bedclothes, Ted Murphy, breathless, flung open the door.

“Father Scanlan wants to know,” he cried, “what ails the baby that you can’t bring it to church,” he says.

All turned questioning eyes to Barney, till his mind flutthered like a wounded parthridge. Only two disayses could the unfortunate man on the suddint raymember.

“It’s half maysles and a thrifle of scarlet faver,” he says. He couldn’t aisily have said anything worse. Seeing a turrible look on Mrs. Mulligan’s face, he says agin, “But I don’t think it’s ketching, ma’am.”

The fright was on. With a great cry, Mrs. Brophy dived for and picked up little Cornaylius and rushed with him out of the door and down the road; Mrs. Mulligan, thinking she had little Patsy, bekase of the clothes, snatched up the King⁠—his head still rowled in the cloth⁠—and darted up the road. She was clucking curses like an angry hen as she went, and hugging the King and coddling him, and crying over him and saying foolish baby langwidge, till he was so disgusted that he daytermined to give her a shock.

“Oh, me poor little darling!” she sobbed, pressing the King’s head to her bosom⁠—“oh, Patsy, me jewel, have they kilt you entirely?”

At that the King spoke up in a clear, cowld woice.

Misdoubting her ears, Mrs. Mulligan stopped and bent her head, listening to her baby.

“Don’t worry for me, ma’am, thank you kindly,” says the baby, polite and sthrong. “Don’t throuble yourself about the general state of my robustness,” it says, “it’s thraymendous,” says the child⁠—“in fact, I never was betther.”

As cautiously as if she was unwrapping a rowl of butther Mrs. Mulligan began to unwind the cloth from about the King’s head.

When this was done she flung up her face an’ yelled, “Ow! ow! ow!” and then came right up from the ground the second hard joult the King got that day.

As he lay on his back fastening his strange clothes and thinking what he would do next, he could hear Mrs. Mulligan going down the road. She was making a noise something like a steam whustle.

“Be-gorr,” says the King, sitting up and feeling of his back, “today, with the women, I’m playing the divil entirely!”

The wee King of the Fairies sat in the dust of the road where Ann Mulligan had dhropped him. There were dents in his goold crown, and the baby’s dhress he still wore was soiled and tore.

Ow! Ow! Ow! What a terrible joult agin the ground Ann Mulligan gave him when she took the covering from his head and found his own face gazing up at her instead of her baby Patsy’s. He turned to shake his fist up the road, and twishted once more to shake his fist down the road.

“Be the bones of Pether White,” he says, “what me and me subjects’ll do tonight to this parish’ll make the big wind seem like a cock’s breath!”

“But,” he says, again, “how’ll I hide meself till dark? Wirra! Wirra! if it were only sunset⁠—the sun has melted every power and charm and spell out of me⁠—the power has left my four bones. I can be seen and molested by any spalpeen that comes along; what’ll I do at all at all! I think I had best be getting through the fields back to Barney Casey’s. It’s little welcome they have for me there, but they must keep me saycret now for their own sakes.”

With that he got upon his legs, and houldin’ up his white dhress, climbed through the stile into Casey’s field.

The first thing he saw there was a thin but jolly-minded looking pig, pushing up roots with her nose and tossing them into the air through sheer divilment.

Dark-eyed Susan was she called, and she belonged to Tom Mulligan, the one-legged ballad-maker, who had named her after the famous ballad.

Mulligan was too tindher-hearted to sell her to be kilt, and too poor to keep her in victuals, so she roamed the fields, a shameless marauder and a nimble-footed freebooter.

“Be-gorr, here’s luck!” said the little King; “since ’tis in Casey’s field, this must be Casey’s baste. I couldn’t ask betther; whinever a pig is frightened it runs to its own house; so I’ll just get on her back and ride down to Casey’s cabin.”

The King looked inquirin’ at Susan, and Susan looked impident suspicion at the King.

“Oh, ho, ye beauty, you know what’s in me mind!” says he, whistlin’ and coaxin’ and sidlin’ up to her. A pig likes a compliment if it’s well tould, so Susan hung her head, grunted coquettish, and looked away. Taking adwantage of her head being turned, without another word, his Rile Highness ran over, laid hould of her ear, and with one graceful jump took an aisy saddle-sate on her back.

This was the last thing the pig expected, so with one frightened squeal from Susan both of them were off like the wind through the fields toward Mulligan’s house, taking stones, ridges, and ditches like hurdle jumpers till they came in sight of a mud-plasthered cabin which stood on the hillside. A second afther the King’s hair stood straight up and his heart grew cowld, for there, sitting on the thrashold, with her family in a little crowd about her, was the woman who, misconsthruing him for her own child, had fled with him from Barney Casey’s, and, finding her mistake, had trun him into the high road.

About the ballad-maker’s door was gathered his whole family, listening to the wondherful tale being tould by Ann Mulligan. A frightened woman she was.

Indade, whin Ann Mulligan, afther dhropping the King in the road, raiched home she fell unconscionable in the door before her husband and her frightened childher, an’ she never come to till little Pether sprinkled a noggin of wather on her; thin she opened her eyes and began telling how Ould Nick had stole the baby and had taken little Patsy’s place in her own two arms.

There she sat wringing her hands and waving back and forth. The fairy-man could aisily guess the story she was telling, and his flying steed was hurrying straight toward the house and nothing could stop it. They’d both be there in tin seconds.

“Well, this time, anyhow, I’ll be kilt intirely,” says the King.

Mrs. Mulligan turned to pint down the road to the place where she had dhropped the King, when, lo and behold, up the boreen and through the field they saw, coming at a thraymendous pace, Dark-eyed Susan and the King, riding her like a dhragoon.

Mrs. Mulligan gave one screech and, lifting her petticoats, flew; the childher scurried off afther her like young rabbits.

Tom, not being able to run bekase of his wooden leg, stood his ground, but at the same time raymembering more prayers an’ raypentin’ of more mane things he’d done than ever before since he was born.

He was sure it was Ould Nick himself that was in it.

And now a new danger jumped suddenly before the King. The pig headed for her favourite hole through the hedge, and whin the King saw the size of the hole he let a howl out of him, for he knew he’d be trun. He scrooched close to the baste’s back and dhrew up his legs. Sure enough he was slithered off her back and left sitting on the hard ground, half the clothes torn from his rile back.

That howl finished Tom entirely, so that whin his Majesty crawled through the hole afther the pig and came over to him, the ballad-maker wouldn’t have given tuppence for his sowl’s salvation. Howsumever, he put on the best and friendliest face he could undher the sarcumstances. Scraping with his wooden leg and pulling at a tuft of carroty hair on his forehead, Tom said, mighty wheedling:

“The top o’ the day to your Honour. Sure, how’s Mrs. Balzebub and the childher. I hear it’s a fine, bright family your Lordship has. Arrah, it isn’t the likes of me, poor Tom Mulligan, the ballad-maker, that your riverence’d be wanting.”

Hearing them words, the King looked mighty plazed. “If you’re Tom Mulligan, the ballad-maker,” he says, coming over smiling, “it’s proud and happy I am to meet you! I’m no less than Brian Connors, the King of the Good People,” he says, dhrawing himself up and trying to look grand. “It’s many’s the fine ballad of yours we sing in Sleive-na-mon.”

“But little Patsy,” stammered Tom; “sure your Majesty wouldn’t take him from us; he’s our twelfth and rounds out the dozen, you know.”

“Have no fear,” says the fairy; “Patsy’ll be here safe and sound at nightfall. If you stand friend to me this day the divil a friend you’ll ever need agin as long as you live!” With that the King up and tould him all the day’s happenin’s and misfortunes. Tom could hardly belave his eyes or his ears. He was so happy he begun in his mind making a ballad about himself and the King that minute.

“Ow!” says the King, bending his back and houlding his head, “whin I think of the ondacencies I wint true this day!”

“Your Majesty’ll go through no more,” says Tom. With that he went stumping away to call back the wife and childher.

In a few minutes the ruler of the nighttime was sitting on Mulligan’s table ating the last petatie and dhrinking the last sup of new milk that was in the house. The King dhrained the cup an’ smacked his lips. “Now sing us a ballad, Tom Mulligan, my lad,” says he, leaning back against the empty milk-crock and crossing his legs like a tailor. Ann Mulligan nodded approvin’ from where she sat, proud and contented on the bed, the childher smiled up from the mud floor. So Tom, who was a most maylodious man, just as his wife was a most harmonious woman, up and sang the ballad of Hugh Reynolds:

“Me name is Hugh Reynolds, I came of dacint parents;
I was born in County Cavin, as you may plainly see.
Be lovin’ of a maid named Catherine McCabe,
My love has been bethrayed, she’s a sore loss to me.”

There’s most of the time thirty-two varses to that song, and Tom sang them all without skippin’ a word.

“Bate that, King Brian Connors,” he says at last. “I challenge you!”

Then King Brian trew back his head and, shutting his eyes, sung another ballad of forty-seven varses, which was Catherine McCabe’s answer to Hugh Reynolds, and which begins this away:

“Come all ye purty fair maids wherever you may be,
And if you’ll pay attention and listen unto me,
I’ll tell of a desayver that you may beware of the same,
He comes from the town of Drumscullen in the County Cavan,
an’ Hugh Reynolds is his name.”

One song brought out another finer than the first, until the whole family, childher and all, jined in singing “Willie Reilly and His Dear Colleen Bawn.”

’Twould make your heart young agin to hear them. At the ind of aich varse all the Mulligans’d stop quick to let the King wobble his woice alone. Dark-eyed Susan was standing scratching herself inside the closed door, plazed but wondherin’; so, with sweet songs and ould tales, the hours flew like minutes till at last the ballad-maker pushed back the table and tuned his fiddle, while the whole family⁠—at laste all of them ould enough to stand⁠—smiling, faced one another for a dance.

The King chose Mrs. Ann Mulligan for a partner.

The fiddle struck a note, the bare, nimble feet raised. “Rocky Roads to Dublin” was the tune.

“Deedle, deedle, dee; deedle, deedle, diddle um.
Deedle, deedle, dee, rocky roads to Dubalin.”

The twinkling feet fell together. Smiles and laughter and jostling and jollity broke like a summer storm through the room. And singing and pattherin’ and jiggering, rose and swirled to the mad music, till suddenly⁠—“knock, knock, knock!”⁠—the blows of a whip-handle fell upon the door and every leg stopped stiff.

“Murther in Irish,” whispered little Mickey Mulligan, “ ’tis Father Scanlan himself that’s in it!”

Ochone mavrone! what a change from merrymaking and happiness to fright and scandalation was there! The Master of the Fairies, sure that Father Scanlan had the scent of him, tried to climb up on to the settle-bed, but was too wake from fear, so Mrs. Mulligan histed him and piled three childher on top of the King to hide him just as Father Scanlan pushed open the door.

The priest stood outside, houlding his horse with one hand and pintin’ his whip with the other.

“What are you hiding on that bed, you vagabone?” he says.

“Whist!” says Tom Mulligan, hobblin’ over and going outside, with the fiddle undher his arrum, “ ’tis little Patsy, the baby, and he ain’t dressed dacint enough for your riverence to see,” whuspered the villain.

“Tom Mulligan,” says the priest, shaking his whip, “you’re an idle, shiftless, thriftless man, and a cryin’ shame and a disgrace to my flock; if you had two legs I’d bate you within an inch of your life!” he says, lookin’ stern at the fiddler.

“Faith, and it’s sorry I am now for my other leg,” says Tom, “for it’s well I know that whin your riverence scolds and berates a man you only give him half a shilling or so, but if you bate him as well, your riverence sometimes empties your pockets to him.”

’Twas hard for the priest to keep an ill-natured face, so he smiled; but as he did, without knowing it, he let fly a shot that brought terror to the heart of the ballad-maker.

“God help me with you and the likes of you,” says the priest, thrying to look savare; “you keep me from morning till night robbing Pether to pay Paul. Barney Casey, the honest man, gives me a crown for baptising his child, and tin minutes afther I must give that same money to a blaggard!”

Well, whin Mulligan heard that his own little Patsy had been baptised agin at the instigation of that owdacious imposthure, Barney Casey, the ballad-maker’s neck swelled with rage. But worse was to come. Gulping a great lump down his throat he axed:

“What name did your riverence give the baby?”

There was a thremble in the poor man’s woice.

“Bonyface,” says the priest, his toe in the stirrup. “Today is the feast of St. Bonyface, a gr‑r‑reat bishop. He was a German man,” says Father Scanlan.

The groan Tom Mulligan let out of him was heart-rendering. “Bonyface! Oh, my poor little Patsy; bad scran to you, Barney Casey! My own child turned into a German man⁠—oh, Bonyface!”

The priest was too busy mounting his horse to hear what the ballad-maker said, but just before starting the good man turned in his saddle.

“I came near forgetting my errant,” he says. “There’s a little ould man⁠—dwarves they call the likes of thim⁠—who has been lost from some thravelling show or carawan, or was stole by ould Peggy Collins this morning from some place⁠—I don’t rightly know which. Sind the childher looking for him and use him kind. I’m going up the road spreading the news. Ignorant people might misthrate him,” says his riverence, moving off.

“You’ll find no ignorant person up this road,” called Tom, in a broken woice, “but Felix O’Shaughnessy, and he’s not so bad, only he don’t belave in ghosts,” cried Mulligan.

Even as the ballad-maker turned to go in the door the sun, shooting one red, angry look at the world, dhropped below the western mountains. The King jumped from the bed.

“The charms have come back to me. I feel in my four bones the power, for ’tis sunset. I’m a greater man now than any king on his trone,” says he. “Do you sind word to Barney and Judy Casey that if they don’t bring little Patsy and my green velvet cloak and the silver-topped noggin and stand ferninst me on this floor within half an hour, I’ll have the both of thim presners in Sleive-na-mon before midnight, to walk on all-fours the rest of their lives. As for you, my rayspected people,” he says, “a pleasanter afthernoon I seldom spint, and be ready to get your reward.”

With thim words he vanished. Their surprise at his disappearance was no sooner over than the Mulligans began hunting vessels in which to put the goold the fairy was going to give them.

Ann Mulligan was dragging in from outside an empty tub when shamefaced Judy Casey passed in, carrying little Patsy Mulligan. Behind her slunk Barney, her husband, houlding the green cloak and the silver-topped noggin.

“I had him for one day, Ann Mulligan,” says Judy, handing little Patsy to his mother, “and though it breaks my poor, withered heart to give him up, he’s yours by right, and here he is.”

Whilst she was speaking those words the ruler of the fairies sprung over the threshold and laid a white bundle on the table. The household crowded up close around.

Without a word the fairy dhrew the cover from the white bundle, an’ there, like a sweet, pink rose, lay sleepin’ on its white pillow the purtiest baby you ever set your two livin’ eyes on.

Judy gave a great gasp, for it was the identical child the fairies stole from her down in the County Mayo.

“You don’t desarve much from me,” says the King, “but because Ann Mulligan⁠—fine woman⁠—asked it, I’ll do you a favour. You may take back the baby or I’ll give you a hundhred pounds. Take your choice, Barney Casey.”

Barney stood a long time with bowed head, looking at the child and thinking hard. You can surely see what a saryous question he had. One’s own child is worth more than a hundred pounds, but other people’s childhren are plenty and full of failings. Mulligan’s family peered up into his face, and his wife Judy sarched him with hungry eyes. At last he said, very slow:

“My mind has changed,” says he. “Though people always tould me that childher were a throuble, a worry and a care, yesterday I’d give the County Clare for that little one. After this day’s work I know that sayin’s thrue, so I’ll take the hundhred pounds,” he says.

“Divil a fear of you takin’ the hundhred pounds!” snapped his wife, Judy, grabbing up the child. An’ thin the two women, turning on him, fell to abusin’ and ballyraggin’ the Man without Childher, till sorra bit of courage was left in his heart.

“I promised you yer choice, and they’ll lave you no choice,” says the King, looking vexed. “Well, here’s the hundhred pounds, and let Judy keep the child.”

Whin the fairy turned to the ballad-maker the hearts of all the Mulligans stopped still.

“Now, my grand fellow, me one-legged jaynious,” he says, “you’re goin’ to be disappinted. You think I’ll give you riches, but I won’t.” At that Tom’s jaw dhropped to his chist, and the littlest Mulligans began to cry.

“I’ll not make you rich bekase you’re a born ballad-maker, and a weaver of fine tales, and a jaynious⁠—if you make a jaynious rich you take all the songs out of him and you spile him. A man’s heart-sthrings must be often stretched almost to the breaking to get good music from him. I’ll not spile you, Tom Mulligan.

“Besides,” he says, “as you are a natural-born ballad-maker, you’d kill yourself the first year thryin’ to spind all your money at wanst. But I’ll do betther for you than to make you rich. Ann Mulligan, do you clear the table an’ put my silver-topped noggin on the edge of it,” says he.

When Ann Mulligan did as she was bid the King put the green cloak on his chowlders and, raising his hand, pointed to the silver-covered noggin. Everyone grew still and frightened.

“Noggin, noggin, where’s your manners?” he says, very solemn.

At the last word the silver lid flew open, and out of the cup hopped two little men dhressed all in black, dhragging something afther them that began to grow and grow amazing. So quickly did they work, and so swiftly did this thing they brought twirl and change and turn into different articles that the people hadn’t time to mark what form it was at first, only they saw grow before their astonished eyes tay-cups and dishes and great bowls, an’ things like that.

In a minute the table was laid with a white cloth like the quality have, and chiny dishes and knives and forks.

“Noggin, noggin, where’s your manners?” says the King again. The little men dhragged from the noggin other things that grew into a roast of mutton and biled turnips, and white bread an’ butther, and petaties, and pots of tay.

“Noggin, noggin, where’s your manners?” says the King, for the last time.

At that the little black men, afther puttin’ a silver shillin’ beside every plate at the table, jumped into the noggin an’ pulled down its lid.

Whin the ating and drinking and jollity were at their hoight the King arose, drew tight his crown on his head, and pointing once more to the silver-covered noggin, said:

“This is my gift to you and your reward, Tom Mulligan, maker of ballads and journeyman worker in fine tales. ’Tis more than your wish was. Nayther you nor anyone who sits at your table, through all your life, will ever want a bite to ate or a sup to dhrink, nor yet a silver shilling to cheer him on his way. Good luck to all here and goodbye!” Even as they looked at the King he was gone, vanished like a light that’s blown out⁠—and they never saw him more.

But the news spread. Musicianers, poets, and storytellers, and jayniouses flocked to the ballad-maker’s cabin from all over Ireland. Any fine day in the year one might see them gather in a dozen knots before his door and into as many little crowds about the stable. In each crowd, from morning till night, there was a chune being played, a ballad sung, or a story being tould. Always one could find there blacksmiths, schoolmasters, and tinkers, and all trades, but the greater number be far, av coorse, were beggarmen.

Nor is that same to be wondhered at, bekase every jaynious, if he had his own way and could folly his own heart’s desire’d start tomorrow at daybreak with the beggarman’s staff and bag.

But wherever they came from, and whatever their station, Tom Mulligan stumped on his wooden leg from crowd to crowd, the jovial, happy master of them all.