The Banshee’s Comb
I
The Diplomacy of Bridget
I
’Twas the mendin’ of clothes that All Sowls’ afthernoon in Elizabeth Ann Egan’s kitchen that naturally brought up the subject of husbands an’ the best ways to manage them. An’ if there’s one thing more than another that makes me take me hat off to the women, ’tis the owdacious way the most downthrodden of their sex will brag about her blaggard husband.
Not that ayther one or the other of the foive busy-tongued and busy-fingered neighbour women who bint above their sewing or knitting that afthernoon were downthrodden; be no manner of manes; far, far from it. They were so filled with matrimonial contintedness that they fairly thrampled down one another to be first in praising the wondherful men of their choice. Every woman proudly claimed to own an’ conthrol the handsomest, loikeliest man that ever throd in brogues.
They talked so fast an’ they talked so loud that ’twas a thryin’ long while before meek-woiced little Margit Doyle could squeege her husband, Dan’l John, sideways into the argyment. An’ even when she did get him to the fore, the other women had appropryated all the hayroic qualifications for their own men, so that there was nothing left for Dan’l but the common lavings; an’ that dayprivation nettled Margit an’ vexed her sore. But she took her chanst when it came, poor as it was, an’ boulted in.
Jabbing the air as though her needle were a dagger, she broke into the discoorse.
“I wouldn’t thrade my Dan for the King of Rooshia or the Imperor of Chiney,” says she, peering dayfiant around the room. No one sided with that raymark, an’ no one argyed agin it, an’ this vexed her the more.
“The Kingdom of Chiney is where the most supharior tay comes from,” says Caycelia Crow. She was a large, solemn woman, was Misthress Crow, an a gr‑r‑reat histhorian.
“No,” says Margit, scorning the intherruption, “not if the two men were rowled into one,” says she.
“Why,” says Caycelia Crow, an’ her deep woice tolled like a passing bell—“why,” says she, “should any dacint woman be wantin’ to marry one of thim haythen Imperors? Sure they’re all ambiguious,” she says, looking around proud of the grand worrud.
Elizabeth Ann sthopped the spinning-wheel the betther to listen, while the others turned bothered faces to the histhorian.
“Ambiguious,” says Misthress Crow, raisin’ her woice in the middle part of the worrud; “ambiguious,” she says again, “manes that accordin’ to the laygal laws of some furrin parts, a man may marry four or five wives if he has a mind to.”
At this Margit bristled up like a bantam-hin.
“Do you mane to say, Caycelia Crow,” says she, dhroppin’ in her lap the weskit she was mendin’, “do you intind to substantiate that I’m wishin’ to marry the Imperor of Chiney, or,” she says, her woice growin’ high an’ cutting as an east wind, “do you wish to inferentiate that if my Dan’l had the lave he’d be ambiguious? Will you plaze tell these friends an’ neighbours,” she says, wavin’ a hand, “which of the two of us you was minded to insinuate against?”
The attackt was so sudden an’ so unexpected that Misthress Crow was too bewildhered to dayfind herself. The poor woman only sat starin’ stupid at Margit.
The others sunk back in their chairs spacheless with consternaytion till Mollie Scanlan, wishin’ to pacificate the sitiwation, an’ winkin’ friendly at Caycelia, spoke up sootherin’.
“Thrue for ye, Margit Doyle,” says she. “What kind of talk is that for ye to be talkin’, Caycelia?” says she. “Sure if Dan’l John were to be med the Imperor of Chiney tomorrow he’d hesitate an’ dayliberate a long time before bringin’ in one of them ambiguious women to you an’ the childher. I’d like to see him thry it. It’ud be a sore an’ a sorrowful day for him, I’m thinkin’.”
At thim worruds, Margit, in her mind’s eye, saw Dan’l John standin’ ferninst her with an ambiguious haythen woman on aich side of him, an’ the picture riled the blood in her heart.
“Oh, ho!” says she, turning on poor, shrinkin’ Mollie with a smile, an’ that same smile had loaded guns an’ pistols in it. “An’ will you plaze be so kind an’ condesinden’, Misthress Scanlan,” says she, “to explain what you ever saw or heerd tell of in my Dan’l John’s actions, that’ud make you think he’d contimplate such schoundrel endayvours,” says she, thrimblin’.
The only answer to the question was from the tay-kettle. It was singin’ high an’ impident on the hob.
Now, Bridget O’Gill, knowin’ woman that she was, had wisely kept out of the discoorse. She sat apart, calmly knittin’ one of Darby’s winther stockings. As she listened, howsumever, she couldn’t keep back a sly smile that lifted one corner of her mouth.
“Isn’t it a poor an’ a pittiful case,” said Misthress Doyle, glaring savage from one to the other, “that a dacint man, the father of noine childher, eight of them livin’, an’ one gone for a sojer—isn’t it a burnin’ shame,” she says, whumperin’, “that such a daycint man must have his char-ack-ther thrajuiced before his own wife—Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re laughing at, Bridget O’Gill, ma’am?” she blazed.
Bridget, flutthering guilty, thried to hide the misfortunate smile, but ’twas too late.
“Bekase, if it is my husband you’re mocking at,” says Margit, “let me tell you, fair an’ plain, his ayquils don’t live in the County of Tipperary, let alone this parish! ’Tis thrue,” she says, tossin’ her head, “he hasn’t spint six months with the Good People—he knows nothin’ of the fairies—but he has more sinse than those that have. At any rate, he isn’t afeard of ghosts like a knowledgeable man that I could mintion.”
That last thrust touched a sore spot in the heart of Bridget. Although Darby O’Gill would fight a dozen livin’ men, if needful, ’twas well known he had an unraysonable fear of ghosts. So, Bridget said never a worrud, but her brown eyes began to sparkle, an’ her red lips were dhrawn up to the size of a button.
Margit saw how hard she’d hit, an’ she wint on thriumphant.
“My Dan’l John’ud sleep in a churchyard. He’s done it,” says she, crowin’.
Bridget could hould in no longer. “I’d be sore an’ sorry,” she says, “if a husband of mine were druv to do such a thing as that for the sake of a little pace and quiet,” says she, turnin’ her chowlder.
Tare an’ ’ounds, but that was the sthroke! “The Lord bless us!” mutthered Mollie Scanlan. Margit’s mind wint up in the air an’ stayed there whirlin’, whilst she herself sat gasping an’ panting for a rayply. ’Twas a thrilling, suspenseful minute.
The chiney shepherd and shepherdess on the mantel sthopped ogling their eyes an’ looked shocked at aich other; at the same time Bob, the linnet, in his wooden cage at the door, quit his singin’ an’ cocked his head the betther to listen; the surprised tay-kettle gave a gasp an’ a gurgle, an’ splutthered over the fire. In the turrible silence Elizabeth Egan got up to wet the tay. Settin’ the taypot in the fender she spoke, an’ she spoke raysentful.
“Any sinsible man is afeard of ghosts,” says she.
“Oh, indade,” says Margit, ketching her breath. “Is that so? Well, sinsible or onsinsible,” says she, “this will be Halloween, an’ there’s not a man in the parish who would walk past the churchyard up to Cormac McCarthy’s house, where the Banshee keened last night, except my Dan’l!” says she, thriumphant.
The hurt pride in Bridget rose at that an’ forced from her angry lips a foolish promise.
“Huh! we hear ducks talkin’,” she says, coolly rowling up Darby’s stocking, an’ sticking the needle in the ball of yarn. “This afthernoon I was at Cormac McCarthy’s,” she says, “an’ there wasn’t a bit of tay in the house for poor Eileen, so I promised Cormac I’d send him up a handful. Now, be the same token, I promise you my Darby will make no bones of going on that errant this night.”
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed Margit. “If he has the courage to do it bid him sthop in to me on his way back, an’ I’ll send to you a fine settin’ of eggs from my black Spanish hin.”
What sharp worrud Misthress O’Gill would have flung back in answer no one knows, bekase whin once purvoked she has few ayquils for sarcastic langwidge, but just then Elizabeth Ann put in Bridget’s hand a steaming cup of good, sthrong tay. Now, whusky, ale, an’ porther are all good enough in their places, yer honour—I’ve nothing to intimidate aginst them—but for a comforting, soothering, edayfing buverage give me a cup of foine black tay. So this day the cups were filled only the second time, when the subject of husbands was complately dhropped, an’ the conwersation wandhered to the misdajmeanours of Anthony Sullivan’s goat.
All this time the women had been so busy with their talkin’ an’ argyfyin’ that the creeping darkness of a coming storm had stolen unnoticed into the room, making the fire glow brighter and redder on the hearth. A faint flare of lightning, follyed be a low grumble of thunder, brought the women to their feet.
“Marcy on us!” says Caycelia Crow, glad of an excuse to be gone, “do you hear that? We’ll all be dhrownded before we raich home,” says she.
In a minute the wisitors, afther dhraining their cups, were out in the road, aich hurryin’ on her separate way, an’ tying her bonnet-sthrings as she wint.
’Twas a heavy an’ a guilty heart that Bridget carried home with her through the gathering storm. Although Darby was a nuntimate friend of the fairies, yet, as Margit Doyle said, he had such a black dhread of all other kinds of ghosts that to get him out on this threatening Halloween night, to walk past the churchyard, as he must do on his way to Cormac McCarthy’s cottage, was a job ayquil to liftin’ the Shannon bridge. How she was to manage it she couldn’t for the life of her tell; but if the errant was left undone she would be the laughin’-stock of every woman in the parish.
But worst of all, an’ what cut her heart the sorest, was that she had turned an act of neighbourly kindness into a wainglorious boast; an’ that, she doubted not, was a mortal sin.
She had promised Cormac in the afthernoon that as soon as she got home she would send Darby over with some tay for poor little Eileen, an’ now a big storm was gathering, an’ before she could have supper ready, thry as hard as she could, black night might be upon them.
“To bring aise to the dying is the comfortingist privilege a man or woman can have, an’ I’ve thraded it for a miserable settin’ of eggs,” she says. “Amn’t I the unfortunit crachure,” she thought, “to have let me pride rune me this away. What’ll I do at all at all?” she cried. “Bad luck to the thought that took me out of me way to Elizabeth Egan’s house!”
Then she med a wish that she might be able to get home in time to send Darby on his errant before the night came on. “If they laugh at me, that’ll be my punishment, an’ maybe it’ll clane my sin,” says she.
But the wish was in wain. For just as she crossed the stile to her own field the sun dhropped behind the hills as though he had been shot, an’ the east wind swept up, carrying with it a sky full of black clouds an’ rain.
II
That same All Sowls’ night Darby O’Gill, the friend of the fairies, sat, as he had often sat before, amidst the dancin’ shadows, ferninst his own crackling turf and wood fire, listening to the storm beat against his cottage windows. Little Mickey, his six-year-ould, cuddled asleep on his daddy’s lap, whilst Bridget sat beside thim, the other childher cruedled around her. My, oh my, how the rain powered and hammered an’ swirled!
Out in the highway the big dhrops smashed agin wayfarers’ faces like blows from a fist, and once in a while, over the flooded moors and the far row of lonesome hills, the sullen lightning spurted red and angry, like the wicious flare of a wolcano.
You may well say ’twas perfect weather for Halloween—tonight whin the spirits of the dayparted dead visit once again their homes, and sit unseen, listening an’ yearnin’ about the ould hearthstones.
More than once that avenin’ Darby’d shivered and shuddered at the wild shrieks and wails that swept over the chimney-tops; he bein’ sartin sure that it wasn’t the wind at all, but despairing woices that cried out to him from the could lips of the dead.
At last, afther one purticular doleful cry that rose and fell and lingered around the roof, the knowledgeable man raised his head and fetched a deep breath, and said to his wife Bridget:
“Do you hear that cry, avourneen? The dear Lord be marciful to the souls of the dayparted!” sighed he.
Bridget turned a throubled face toward him. “Amen,” she says, speakin’ softly; “and may He presarve them who are dying this night. Poor Eileen McCarthy—an’ she the purty, light-footed colleen only married the few months! Haven’t we the raysons to be thankul and grateful. We can never pray enough, Darby,” says she.
Now the family had just got off their knees from night prayers, that had lasted half an hour, so thim last worruds worried Darby greatly.
“That woman,” he says to himself, mighty sour, “is this minute contimplaytin’ an’ insinuatin’ that we haven’t said prayers enough for Eileen, when as it is, me two poor knees have blisters on thim as big as hin’s eggs from kneelin’. An’ if I don’t look out,” he says to himself again, “she’ll put the childher to bed and then she’s down on her knees for another hour, and me wid her; I’d never advise anyone to marry such a pious woman. I’m fairly kilt with rayligion, so I am. I must disthract her mind an’ prevent her intintions,” he says to himself.
“Maybe, Bridget,” he says, out loud, as he was readying his pipe, “it ain’t so bad afther all for Eileen. If we keep hoping for the best, we’ll chate the worst out of a few good hours at any rate,” says the knowledgeable man.
But Bridget only rowled the apron about her folded arms and shook her head sorrowful at the fire. Darby squinted carefully down the stem of his pipe, blew in it, took a sly glance at his wife, and wint on:
“Don’t you raymember, Bridget,” he says, “whin ould Mrs. Rafferty lay sick of a bad informaytion of the stomick; well, the banshee sat for a full hour keening an’ cryin’ before their house—just as it did last night outside Cormac McCarthy’s. An’ you know the banshee cried but once at Rafferty’s, but never rayturned the second time. The informaytion left Julia, and all the wide worruld knows, even the King of Spain might know if he’d send to ax, that Julia Rafferty, as strong as a horse, was diggin’ petaties in her own field as late as yesterday.”
“The banshee comes three nights before anyone dies, doesn’t it, daddy?” says little Mickey, waking up, all excited.
“It does that,” says Darby, smilin’ proud at the child’s knowledgeableness; “and it’s come but once to Eileen McCarthy.”
“An’ while the banshee cries, she sits combing her hair with a comb of goold, don’t she, daddy?”
Bridget sat onaisy, bitin’ her lips. Always an’ ever she had sthrove to keep from the childher tidings of fairies and of banshees an’ ghosts an’ other onnatural people. Twice she trun a warning look at Darby, but he, not noticin’, wint on, strokin’ the little lad’s hair, an’ sayin’ to him:
“It does, indade, avick; an’ as she came but once to Mrs. Rafferty’s, so we have rayson to hope she’ll come no more to Cormac McCarthy’s.”
“Hush that nonsinse!” says Bridget, lookin’ daggers; “sure Jack Doolan says that ’twas no banshee at all that come to Rafferty’s, but only himself who had taken a drop too much at the fair, an’ on his way home sat down to rest himself by Rafferty’s door. He says that he stharted singin’ pious hymns to kape off the evil spirits, and everyone knows that the same Jack Doolan has as turrible a woice for singin’ as any banshee that ever twishted a lip,” she says.
The woman’s conthrayriness vexed Darby so he pounded his knee with his fist as he answered her: “You’ll not deny, maybe,” he says, “that the Costa Bower sthopped one night at the Hall, and—”
“Whist!” cried Bridget; “lave off,” she says; “sure that’s no kind of talk to be talkin’ this night before the childher,” says she.
“But mammy, I know what the Costa Bower is,” cried little Mickey, sitting up straight in Darby’s lap an’ pinting his finger at his mother; “ ’tis I that knows well. The Costa Bower is a gr‑r‑reat black coach that comes in the night to carry down to Croagmah the dead people the banshee keened for.”
The other childher by now were sitting boult upright, stiff as ramrods, and staring wild-eyed at Mickey.
“The coachman’s head is cut off an’ he houlds the reins this away,” says the child, lettin’ his hands fall limp an’ open at his side. “Sometimes it’s all wisable, an’ then agin it’s unwisable, but always whin it comes one can hear the turrible rumble of its wheels.” Mickey’s woice fell and, spreading out his hands, he spoke slow an’ solemn. “One Halloween night in the woods down at the black pond, Danny Hogan heard it coming an’ he jumped behind a stone. The threes couldn’t sthop it, they wint right through it, an’ as it passed Danny Hogan says he saw one white, dead face laned back agin the dark cushions, an’ this is the night—All Sowls’ night—whin it’s sure to be out; now don’t I know?” he says, thriumphant.
At that Bridget started to her feet. For a minute she stood spacheless with vexation at the wild, frighting notions that had got into the heads of her childher; then “Glory be!” she says, looking hard at Darby. You could have heard a pin dhrop in the room. Ould Malachi, the big yellow cat, who until this time lay coiled asleep on a stool, was the best judge of Bridget’s charack-ter in that house. So, no sooner did he hear the worruds an’ see Bridget start up, than he was on his own four feet, his back arched, his tail straight up, an’ his two goolden eyes searchin’ her face. One look was enough for him. The next instant he lept to the ground an’ started for the far room. As he scampered through the door, he trew a swift look back at his comerades, the childher, an’ that look said plain as any worruds could say:
“Run for it while you’ve time! Folly me; some one of us vagebones has done something murtherin’!”
Malachi was right; there would have been sayrious throuble for all hands, only that a softening thought was on Bridget that night which sobered her temper. She stopped a bit, the frown on her face clearing as she looked at the childher, an’ she only said: “Come out of this! To bed with yez! I’m raising a pack of owdacious young romancers, an’ I didn’t know it. Mickey sthop that whimpering an’ make haste with your clothes. The Lord help us, he’s broke off another button. Look at that, now!” she says.
There was no help for thim. So, with longin’ looks trun back at their father, sittin’ cosy before the fire, an’ with consolin’ winks an’ nods from him, the childher followed their mother to the bedroom.
Thin, whilst Bridget was tucking the covers about them, an’ hushing their complainings, Darby sat with his elbows on his knees, doing in his head a sum in figures; an’ that sum was this:
“How much would it be worth this All Sowls’ night for a man to go out that door and walk past the churchyard up to Cormac McCarthy, the stonecutter’s house?” One time he made the answer as low as tin pounds two shillings and thruppence, but as he did so a purticular loud blast went shrieking past outside, an’ he raised the answer to one thousand five hundred an’ tunty pounds sterling. “And cheap at that,” he said aloud.
While he was studyin’ thim saygacious questions, Bridget stole quietly behind and put a light hand on his chowlder. For a minute, thin, nayther of thim said a worrud.
Surprised at the silence, an’ puzzled that little Mickey had escaped a larruping, Malachi crept from the far room an’ stood still in the doorway judging his misthress. An’ expression was on her face the cat couldn’t quite make out. ’Twas an elevayted, pitying, good-hearted, daytermined look, such as a man wears when he goes into the sty to kill one of his own pigs for Christmas.
Malachi, being a wise an’ expayieranced baste, daycided to take no chances, so he backed through the door again an’ hid undher the dhresser to listen.
“I was just thinking, Darby avourneen,” says the woman, half whuspering, “how we might this blessed night earn great credit for our two sowls.”
“Wait!” says the sly man, straightening himself, an’ raising a hand. “The very thing you’re going to spake was in my own mind. I was just dayliberatin’ that I hadn’t done justice tonight to poor Eileen. I haven’t said me prayers farvint enough. I niver can whin we’re praying together, or whin I’m kneeling down. Thin, like every way else, there’s something quare about me. The foinest prayers I ever say is whin I’m be myself alone in the fields,” says the conniving villyan. “So, do you, Bridget, go in an’ kneel down by the childher for a half hour or so, an’ I’ll sit here doing my best. If you should happen to look out at me ye might aisily think,” he says, “that I was only sittin’ here comfortably smoking my pipe, but at the same time prayers’ll be whirlin’ inside of me like a windmill,” says he.
“Oh, thin, ain’t I glad an’ happy to hear you say thim worruds,” says his wife, puttin’ one foine arrum about his neck; “you’ve taken a load off my heart that’s been weighing heavy on it all night, for I thought maybe you’d be afeard.”
“Afeard of what?” axed Darby, liftin’ his eyebrows. Malachi throtted bouldly in an’ jumped up on the stool.
“You know Father Cassidy says,” whuspered Bridget, “that a loving deed of the hands done for the disthressed is itself a prayer worth a week of common prayers.”
“I have nothin’ agin that sayin’,” says Darby, his head cocked, an’ he growin’ suspicious.
Bridget wiped her forehead with her apron. “Well, this afthernoon I was at McCarthy’s house,” she wint on, soothering his hair with one hand, “an’, oh, but the poor child was disthressed! Her cheeks were flaming with the faver. An’, Darby, the thirst, the awful thirst! I looked about for a pinch of tay—there’s nothing so coolin’ for one in the faver as a cup of wake tay—an’ the sorra scrap of it was in the house, so I tould Cormac that tonight, as soon as the childher were in bed, I’d send you over with a pinch.”
Every one of Darby’s four bones stiffened an’ a mortial chill sthruck into his heart.
“Listen, darlint,” she says, “the storm’s dying down, so while you’re putting on your greatcoat I’ll wrap up the bit of tay.” He shook her hand from his chowldhers.
“Woman,” he says, with bitther politeness, “I think you said that we had a great chanst to get credit for our two sowls. That’s what I think you raymarked and stibulated,” says he.
“Arrah, shouldn’t a woman have great praise an’ credit who’ll send her husband out on such a night as this,” his wife says. “The worse the con‑ditions, the more credit she’ll get. If a ghost were to jump at ye as you go past the churchyard, oughtn’t I be the happy woman entirely?” says Bridget.
There was a kind of a tinkle in her woice, such as comes when Bridget is telling jokes, so Darby, with a sudden hope in his mind, turned quick to look at her. But there she stood grim, unfeeling, an’ daytermined as a pinted gun.
“Oh, ho! is that the way it is?” he says. “Well, here’s luck an’ good fortune to the ghost or skellington that lays his hand on me this blessed night!” He stuck his two hands deep in his pockets and whirled one leg across the other—the most aggrawating thing a man can do. But Bridget was not the laste discouraged; she only made up her mind to come at him on his soft side, so she spoke up an’ said:
“Suppose I was dying of the faver, Darby O’Gill, an’ Cormac rayfused to bring over a pinch of tay to me. What, then, would ye think of the stonecutter?”
Malachi, the cat, stopped licking his paws, an’ trun a sharp, inquiring eye at his master.
“Bridget,” says the knowledgeable man, giving his hand an argifying wave. “We have two separate ways of being good. Your way is to scurry round an’ do good acts. My way is to keep from doing bad ones. An’ who knows,” he says, with a pious sigh, “which way is the betther one. It isn’t for us to judge,” says he, shakin’ his head solemn at the fire.
Bridget walked out in front of him an’ fowlded her arms tight.
“So you won’t go,” she says, sharp an’ suddin’.
“The divil a foot!” says he, beginnin’ to whustle.
You’d think, now, Bridget was bate, but she still hildt her trump card, an’ until that was played an’ lost the lad wasn’t safe. “All right, me brave hayro,” says she; “do you sit there be the fire; I’ll go meself,” she says. With that she bounced into the childher’s room an’ began to get ready her cloak an’ hood.
For a minute Darby sat pokin’ the fire, muttherin’ to himself an’ feeling very discommodious. Thin, just to show he wasn’t the laste bit onaisy, the lad cleared his throat, and waggin’ his head at the fire, began to sing:
“Yarra! as I walked out one mor‑r‑nin’ all in the month of June
The primrosies and daisies o’ cowslips were in bloom,
I spied a purty fair maid a-sthrollin’ on the lea,
An’ Rory Bory Alice, nor any other ould ancient haythan goddess
was not half so fair as she.
Says I, ‘Me purty fair maid, I’ll take you for me bride.
An’ if you’ll pay no at-tin-tion—’ ”
Glancing up sudden, he saw Malachi’s eye on him, and if ever the faytures of a cat spoke silent but plain langwidge Malachi’s face talked that minute to its master, and this is what it said:
“Well, of all the cowardly, creaking bostheens I ever see in all me born days you are the worst, Darby O’Gill. You’ve not only guve impidence to your wife—an’ she’s worth four of you—but you’ve gone back on the friends you purtended to—”
Malachi’s faytures got no further in their insultin’ raymarks, for at that Darby swooped up a big sod of turf an’ let it fly at the owdacious baste.
Now it is well known that be a spontaneous trow like that no one ever yet hit a sinsible cat, but always an’ ever in that unlucky endayvour he strikes a damaginger blow where it’s not intinded. So it was this time.
Bridget, wearing her red cloak an’ hood, was just coming through the door, an’ that misfortunate sod of turf caught her fair an’ square, right below the chist, an’ she staggered back agin the wall.
Darby’s consthernaytion an’ complycation an’ turpitaytion were beyant imaginaytion.
Bridget laned there gasping. If she felt as bad as she looked, four Dublint surgunts with their saws an’ knives couldn’t have done her a ha-porth of good. Howsumever, for all that, the sly woman had seen Malachi dodge an’ go gallopin’ away, but she purtendid to think ’twas at herself the turf was trun. Not that she scolded, or anything so common as that, but she went on like an early Christian marthyer who was just goin’ to be inthrojuiced to the roaring loins.
Well, as you may aisy see, the poor man, her husband, hadn’t a chanst in the worruld afther that. Of course, to rightify himself, he’d face all the ghosts in Croaghmah. So, in a minute, he was standing in his greatcoat with his hand on the latch. There was a packet of tay in his pocket, an’ he was a subdued an’ conquered man.
He looked so woeful that Bridget raypented an’ almost raylinted.
“Raymember,” he says, mournful, “if I’m caught this night be the Costa Bower, or be the banshee, take good care of the childher, an’ raymember what I say—I didn’t mane, Bridget, to hit ye with that sod of turf.”
“Oh, ain’t ye the foolish darlin’ to be afeared,” smiled Bridget back at him, but she was sayrious, too. “Don’t you know that when one goes on an errant of marcy a score of God’s white angels with swoords in their hands march before an’ beside an’ afther him, keeping his path free from danger?” With that she pulled his face down to hers, an’ kissed him as she used in the ould courtin’ days.
There’s nothing puts so much high courage an’ clear, steadfast purpose in a man’s heart, if it be properly given, as a kiss from the woman he loves. So, with the warmth of that kiss to cheer him, Darby set his face agin the storm.
II
The Banshee’s Halloween
I
Halloween night, to all unhappy ghosts, is about the same as St. Patrick’s Day is to you or to me—’tis a great holiday in every churchyard. An’ no one knew this betther or felt it keener than did Darby O’Gill, that same Halloween night, as he stood on his own doorstep with the paper of black tay for Eileen McCarthy safely stowed away in the crown of his top-hat.
No one in that barony was quicker than he at an act of neighbourly kindness, but now, as he huddled himself together in the shelter of his own eaves, and thought of the dangers before, an’ of the cheerful fire an’ comfortable bed he was leaving behint, black raybellion rushed shouting across his heart.
“Oh, my, oh, my, what a perishin’ night to turn a man out into!” he says. “It’d be half a comfort to know I was goin’ to be kilt before I got back, just as a warnin’ to Bridget,” says he.
The misthrayted lad turned a sour eye on the chumultuous weather, an’ groaned deep as he pulled closer about his chowldhers the cape of his greatcoat an’ plunged into the daysarted an’ flooded roadway.
Howsumever, ’twas not the pelting rain, nor the lashing wind, nor yet the pitchy darkness that bothered the heart out of him as he wint splashin’ an’ stumbling along the road. A thought of something more raylentless than the storm, more mystarious than the night’s blackness put pounds of lead into the lad’s unwilling brogues; for somewhere in the shrouding darkness that covered McCarthy’s house the banshee was waiting this minute, purhaps, ready to jump out at him as soon as he came near her.
And, oh, if the banshee nabbed him there, what in the worruld would the poor lad do to save himself?
At the raylisation of this sitiwation, the gooseflesh crept up his back an’ settled on his neck an’ chowldhers. He began to cast about in his mind for a bit of cheer or a scrap of comfort, as a man in such sarcumstances will do. So, grumblin’ an’ sore-hearted, he turned over Bridget’s parting words. “If one goes on an errant of marcy,” Bridget had said, “a score of God’s white angels with swoords in their hands march before an’ beside an’ afther him, keeping his path free from danger.”
He felt anxious in his hat for the bit of charitable tay he was bringin’, and was glad to find it there safe an’ dhry enough, though the rest of him was drenched through an’ through.
“Isn’t this an act of charity I’m doin’, to be bringin’ a cooling drink to a dyin’ woman?” he axed himself aloud. “To be sure it is. Well, then, what rayson have I to be afeared?” says he, pokin’ his two hands into his pockets. “Arrah, it’s aisy enough to bolsther up one’s heart with wise sayin’ an’ hayroic praycepts when sitting comodious by one’s own fire; but talkin’ wise words to one’s self is mighty poor comfort when you’re on the lonely high road of a Halloween night, with a churchyard waitin’ for ye on the top of the hill not two hundred yards away. If there was only one star to break through the thick sky an’ shine for him, if there was but one friendly cow to low or a distant cock to break the teeming silence, ’twould put some heart into the man. But not a sound was there only the swish and wailing of the wind through the inwisible hedges.
“What’s the matther with the whole worruld? Where is it wanished to?” says Darby. “If a ghost were to jump at me from the churchyard wall, where would I look for help? To run is no use,” he says, “an’ to face it is—”
Just then the current of his misdoubtings ran whack up against a sayin’ of ould Peggy O’Callaghan. Mrs. O’Callaghan’s repitation for truth and voracity, whin it come to fairy tales or ghost stories, be it known, was ayquil if not shuparior to the best in Tipperary. Now, Peggy had towld Ned Mullin, an’ Ned Mullin had towld Bill Donahue, the tinker, an’ the tinker had adwised Darby that no one need ever be afeared of ghosts if he only had the courage to face them.
Peggy said, “The poor crachures ain’t roamin’ about shakin’ chains an’ moanin’ an’ groanin’, just for the sport of scarin’ people, nor yet out of maneness. ’Tis always a throuble that’s on their minds—a message they want sint, a saycret they’re endayvouring to unload. So instead of flyin’ from the onhappy things, as most people generally do,” she said, “one should walk up bowld to the apparraytion, be it gentle or common, male or faymale, an’ say, ‘What throubles ye, sir?’ or ‘What’s amiss with ye, ma’am?’ An’ take my worrud for it,” says she, “ye’ll find yourself a boneyfactor to them when you laste expect it,” she says.
’Twas a quare idee, but not so onraysonable afther all whin one comes to think of it; an’ the knowledgeable man fell to dayliberatin’ whether he’d have the hardness to folly it out if the chanst came. Sometimes he thought he would, then agin he was sure he wouldn’t. For Darby O’Gill was one who bint quick undher trouble like a young three before a hurrycane, but he only bint—the throuble never broke him. So, at times his courage wint down to a spark like the light of a candle in a gust of wind, but before you could turn on your heel ’twas blazing up sthrong and fiercer than before.
Whilst thus contimplatin’ an’ meditaytin’, his foot sthruck the bridge in the hollow just below the berrin’-ground, an’ there as the boy paused a minute, churning up bravery enough to carry him up the hill an’ past the mystarious gravestones, there came a short quiver of lightning, an’ in its sudden flare he was sure he saw not tin yards away, an’ comin’ down the hill toward him, a dim shape that took the breath out of his body.
“Oh, be the powers!” he gasped, his courage emptying out like wather from a spilt pail.
It moved, a slow, grey, formless thing without a head, an’ so far as he was able to judge it might be about the size of an ulephant. The parsecuted lad swung himself sideways in the road, one arrum over his eyes an’ the other stretched out at full length, as if to ward off the turrible wisitor.
The first thing that began to take any shape in his bewildhered brain was Peggy O’Callaghan’s adwice. He thried to folly it out, but a chatterin’ of teeth was the only sound he made. An’ all this time a thraymendous splashin’, like the floppin’ of whales, was coming nearer an’ nearer.
The splashin’ stopped not three feet away, an’ the ha’nted man felt in the spine of his back an’ in the calves of his legs that a powerful, unhowly monsther towered over him.
Why he didn’t swoonge in his tracks is the wondher. He says he would have dhropped at last if it weren’t for the distant bark of his own good dog, Sayser, that put a throb of courage intil his bones. At that friendly sound he opened his two dhry lips an’ stutthered this sayin’:
“Whoever you are, an’ whatever shape ye come in, take heed that I’m not afeared,” he says. “I command ye to tell me your throubles an’ I’ll be your boneyfactor. Then go back dacint an’ rayspectable where you’re buried. Spake an’ I’ll listen,” says he.
He waited for a reply, an’ getting none, a hot splinther of shame at bein’ so badly frightened turned his sowl into wexation. “Spake up,” he says, “but come no furder, for if you do, be the hokey I’ll take one thry at ye, ghost or no ghost!” he says. Once more he waited, an’ as he was lowering the arrum from his eyes for a peek, the ghost spoke up, an’ its answer came in two pitiful, disthressed roars. A damp breath puffed acrost his face, an’ openin’ his eyes, what should the lad see but the two dhroopin’ ears of Solomon, Mrs. Kilcannon’s grey donkey. Foive different kinds of disgust biled up into Darby’s throat an’ almost sthrangled him. “Ye murdherin’, big-headed imposture!” he gasped.
Half a minute afther a brown hoot-owl, which was shelthered in a nearby blackthorn three, called out to his brother’s fambly which inhabited the belfry of the chapel above on the hill that some black-minded spalpeen had hoult of Solomon Kilcannon be the two ears an’ was kickin’ the ribs out of him, an’ that the langwidge the man was usin’ to the poor baste was worse than scan’lous.
Although Darby couldn’t undherstand what the owl was sayin’, he was startled be the blood-curdlin’ hoot, an’ that same hoot saved Solomon from any further exthrayornery throuncin’, bekase as the angry man sthopped to hearken there flashed on him the rayilisation that he was bating an’ crool maulthraytin’ a blessing in dishguise. For this same Solomon had the repitation of being the knowingest, sensiblist thing which walked on four legs in that parish. He was a fayvourite with young an’ old, especially with childher, an’ Mrs. Kilcannon said she could talk to him as if he were a human, an’ she was sure he understhood. In the face of thim facts the knowledgeable man changed his chune, an’ puttin’ his arrum friendly around the disthressed animal’s neck, he said:
“Aren’t ye ashamed of yerself, Solomon, to be payradin’ an’ mayandherin’ around the churchyard Halloween night, dishguisin’ yerself this away as an outlandish ghost, an’ you havin’ the foine repitation for daciency an’ good manners?” he says, excusin’ himself. “I’m ashamed of you, so I am, Solomon,” says he, hauling the baste about in the road, an’ turning him till his head faced once more the hillside. “Come back with me now to Cormac McCarthy’s, avourneen. We’ve aich been in worse company, I’m thinkin’; at laste you have, Solomon,” says he.
At that, kind an’ friendly enough, the forgivin’ baste turned with him, an’ the two keeping aich other slitherin’ company, went stumblin’ an’ scramblin’ up the hill toward the chapel. On the way Darby kept up a one-sided conwersation about all manner of things, just so that the ring of a human woice, even if ’twas only his own, would take a bit of the crool lonesomeness out of the dark hedges.
“Did you notice McDonald’s sthrame as you came along the night, Solomon? It must be a roarin’ torrent be this, with the pourin’ rains, an’ we’ll have to cross it,” says he. “We could go over McDonald’s stone bridge that stands ferninst McCarthy’s house, with only Nolan’s meadow betwixt the two, but,” says Darby, laying a hand, confaydential on the ass’s wet back, “ ’tis only a fortnit since long Faylix, the blind beggarman, fell from the same bridge and broke his neck, an’ what more natural,” he axed, “than that the ghost of Faylix would be celebraytin’ its first Halloween, as a ghost, at the spot where he was kilt?”
You may believe me or believe me not, but at thim worruds Solomon sthopped dead still in his thracks an’ rayfused to go another step till Darby coaxed him on be sayin’:
“Oh, thin, we won’t cross it if you’re afeared, little man,” says he, “but we’ll take the path through the fields on this side of it, and we’ll cross the sthrame by McCarthy’s own wooden footbridge. ’Tis within tunty feet of the house. Oh, ye needn’t be afeared,” he says agin; “I’ve seen the cows cross it, so it’ll surely hould the both of us.”
A sudden raymembrance whipped into his mind of how tall the stile was, ladin’ into Nolan’s meadow, an’ the boy was puzzling deep in his mind to know how was Solomon to climb acrost that stile, whin all at once the gloomy western gate of the graveyard rose quick be their side.
The two shied to the opposite hedge, an’ no wondher they did.
Fufty ghosts, all in their shrouds, sat cheek be jowl along the churchyard wall, never caring a ha’porth for the wind or the rain.
There was little Ted Rogers, the humpback, who was dhrownded in Mullin’s well four years come Michaelmas; there was black Mulligan, the gamekeeper, who shot Ryan, the poacher, sittin’ with a gun on his lap, an’ he glowerin’; beside the gamekeeper sat the poacher, with a jagged black hole in his forehead; there was Thady Finnegan, the scholar, who was disappointed in love an’ died of a daycline; furder on sat Mrs. Houlihan, who dayparted this life from ating of pizen musherooms; next to her sat—oh, a hundhred others!
Not that Darby saw thim, do ye mind. He had too good sinse to look that way at all. He walked with his head turned out to the open fields, an’ his eyes squeeged shut. But something in his mind toult him they were there, an’ he felt in the marrow of his bones that if he gave them the encouragement of one glance two or three’d slip off the wall an’ come moanin’ over to tell him their throubles.
What Solomon saw an’ what Solomon heard, as the two wint shrinkin’ along’ll never be known to living man, but once he gave a jump, an’ twice Darby felt him thrimblin’, an’ whin they raiched at last the chapel wall the baste broke into a swift throt. Purty soon he galloped, an’ Darby wint gallopin’ with him, till two yallow blurs of light across in a field to the left marked the windys of the stonecutter’s cottage.
’Twas a few steps only, thin, to the stile over into Nolan’s meadow, an’ there the two stopped, lookin’ helpless at aich other. Solomon had to be lifted, and there was the throuble. Three times Darby thried be main strength to hist his compagnen up the steps, but in vain, an’ Solomon was clane dishgusted.
Only for the tendher corn on our hayro’s left little toe, I think maybe that at length an’ at last the pair would have got safe over. The kindhearted lad had the donkey’s two little hoofs planted on the top step, an’ whilst he himself was liftin’ the rest of the baste in his arrums, Solomon got onaisy that he was goin’ to be trun, an’ so began to twisht an’ squirm; of course, as he did, Darby slipped an’ wint thump on his back agin the stile, with Solomon sittin’ comfortable on top of the lad’s chist. But that wasn’t the worst of it, for as the baste scrambled up he planted one hard little hoof on Darby’s left foot, an’ the knowledgeable man let a yowl out of him that must have frightened all the ghosts within miles.
Seein’ he’d done wrong, Solomon boulted for the middle of the road an’ stood there wiry an’ attentive, listening to the names flung at him from where his late comerade sat on the lowest step of the stile nursin’ the hurted foot.
’Twas an excited owl in the belfry that this time spoke up an’ shouted to his brother down in the blackthorn:
“Come up, come up quick!” it says. “Darby O’Gill is just afther calling Solomon Kilcannon a malayfactor.”
Darby rose at last, an’ as he climbed over the stile he turned to shake his fist toward the middle of the road.
“Bad luck to ye for a thickheaded, ongrateful informer!” he says; “you go your way an’ I’ll go mine—we’re sundhers,” says he. So sayin’, the crippled man wint limpin’ an’ grumplin’ down the boreen, through the meadow, whilst his desarted friend sint rayproachf ul brays afther him that would go to your heart.
The throbbin’ of our hayro’s toe banished all pity for the baste, an’ even all thoughts of the banshee, till a long, gurgling, swooping sound in front toult him that his fears about the rise in McDonald’s sthrame were undher rather than over the actwil conditions.
Fearin’ that the wooden footbridge might be swept away, as it had been the year purvious, he hurried on.
Most times this sthrame was only a quiet little brook that ran betwixt purty green banks, with hardly enough wather in it to turn the broken wheel in Chartres’ runed mill; but tonight it swept along an angry, snarlin’, growlin’ river that overlept its banks an’ dhragged wildly at the swaying willows.
Be a narrow throw of light from McCarthy’s side windy our thraveller could see the maddened wather sthrivin’ an’ tearing to pull with it the props of the little footbridge; an’ the boards shook an’ the centre swayed undher his feet as he passed over. “Bedad, I’ll not cross this way goin’ home, at any rate,” he says, looking back at it.
The worruds were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a crack, an’ the middle of the footbridge lifted in the air, twishted round for a second, an then hurled itself into the sthrame, laving the two inds still standing in their place on the banks.
“Tunder an’ turf!” he cried, “I mustn’t forget to tell the people within of this, for if ever there was a thrap set by evil spirits to drownd a poor, unwary mortial, there it stands. Oh, ain’t the ghosts turrible wicious on Halloween!”
He stood dhrippin’ a minute on the threshold, listening; thin, without knockin’, lifted the latch an’ stepped softly into the house.
II
Two candles burned above the blue and white chiney dishes on the table, a bright fire blazed on the hearth, an’ over in the corner where the low bed was set the stonecutter was on his knees beside it.
Eileen lay on her side, her shining hair sthrealed out on the pillow. Her purty, flushed face was turned to Cormac, who knelt with his forehead hid on the bedcovers. The colleen’s two little hands were clasped about the great fist of her husband, an’ she was talking low, but so airnest that her whole life was in every worrud.
“God save all here!” said Darby, takin’ off his hat, but there was no answer. So deep were Cormac an’ Eileen in some conwersation they were having together that they didn’t hear his coming. The knowledgeable man didn’t know what to do. He raylised that a husband and wife about to part forever were lookin’ into aich other’s hearts, for maybe the last time. So he just sthood shifting from one foot to the other, watching thim, unable to daypart, an’ not wishin’ to obtrude.
“Oh, it isn’t death at all that I fear,” Eileen was saying. “No, no, Cormac asthore, ’tis not that I’m misdoubtful of; but, ochone mavrone, ’tis you I fear!”
The kneelin’ man gave one swift upward glance, and dhrew his face nearer to the sick wife. She wint on, thin, spakin’ tindher an’ half smiling an’ sthrckin’ his hand:
“I know, darlint, I know well, so you needn’t tell me, that if I were to live with you a thousand years you’d never sthray in mind or thought to any other woman, but it’s when I’m gone—when the lonesome avenings folly aich other through days an’ months, an’ maybe years, an’ you sitting here at this fireside without one to speak to, an’ you so handsome an’ gran’, an’ with the penny or two we’ve put away—”
“Oh, asthore machree, why can’t ye banish thim black thoughts!” says the stonecutter. “Maybe,” he says, “the banshee will not come again. Ain’t all the counthry-side prayin’ for ye this night, an’ didn’t Father Cassidy himself bid you to hope? The saints in Heaven couldn’t be so crool!” says he.
But the colleen wint on as though she hadn’t heard him, or as if he hadn’t intherrupted her:
“An’ listen,” says she; “they’ll come urging ye, the neighbours, an’ raysonin’ with you. You’re own flesh an’ blood’ll come, an’, no doubt, me own with them, an’ they all sthriving to push me out of your heart, an’ to put another woman there in my place. I’ll know it all, but I won’t be able to call to you, Cormac machree, for I’ll be lying silent undher the grass, or undher the snow up behind the church.”
While she was sayin’ thim last worruds, although Darby’s heart was meltin’ for Eileen, his mind began running over the colleens of that townland to pick out the one who’d be most likely to marry Cormac in the ind. You know how farseeing an’ quick-minded was the knowledgeable man. He settled sudden on the Hanlon girl, an’ daycided at once that she’d have Cormac before the year was out. The ondaycency of such a thing made him furious at her.
He says to himself, half crying, “Why, then, bad cess to you for a shameless, red-haired, forward baggage, Bridget Hanlon, to be runnin’ afther the man, an’ throwing yourself in his way, an’ Eileen not yet cowld in her grave!” he says.
While he was saying them things to himself, McCarthy had been whuspering fierce to his wife, but what it was the stonecutter said the friend of the fairies couldn’t hear. Eileen herself spoke clean enough in answer, for the faver gave her onnatural strength.
“Don’t think,” she says, “that it’s the first time this thought has come to me. Two months ago, whin I was sthrong an’ well an’ sittin’ happy as a meadowlark at your side, the same black shadow dhrifted over me heart. The worst of it an’ the hardest to bear of all is that they’ll be in the right, for what good can I do for you when I’m undher the clay,” says she.
“It’s different with a woman. If you were taken an’ I left I’d wear your face in my heart through all me life, an’ ax for no sweeter company.”
“Eileen,” says Cormac, liftin’ his hand, an’ his woice was hoarse as the roar of the say, “I swear to you on me bendid knees—”
With her hand on his lips, she sthopped him. “There’ll come on ye by daygrees a great cravin’ for sympathy, a hunger an’ a longing for affection, an’ you’ll have only the shadow of my poor, wanished face to comfort you, an’ a recollection of a woice that is gone forever. A new, warm face’ll keep pushin’ itself betwixt us—”
“Bad luck to that redheaded hussy!” mutthered Darby, looking around disthressed. “I’ll warn father Cassidy of her an’ of her intintions the day afther the funeral.”
There was silence for a minute; Cormac, the poor lad, was sobbing like a child. By-and-by Eileen wint on again, but her woice was failing an’ Darby could see that her cheeks were wet.
“The day’ll come when you’ll give over,” she says. “Ah, I see how it’ll all ind. Afther that you’ll visit the churchyard be stealth, so as not to make the other woman sore-hearted.”
“My, oh, my, isn’t she the far-seein’ woman?” thought Darby.
“Little childher’ll come,” she says, “an’ their soft, warm arrums will hould you away. By-and-by you’ll not go where I’m laid at all, an’ all thoughts of these few happy months we’ve spent together—Oh! Mother in Heaven, how happy they were—”
The girl started to her elbow, for, sharp an’ sudden, a wild, wailing cry just outside the windy startled the shuddering darkness. ’Twas a long cry of terror and of grief, not shrill, but piercing as a knife-thrust. Every hair on Darby’s head stood up an’ pricked him like a needle. ’Twas the banshee!
“Whist, listen!” says Eileen. “Oh, Cormac asthore, it’s come for me again!” With that, stiff with terror, she buried herself undher the pillows.
A second cry follyed the first, only this time it was longer, and rose an’ swelled into a kind of a song that broke at last into the heart-breakingest moan that ever fell on mortial ears. “Ochone!” it sobbed.
The knowledgeable man, his blood turned to ice, his legs thremblin’ like a hare’s, stood looking in spite of himself at the black windy-panes, expecting some frightful wision.
Afther that second cry the woice balanced itself up an’ down into the awful death keen. One word made the whole song, and that was the turruble worrud, “Forever!”
“Forever an’ forever, oh, forever!” swung the wild keen, until all the deep meaning of the worrud burned itself into Darby’s sowl, thin the heart-breakin’ sob, “Ochone!” inded always the varse.
Darby was just wondherin’ whether he himself wouldn’t go mad with fright, whin he gave a sudden jump at a hard, sthrained woice which spoke up at his very elbow.
“Darby O’Gill,” it said, and it was the stonecutter who spoke, “do you hear the death keen? It came last night; it’ll come tomorrow night at this same hour, and thin—oh, my God!”
Darby tried to answer, but he could only stare at the white, set face an’ the sunken eyes of the man before him.
There was, too, a kind of fierce quiet in the way McCarthy spoke that made Darby shiver.
The stonecutter wint on talkin’ the same as though he was goin’ to dhrive a bargain. “They say you’re a knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill,” he says, “an’ that on a time you spint six months with the fairies. Now I make you this fair, square offer,” he says, laying a forefinger in the palm of the other hand. “I have fifty-three pounds that Father Cassidy’s keeping for me. Fifty-three pounds,” he says agin. “An’ I have this good bit of a farm that me father was born on, an’ his father was born on, too, and the grandfather of him. An’ I have the grass of seven cows. You know that. Well, I’ll give it all to you, all, every stiver of it, if you’ll only go outside an’ dhrive away that cursed singer.” He trew his head to one side an’ looked anxious up at Darby.
The knowledgeable man racked his brains for something to speak, but all he could say was, “I’ve brought you a bit of tay from the wife, Cormac.”
McCarthy took the tay with unfeeling hands, an’ wint on talking in the same dull way. Only this time there came a hard lump in his throat now and then that he stopped to swally.
“The three cows I have go, of course, with the farm,” says he. “So does the pony an’ the five pigs. I have a good plough an’ a foine harrow; but you must lave my stone-cutting tools, so little Eileen an’ I can earn our way wherever we go, an’ it’s little the crachure ates the best of times.”
The man’s eyes were dhry an’ blazin’; no doubt his mind was cracked with grief. There was a lump in Darby’s throat, too, but for all that he spoke up scolding-like.
“Arrah, talk rayson, man,” he says, putting two hands on Cormac’s chowlders; “if I had the wit or the art to banish the banshee, wouldn’t I be happy to do it an’ not a fardin’ to pay?”
“Well, then,” says Cormac, scowling, an’ pushin’ Darby to one side, “I’ll face her myself—I’ll face her an’ choke that song in her throat if Sattin himself stood at her side.”
With those words, an’ before Darby could sthop him, the stonecutter flung open the door an’ plunged out into the night. As he did so the song outside sthopped. Suddenly a quick splashing of feet, hoarse cries, and shouts gave tidings of a chase. The half-crazed gossoon had stharted the banshee—of that there could be no manner of doubt. A raymembrance of the awful things that she might do to his friend paythrefied the heart of Darby.
Even afther these cries died away he stood listenling a full minute, the sowls of his two brogues glued to the floor. The only sounds he heard now were the deep ticking of a clock and a cricket that chirped slow an’ solemn on the hearth, an’ from somewhere outside came the sorrowful cry of a whipperwill. All at once a thought of the broken bridge an’ of the black, treacherous waters caught him like the blow of a whip, an’ for a second drove from his mind even the fear of the banshee.
In that one second, an’ before he rayalised it, the lad was out undher the dhripping trees, and running for his life toward the broken footbridge. The night was whirling an’ beating above him like the flapping of thraymendous wings, but as he ran Darby thought he heard above the rush of the water and through, the swish of the wind Cormac’s woice calling him.
The friend of the fairies stopped at the edge of the footbridge to listen. Although the storm had almost passed, a spiteful flare of lightning lept up now an’ agin out of the western hills, an’ afther it came the dull rumble of distant thunder; the water splashed spiteful against the bank, and Darby saw that seven good feet of the bridge had been torn out of its centre, laving uncovered that much of the black, deep flood.
He stood sthraining his eyes an’ ears in wondheration, for now the woice of Cormac sounded from the other side of the sthrame, and seemed to be floating toward him through the field over the path Darby himself had just thravelled. At first he was mightily bewildhered at what might bring Cormac on the other side of the brook, till all at once the murdhering scheme of the banshee burst in his mind like a gunpowdher explosion.
Her plan was as plain as day—she meant to dhrown the stonecutter. She had led the poor, daysthracted man straight from his own door down to and over the new stone bridge, an’ was now dayludherin’ him on the other side of the sthrame, back agin up the path that led to the broken footbridge.
In the glare of a sudden blinding flash from the middle of the sky Darby saw a sight he’ll never forget till the day he dies. Cormac, the stonecutter, was running toward the deathtrap, his bare head trun back, an’ his two arrums stretched out in front of him. A little above an’ just out of raich of them, plain an’ clear as Darby ever saw his wife Bridget, was the misty white figure of a woman. Her long, waving hair sthrealed back from her face, an’ her face was the face of the dead.
At the sight of her Darby thried to call out a warning, but the words fell back into his throat. Thin again came the stifling darkness. He thried to run away, but his knees failed him, so he turned around to face the danger.
As he did so he could hear the splash of the man’s feet in the soft mud. In less than a minute Cormac would be sthruggling in the wather. At the thought Darby, bracing himself body and sowl, let a warning howl out of him.
“Hould where you are!” he shouted; “she wants to drownd ye—the bridge is broke in the middle!” but he could tell, from the rushing footsteps an’ from the hoarse swelling curses which came nearer an’ nearer every second, that the dayludhered man, crazed with grief, was deaf an’ blind to everything but the figure that floated before his eyes.
At that hopeless instant Bridget’s parting words popped into Darby’s head.
“When one goes on an errant of marcy a score of God’s white angels, with swoords in their hands, march before an’ beside an’ afther him, keeping his path free from danger.”
How it all come to pass he could never rightly tell, for he was like a man in a dhrame, but he recollects well standing on the broken ind of the bridge, Bridget’s words ringing in his ears, the glistening black gulf benathe his feet, an’ he swinging his arrums for a jump. Just one thought of herself and the childher, as he gathered himself for a spring, an’ then he cleared the gap like a bird.
As his two feet touched the other side of the gap a turrific screech—not a screech, ayther, but an angry, frightened shriek—almost split his ears. He felt a rush of cowld, dead air agin his face, and caught a whiff of newly turned clay in his nosthrils; something white stopped quick before him, an’ then, with a second shriek, it shot high in the darkness an’ disappeared. Darby had frightened the wits out of the banshee.
The instant afther the two men were clinched an’ rowling over an’ over aich other down the muddy bank, their legs splashing as far as the knees in the dangerous wather, an’ McCarthy raining wake blows on the knowledgeable man’s head an’ breast.
Darby felt himself goin’ into the river. Bits of the bank caved undher him, splashing into the current, an’ the lad’s heart began clunking up an’ down like a churn-dash.
“Lave off, lave off!” he cried, as soon as he could ketch his breath. “Do you take me for the banshee?” says he, giving a dusperate lurch an’ rowling himself on top of the other.
“Who are you, then? If you’re not a ghost you’re the divil, at any rate,” gasped the stonecutter.
“Bad luck to ye!” cried Darby, clasping both arrums of the haunted man. “I’m no ghost, let lone the divil—I’m only your friend, Darby O’Gill.”
Lying there, breathing hard, they stared into the faces of aich other a little space till the poor stonecutter began to cry.
“Oh, is that you, Darby O’Gill? Where is the banshee? Oh, haven’t I the bad fortune,” he says, sthriving to raise himself.
“Rise up,” says Darby, lifting the man to his feet an’ steadying him there. The stonecutter stared about like one stunned be a blow.
“I don’t know where the banshee flew, but do you go back to Eileen as soon as you can,” says the friend of the fairies. “Not that way, man alive,” he says, as Cormac started to climb the footbridge, “it’s broke in the middle; go down an’ cross the stone bridge. I’ll be afther you in a minute,” he says.
Without a word, meek now and biddable as a child, Cormac turned, an’ Darby saw him hurry away into the blackness.
The raysons Darby raymained behind were two: first an’ foremost, he was a bit vexed at the way his clothes were muddied an’ dhraggled, an’ himself had been pounded an’ hammered; an’ second, he wanted to think. He had a quare cowld feeling in his mind that something was wrong—a kind of a foreboding, as one might say.
As he stood thinking a rayalisation of the caylamity sthruck him all at once like a rap on the jaw—he had lost his fine brier pipe. The lad groaned as he began the anxious sarch. He slapped furiously at his chist an’ side pockets, he dived into his throwsers and greatcoat, and at last, sprawlin’ on his hands an’ feet like a monkey, he groped savagely through the wet, sticky clay.
“This comes,” says the poor lad, grumblin’ an’ gropin’, “of pokin’ your nose into other people’s business. Hallo, what’s this?” says he, straightening himself. “ ’Tis a comb. Be the powers of pewther, ’tis the banshee’s comb.”
An’ so indade it was. He had picked up a goold comb the length of your hand an’ almost the width of your two fingers. About an inch of one ind was broken off, an’ dhropped into Darby’s palm. Without thinkin’, he put the broken bit into his weskit pocket, an’ raised the biggest half close to his eyes, the betther to view it.
“May I never see sorrow,” he says, “if the banshee mustn’t have dhropped her comb. Look at that, now. Folks do be sayin’ that ’tis this gives her the foine singing voice, bekase the comb is enchanted,” he says. “If that sayin’ be thrue, it’s the faymous lad I am from this night. I’ll thravel from fair to fair, an’ maybe at the ind they’ll send me to parliament.”
With these worruds he lifted his caubeen an’ stuck the comb in the top tuft of his hair.
Begor, he’d no sooner guv it a pull than a sour, singing feelin’ begun at the bottom of his stomick, an’ it rose higher an’ higher. When it raiched his chist he was just going to let a bawl out of himself only that he caught sight of a thing ferninst him that froze the marrow in his bones.
He gasped short an’ jerked the comb out of his hair, for there, not tin feet away, stood a dark, shadowy woman, tall, thin, an’ motionless, laning on a crutch.
During a breath or two the parsecuted hayro lost his head completely, for he never doubted that the banshee had changed her shuit of clothes to chase back afther him.
The first clear aymotion that rayturned to him was to fling the comb on the ground an’ make a boult of it. On second thought he knew that ’twould be aisier to bate the wind in a race than to run away from the banshee.
“Well, there’s a good Tipperary man done for this time,” groaned the knowledgeable man, “unless in some way I can beguile her.” He was fishing in his mind for its civilist worrud when the woman spoke up, an’ Darby’s heart jumped with gladness as he raycognised the cracked voice of Sheelah Maguire, the spy for the fairies.
“The top of the avenin’ to you, Darby O’Gill,” says Sheelah, peering at him from undher her hood, the two eyes of her glowing like tallow candles; “amn’t I kilt with a‑stonishment to see you here alone this time of the night,” says the ould witch.
Now, the clever man knew as well as though he had been tould, when Sheelah said thim worruds, that the banshee had sent her to look for the comb, an’ his heart grew bould; but he answered her polite enough, “Why, thin, luck to ye, Misthress Maguire, ma’am,” he says, bowing grand, “sure, if you’re kilt with a‑stonishment, amn’t I sphlit with inkerdoolity to find yourself mayandherin’ in this lonesome place on Halloween night.”
Sheelah hobbled a step or two nearer, an’ whuspered confaydential.
“I was wandherin’ hereabouts only this morning,” she says, “an’ I lost from me hair a goold comb—one that I’ve had this forty years. Did ye see such a thing as that, agra?” An’ her two eyes blazed.
“Faix, I dunno,” says Darby, putting his two arrums behind him. “Was it about the length of ye’re hand an’ the width of ye’re two fingers?” he axed.
“It was,” says she, thrusting out a withered paw.
“Thin I didn’t find it,” says the tantalising man. “But maybe I did find something summillar, only ’twasn’t yours at all, but the banshee’s,” he says, chuckling.
Whether the hag was intentioned to welt Darby with her staff, or whether she was only liftin’ it for to make a sign of enchantment in the air, will never be known, but whatsomever she meant the hayro doubled his fists an’ squared off; at that she lowered the stick, an’ broke into a shrill, cackling laugh.
“Ho, ho!” she laughed, houldin’ her sides, “but aren’t ye the bould, distinguishable man. Becourse ’tis the banshee’s comb; how well ye knew it! Be the same token I’m sint to bring it away; so make haste to give it up, for she’s hiding an’ waiting for me down at Chartres’ mill. Aren’t you the courageous blaggard, to grabble at her, an’ thry to ketch her. Sure, such a thing never happened before, since the worruld began,” says Sheelah.
The idee that the banshee was hiding an’ afeared to face him was great news to the hayro. But he only tossed his head an’ smiled shuparior as he made answer.
“ ’Tis yourself that knows well, Sheelah Maguire, ma’am,” answers back the proud man, slow an’ dayliberate, “that whin one does a favour for an unearthly spirit he may daymand for pay the favours of three such wishes as the spirit has power to give. The worruld knows that. Now I’ll take three good wishes, such as the banshee can bestow, or else I’ll carry the goolden comb straight to Father Cassidy. The banshee hasn’t goold nor wor’ly goods, as the sayin’ is, but she has what suits me betther.”
This cleverness angered the fairy-woman so she set in to abuse and to frighten Darby. She ballyragged, she browbate, she trajooced, she threatened, but ’twas no use. The bould man hildt firm, till at last she promised him the favours of the three wishes.
“First an’ foremost,” says he, “I’ll want her never to put her spell on me or any of my kith an’ kin.”
“That wish she gives you, that wish she grants you, though it’ll go sore agin the grain,” snarled Sheelah.
“Then,” says Darby, “my second wish is that the black spell be taken from Eileen McCarthy.”
Sheelah flusthered about like an angry hin. “Wouldn’t something else do as well?” she says.
“I’m not here to argify,” says Darby, swingin’ back an’ forrud on his toes.
“Bad scran to you,” says Sheelah. “I’ll have to go an’ ask the banshee herself about that. Don’t stir from that spot till I come back.”
You may believe it or not, but with that sayin’ she bent the head of her crutch well forward, an’ before Darby’s very face she trew—savin’ your presence—one leg over the stick as though it had been a horse, an’ while one might say Jack Robinson the crutch riz into the air an’ lifted her, an’ she went sailing out of sight.
Darby was still gaping an’ gawpin’ at the darkness where she disappeared whin—whisk! she was back agin an’ dismountin’ at his side.
“The luck is with you,” says she, spiteful. “That wish I give, that wish I grant you. You’ll find seven crossed rushes undher McCarthy’s doorstep; uncross them, put them in fire or in wather, an’ the spell is lifted. Be quick with the third wish—out with it!”
“I’m in a more particular hurry about that than you are,” says Darby. “You must find me my brier pipe,” says he.
“You omadhaun,” sneered the fairy-woman, “ ’tis sthuck in the band of your hat, where you put it when you left your own house the night. No, no, not in front,” she says, as Darby put up his hand to feel. “It’s stuck in the back. Your caubeen’s twishted,” she says.
Whilst Darby was standing with the comb in one hand an’ the pipe in the other, smiling daylighted, the comb was snatched from his fingers and he got a welt in the side of the head from the crutch. Looking up, he saw Sheelah tunty feet in the air, headed for Chartres’ mill, an’ she cacklin’ an’ screechin’ with laughter. Rubbing his sore head an’ mutthering unpious words to himself, Darby started for the new bridge.
In less than no time afther, he had found the seven crossed rushes undher McCarthy’s doorstep, an’ had flung them into the stream. Thin, without knocking, he pushed open McCarthy’s door an’ tiptoed quietly in.
Cormac was kneelin’ beside the bed with his face buried in the pillows, as he was when Darby first saw him that night. But Eileen was sleeping as sound as a child, with a sweet smile on her lips. Heavy pursperation beaded her forehead, showing that the faver was broke.
Without disturbing aither of them our hayro picked up the package of tay from the floor, put it on the dhresser, an’ with a glad heart sthole out of the house an’ closed the door softly behind him.
Turning toward Chartres’ mill he lifted his hat an’ bowed low. “Thank you kindly, Misthress Banshee,” he says. “ ’Tis well for us all I found your comb this night. Public or private, I’ll always say this for you—you’re a woman of your worrud,” he says.
III
The Ghosts at Chartre’s Mill
For a little while afther Darby O’Gill sint the banshee back her comb, there was the duckens to pay in that townland. Aich night came stormier than the other. An’ the rain—never, since Noey the Phoenaycian histed sail for Arrayat was there promised such a daynudherin’ flood. (In one way or another we’re all, even the Germin min an’ the Fardowns, dayscendints of the Phoeaycians.)
Even at that the foul weather was the laste of the throuble—the counthry-side was ha’nted. Every ghost must have left Croaghmah as soon as twilight to wander abroad in the lonesome places. The farmyards and even the village itself was not safe.
One morning, just before cockcrow, big Joey Hooligan, the smith, woke up sudden, with a turrible feeling that some gashly person was lookin’ in at him through the windy. Startin’ up flurried in bed, what did he see but two eyes that were like burnin’ coals of fire, an’ they peerin’ study into the room. One glance was enough. Givin’ a thraymendous gasp, Joey dhropped back quakin’ into the bed, an’ covered his head with the bedclothes. How long afther that the two heegous eyes kept starin’ at the bed Joey can’t rightly tell, for he never uncovered his head nor stirred hand nor foot agin till his wife Nancy had lighted the fire an’ biled the stirabout.
Indade, it was a good month afther that before Joey found courage enough to get up first in the morning so as to light the fire. An’ on that same mimorable mornin’ he an’ Nancy lay in bed argyfin’ about it till nearly noon—the poor man was that frightened.
The avenin’ afther Hooligan was wisited Mrs. Norah Clancy was in the stable milking her cow—Cornaylia be name—whin sudden she spied a tall, sthrange man in a topcoat standin’ near the stable door an’ he with his back turned toward her. At first she thought it a shadow, but it a‑ppeared a thrifle thicker than a shadow, so, a little afeared, she called out: “God save you kindly, sir!”
At that the shadow turned a dim, grey face toward her, so full of rayproachful woe that Mrs. Clancy let a screech out of her an’ tumbled over with the pail of milk betwixt her knees. She lay on her back in the spilt milk unconscionable for full fufteen minutes.
The next night a very rayliable tinker, named Bothered Bill Donahue, while wandherin’ near Chartres’ ruined mill, came quite accidental upon tunty skillingtons, an’ they colloguing an’ confabbing together on the flat roof of the mill-shed.
But worst of all, an’ something that sthruck deeper terror into every heart, was the news that six different persons at six different places had met with the turrible phantom coach, the Costa Bower.
Peggy Collins, a wandherin’ beggar woman from the west counthry, had a wild chase for it; an’ if she’d been a second later raichin’ the chapel steps an’ laying her hand on the church-door it would have had her sure.
Things got on so that afther dark people only wentured out in couples or in crowds, an’ in pint of piety that parish was growin’ into an example an’ patthron for the naytion.
But of all the persons whom thim conditions complicayted you may be sure that the worst harried an’ implicayted was the knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill.
There was a weight on his mind, but he couldn’t tell why, an’ a dhread in his heart that had no raysonable foundaytion. He moped an’ he moothered. Some of the time he felt like singin’ doleful ballads an’ death keens, an’ the rest of the time he could hardly keep from cryin’. His appetite left him, but what confuged him worse than all the rest was the fondness that had come over him for hard worruk—cuttin’ turf an’ diggin’ petaties, an’ things like that.
To make matters more onsociable, his friend, Brian Connors, the King of the Fairies, hadn’t showed a nose inside Darby’s door for more than a fortnit; so the knowledgeable man had no one to adwise with.
In thim dismal sarcumstances Darby, growin’ dusperate, harnessed the pony Clayopathra one morning and dhrove up to Clonmel to see the Masther Doctor—the raynowned McNamara. Be this you may know how bad he felt, for no one, till he was almost at the pint of dissolation, ever wint to that crass, brow-batin’ ould codger.
So, loath enough was our own hayro to face him, an’ hardhearted enough was the welcome the crabbed little docthor hilt out to Darby whin they met.
“What did you ate for breakwus?” the physician says, peerin’ savage from undher his great eyebrows at Darby’s tongue.
“Only a bowl of stirabout, an’ a couple of petaties, an’ a bit of bacon, an’ a few eggs.” He was countin’ on his fingers, “an’—an’ somethin’ or other I forgot. Do you think I’ll go into a daycline, Doctor, agra?”
“Hump! ugh! ugh!” was all the comfort the sick man got from the blinkin’ ould blaggard. But turnin’ imaget to his medicine-table the surgent began studyin’ the medicines. There was so much of it ferninst him he might have give a gallon an’ never missed it. There was one foine big red bottle in particular Darby had his eye on, an’ thought his dose ’ud surely come out of that. But NcNamara turns to a box the size of your hat, an’ it filled to the top with little white, flat pills. Well, the stingy ould rascal counts out three and, handing them to Darby, says: “Take one before breakwus, another before dinner, an’ the last one before suppher, an’ give me four silver shillings, an’ that’ll cure ye,” he says.
You may be sure that Darby biled up inside with madness at the onraysonableness of the price of the pills, but, houlding himself in, he says, very cool an’ quite: “Will you write me out a rayceipt for the money, Doctor McNamara, if you plaze?” he says. An’, whilst the ould chayter was turned to the writing, be the hokey if our hayro didn’t half fill his pockets with pills from the box. By manes of them, as he dhrove along home, he was able to do a power of good to the neighbour people he met with on the road.
Whin you once get in the habit of it there’s no pleasure in life which ayquils givin’ other people medicine.
Darby ginerously med ould Peggy O’Callaghan take six of the little round things. He gave a swally to half-witted Red Durgan, an’ a good mouthful to poor sick Eileen McCarthy (only she had to gulp them whole, poor thing, an’ couldn’t ate them as the others did—but maybe ’twas just as good). An’ he gave a fistful aich to Judy Rafferty an’ Dennis Hogan; an’ he stood handsome thrate to a sthranger, who, the minute he got the taste well intil his mouth, wanted to fight Darby. Howsumever, the two only called aich other hard names for a while, then Darby joggled along, doin’ good an’ growin’ lighter-hearted an’ merrier-minded at every sthop he med. ’Twas this way with him till, just in front of Mrs. Kilcannon’s, who should he see, scratching himself agin the wall, but Solomon, an’ the baste lookin’ bitther daynunciation out of the corner of his eye. Darby turned his head, ashamed to look the misthrayted donkey in the face. An’ worse still nor that, just beyant Solomon, laning agin the same wall, was Bothered Bill Donahue, the deef tinker. That last sight dashed Darby entirely, for he knew as well as if he had been tould that the tinker was layin’ in wait to ride home with him for a night’s lodging.
It wasn’t that Darby objected on his own account to takin’ him home, for a tinker or a beggarman, mind you, has a right, the worruld over, to claim a night’s lodgin’ an’ a bit to ate wherever he goes; an’ well, these honest people pay for it in the gossip an’ news they furnish at the fireside an’ in the good rayport of your family they’ll spread through the counthry aftherwards.
Darby liked well to have them come, but through some unknown wakeness in her char-ack-ther Bridget hated the sight of them. Worst of all, she hated Bothered Bill. She even went so far as to say that Bill was not half so bothered as he purtendid—that he could hear well enough what was agreeable for him to hear, an’ that he was deef only to what he didn’t like to listen to.
Well, anyhow there was the tinker in the road waitin’ for the cart to come up, an’ for a while what to do Darby didn’t well know.
He couldn’t rayfuse one who axed food to ate or shelther for a wandherer’s four bones during the night (that would be a sin, besides it would bring bad luck upon the house), an’ still he had a mortial dislike to go agin Bridget in this purtick’ler—she’d surely blame him for bringin’ Bothered Bill home.
But at length an’ at last he daycided, with a sigh, to put the whole case before Bill an’ then let him come or stay.
Whilst he was meditaytin’ on some way of conveyin’ the news that’d be complaymintary to the tinker, an’ that’d elevayte instid of smashing that thraveller’s sinsitiveness, Bill came up to the cart.
“The top iv the day to you, dacint man,” he says. “ ’Tis gettin’ toward dark an’ I’ll go home with ye for the night, I’m thinkin’,” says he. The tinker, like most people who are hard of hearin’, roared as though the listener was bothered.
Darby laid down the lines an’ hilt out a handful of the little medicines.
“There’s nothin’ the matther with me, so why should I ate thim?” cried Bill.
“They’re the best thing in the worruld for that,” says Darby, forcing them into Bill’s mouth. “You don’t know whin you’ll nade thim,” he says, shoutin’. “It’s betther meet sickness halfway,” says he, “than to wait till it finds you.”
And thin, whilst Bill, with an open hand aginst his ear, was chawin’ the pills an’ lookin’ up plaintiff into Darby’s face, the knowledgeable man wint on in a blandishin’ way to pint out the sitiwation.
“You see, ’tis this away, Wullum,” he says. “It’s only too daylighted I’d be to take you home with me. Indade, Bridget herself has wondherful admiraytion for you in an ord’nary way,” says he. “She believes you’re a raymarkable man intirely,” he says, dayplomatic, “only she thinks you’re not clane,” says he.
The tinker must have misundherstood altogether, for he bawled, in rayply, “Wisha good luck to her,” he says, “an’ ain’t I glad to have so foine opinion from so foine a woman,” says he. “But sure, all the women notice how tidy I am, an’ that’s why they like to have me in the house. But we best be movin’,” says he, coolly dhropping his bags of tools intil the cart, “for the night’s at hand, an’ a black an’ stormy one it’ll be,” says Bill.
He put a foot onto the wheel of the cart. As he did so Darby, growin’ very red in the face, pressed a shilling into the tinker’s hand. “Go into Mrs. Kilcannon’s for the night, Wullum,” he says, “an’ come to us for your breakwus, an’ your dinner an’ maybe your supper, me good fellow,” says he.
But the deef man only pocketed the shillin’ an’ clambered up onto the sate beside Darby. “Faith, the shillin’s welcome,” he says; “but I’d go to such a commodious house as yours any time, Darby O’Gill, without a fardin’s pay,” says he, pattin’ Darby kindly on the back. But Darby’s jaw was hangin’ for the loss of the shillin’ right on top of the unwelcome wisitor.
“We’d betther hurry on,” says the tinker, lighting his pipe; “for afther sundown who knows what’ll catch up with us on the road,” says he.
Sure, there was nothing for it but to make the best of a bad bargain, an’ the two went on together, Darby gloomy an’ vexed an’ the deef man solemn but comfortable till they were almost at McHale’s bridge. Then the tinker spoke up.
“Did ye hear the black threats Sheelah Maguire is makin’ agin you?” he says.
“No,” says Darby; “what in the worruld ails her?” says he.
“Bless the one of me knows,” says the tinker, “nor anybody else for that matther. Only that last Halloween night Sheelah Maguire was bate black an’ blue from head to foot, an’ she lays the raysponsibility on you, Darby,” he says.
The knowledgeable man had his mouth open for a question whin who should go runnin’ acrost the road in front of them but Neddy McHale himself, an’ his arrum full of sticks. “Go back! go back!” cries Neddy, wavin’ an arrum wild. “The bridge’s butther-worruks are washed out be the flood an’ McDonald’s bridge is down, too, so yez must go around be the mill,” says Neddy.
Now here was bitther news for ye! ’Twas two miles out of the way to go be Chartres’ mill, an’ do the best possible they’d be passing that ha’nted place in the pitch dark.
“Faith, an’ I’ve had worse luck than in pickin’ you up this night, Bothered Bill Donahue,” says Darby, “for it’s loath I’d be to go alone—”
He turned to speak just in time, for the tinker had gathered up his bag an’ had put his right foot on the cartwheel, purparin’ for a jump. Darby clutched the lad be the back of his neck an’ joulted him back hard into the sate.
“Sit still, Wullum, till we raich me own house, avourneen,” he says, sarcastic, “for if ye thry that move agin I’ll not lave a whole bone in your body. I’ll never let it be said,” he says, lofty, “that I turned one who axed me for a night’s lodgin’ from me door,” he says. An’ as he spoke he wheeled the cart quick around in the road.
“Lave me down, Misther O’Gill! I think I’ll stop the night with Neddy McHale,” says Wullum, shiverin’. “Bridget don’t think I’m clane,” says he, as the pony started off.
“Who tould ye that, I’d like to know?” shouted Darby, growin’ fierce; “who dared say that of ye? You’re bothered, Wullum, you know, an’ so you misthrupit langwidge,” he says.
But Bill only cowered down sulky, an’ the pony galloped down the side lane intil the woods, strivin’ to bate the rain an’ the darkness. But the elements were too swift-footed, an’ the rain came down an’ all the shadows met together, an’ the dusk whirled quick intil blackness before they raiched the gloomy hill.
Ever and always Chartres’ mill was a misfortunit place. It broke the heart of an’ runed and kilt the man who built it; an’ itself was a rune these last tunty years.
Many was the wild tale known throughout the counthry-side of the things that had been seen an’ heard at that same mill, but the tale that kept Darby an’ the tinker unwelcome company as the pony throtted along was what had happened there a couple of years before. One night, as Paddy Carroll was dhrivin’ past the gloomy ould place, his best ear cocked an’ his weather eye open for ghosts, there came sudden from the mill three agonised shrieks for help.
Thinkin’ ’twas the spirits that were in it Paddy whipped up his pony an’ hurried on his way. But the next morning, misdoubtin’ whether ’twasn’t a human woice, afther all, he had heard, Paddy gathered up a dozen of the neighbours an’ went back to inwestigate. What did they find in one of the upper rooms but a peddler, lying flat on the floor, his pack ramsacked an’ he dead as a doornail. ’Twas his cries Paddy had heard as the poor thraveller was bein’ murdhered.
Since that time a dozen people passing the mill at night had heard the cries of the same peddler, an’ had seen the place blazin’ with lights. So, that now no one who could help it ever alone passed the mill afther dark.
At the hill this side of that place the pony slowed down to a walk; nayther coaxin’ nor batin’ ’d injooce the baste to mend his steps. The horse’d stop a little an’ wait, an’ thin it’d go on thrimblin’.
They could all see the dim outlines of the empty mill glowerin’ up at them, an’ the nearer they came the more it glowered, an’ the faster their two hearts bate. Halfway down the hill an ould signpost pinted the way with its broken arm; just beyant that the bridge, an’ afther that the long, level road an’—salwaytion.
But at the signpost Clayopathra sthopped dead still, starin’ into some bushes just beyant. She was shakin’ an’ snortin’ and her limbs thrimblin’.
At the same time, to tell the truth, she was no worse off than the two Christians sittin’ in the cart behint her, only they were not so daymonsthray-ta-tive about it. Small blame to the lads at that, for they were both sure an’ sartin that lurking in the black shadows was a thing waiting to freeze their hearts with terror, an’ maybe to put a mark on thim that they’d carry to their graves.
Afther coaxing Clayopathra an’ raysonin’ with her in wain, Darby, his knees knocking, turned to the tinker, an’ in the excitement of the events forgettin’ that Bill was deef, whuspered, as cool an’ as aisy-like as he could:
“Would ye mind doin’ me the favour of steppin’ out, avick, an’ seein’ what’s in that road ahead of us, Wullum?”
But Bothered Bill answered back at once, just as cool an’ aisy:
“I would mind, Darby,” he says; “an’ I wouldn’t get down, asthore, to save you an’ your family an’ all their laneyal daysindents from the gallus-rope,” says he.
“I thought you was deef,” says Darby, growin’ disrayspectful.
“This is no time for explaynations,” says Wullum. “An’ I thought meself,” he wint on, turning his chowlder on Darby, “that I was in company with a brave man; but I’m sorry to find that I’m riding with no betther than an’ outrageous coward,” says he, bitther.
Whilst Wullum was sayin’ them wexatious worruds Darby stood laning out of the cart with a hand on Clayopathra’s back an’ a foot on the shaft, goggling his eyes an’ sthrivin’ to pierce the darkness at the pony’s head. Without turnin’ round he med answer:
“Is that the way it is with you, Wullum?” he says, still sarcastic. “Faix, thin ye’ll have that complaint no longer, for if yez don’t climb down this minute I’ll trow you bag an’ baggage in the ditch,” he says; “so get out immaget, darlint, or I’ll trow you out,” says he.
The worruds weren’t well out of his mouth whin the owdacious tinker whipped out his scissors an’ sint the sharp pint half an inch into Clayopathra’s flank. Clayopathra jumped, an’ Darby, legs an’ arrums flying, took a back sommerset that he never ayquiled in his supplest days, for it landed him flat agin the hedge; an’ the leap Clayopathra gave, if she could only keep it up’d fit her for the Curragh races. An’ keep it up for a surprisin’ while she did, at any rate, for as the knowledgeable man scrambled to his feet he could hear her furious gallop a hundhred yards down the road.
“Stop her, Wullum avourneen, I was only joking! Come back, ye shameless rogue of the univarse, or I’ll have ye thransported!” he shouted, rushing a few steps afther them. But the lash of the whip on Clayopathra’s sides was the only answer Wullum sint back to him.
To purshue was useless, so the daysarted man slacked down to a throt. I’d hate bad to have befall me any one of the hundhred things Darby wished aloud then an’ there for Wullum.
Well, at all events, there was Darby, his head bint, plodding along through the storm, an’ a fiercer storm than the wind or rain ever med kept ragin’ in his heart.
Only that through the storm in his mind there flared now an’ thin quivers of fear an’ turpitation that sometimes hastened his steps an’ thin again falthered thim. Howsumever, taking it all in all, he was making good pro‑gress, an’ had got to the bunch of willows at the near side of the mill whin one particular raymembrance of Sheelah Maguire and of the banshee’s comb halted the lad in the middle of the road an’ sint him fumblin’ with narvous hands in his weskit pocket. There, sure enough, was the piece of the banshee’s comb. The broken bit had lain forgotten in the lad’s pocket since Halloween; an’ now, as he felt it there next his thumping heart an’ buried undher pipefuls of tobaccy, the rayalisation almost floored him with consthernaytion. All rushed over his sowl like a flood.
Who else could it be but the banshee that guv Sheelah Maguire that turrible batin’ mintioned by the tinker? An’ what was that bating for, unless the banshee a‑ccused Sheelah of stealing the ind of the comb? An’, mother of Moses! ’Twas sarchin’ for that same bit of comb it was that brought the ghosts up from Croaghmah an’ med the whole townland ha’nted.
Was ever such a dangerous purdicament! Here he was, with ghosts in the threes above him an’ in the hedges, an’ maybe lookin’ over his chowlder, an’ all of them sarchin’ for the bit of enchanted comb that was in his own pocket. If they should find out where it lay what awful things they would do to him. Sure, they might call up the Costa Bower an’ fling him into it, an’ that ’ud be the last ever heard of Darby O’Gill in the land of the livin’.
With thim wild thoughts jumpin’ up an’ down in his mind he stood in the dark an’ in the rain, gawmin’ vacant over toward the shadowy ruin. An’ he bein’ much agitayted, the lad, without thinkin’, did the foolishest thing a man in his sitiwaytion could well a-complish—he took out of his pocket the enchanted sliver of goold an’ hildt it to his two eyes for a look.
The consequences came suddin’, for as he stuck it back into the tobaccy there burst from the darkness of the willows the hallowest, most blood-curdlin’ laugh that ever fell on mortial ears. “Ho! ho! ho!” it laughed.
The knowledgeable man’s hair lifted the hat from his head.
An’ as if the laugh wasn’t enough to scatther the wits of anyone, at the same instant it sounded, an’ quick as a flash, every windy in the ould mill blazed with a fierce blue light. Every batthered crack an’ crevice seemed bursting with the glare for maybe the space of ten seconds, an’ then, oh, Millia Murther! there broke from the upper floor three of the bitterest shrieks of pain an’ terror ever heard in this worruld; an’, with the last cry, the mill quinched itself into darkness agin an’ stood lonely an’ gloomy an’ silent as before. The rain patthered down on the road an’ the wind swished mournful in the threes, but there was no other sound.
The knowledgeable man turned to creep away very soft an’ quiet; but as he did a monsthrous black thing that looked like a dog without a head crawled slowly out from the willows where the turrible laugh had come from, an’ it crept into the gloom of the opposite hedge an’ there it stood, waitin’ for Darby to dhraw near.
But the knowledgeable man gave a leap backwards, an’ as he did from the darkness just behindt him swelled a deep sigh that was almost a groan. From the hedge to his right came another sigh, only deeper than the first, and from the blackness on his left rose another moan, an’ then a groaning, moaning chorus rose all round him, an’ lost itself in the wailing of the wind. He was surrounded—the ghosts had captured Darby.
The lad never rayalised before that minute what a precious thing is daylight. If there would only come a flash of lightening to show him the faces of the surrounding spirrits, horrible though they might be, he’d bid it welcome. But though the rain drizzled an’ the tunder rumpled, not a flare lit up the sky.
One swift, dusperate hope at the last minute saved the boy from sheer dispair; an’ that same hope was that maybe some of the Good People might be flyin’ about an’ would hear him. Liftin’ up his face to the sky an’ crying out to the passin’ wind, he says:
“Boys,” he says, agonised, “lads,” says he, “if there be any of yez to listen,” he cried, “I’ll take it as a great favour an’ I’ll thank ye kindly to tell King Brian Connors that his friend an’ comerade, Darby O’Gill, is in deep throuble and wants to see him imaget,” says he.
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed the turrible thing in the hedge.
In spite of the laugh he was almost sure that off in the distance a cry answered him.
To make sure he called again, but this time, though he sthrained his ears till their drums ached, he caught no rayply.
And now, out of the murkiness in the road ahead of him, something began to grow slowly into a tall, slender, white figure. Motionless it stood, tightly wrapped in a winding sheet. In its presence a new an’ awful fear pressed down the heart of Darby. He felt, too, that another shade had taken its place behindt him, an’ he didn’t want to look, an’ sthrove against lookin’, but something forced the lad to turn his head. There, sure enough, not foive feet away, stood still an’ silent the tall, dark figure of a man in a topcoat.
Thin came from every direction low, hissing whuspers that the lad couldn’t undherstand. Somethin’ turrible would happen in a minute—he knew that well.
There’s just so much fear in every man, just exactly as there is a certain amount of courage, an’ whin the fear is all spilt a man aither fights or dies. So Darby had always said.
He raymembered there was a gap in the hedge nearly opposite the clump of willows, so he med up his mind that, come what might, he’d make a gran’ charge for it, an’ so into the upland meadow beyant. He waited an instant to get some strength back intil his knees, an’ then he gave a spring. But that one spring was all he med—in that direction, at laste.
For, as he neared the ditch, a dozen white, ghostly hands raiched out eager for him. With a gasp he whirled in his thracks an’ rushed mad to the willows opposite, but there a hundhred gashly fingers were stretched out to meet the poor lad; an’ as he staggered back into the middle of the road agin, the hayro couldn’t, to save his sowl, keep back a long cry of terror and disthress.
Imaget, from undher the willows and from the ditch near the hedge an’ in the air above his head, from countless dead lips aychoed that triumphing, onairthly laugh, Ho! ho! ho!
’Twas then Darby just nearly guve up for lost. He felt his eyes growing dim an’ his limbs numb. There was no air comin’ into his lungs, for whin he thried to breathe he only gaped, so that he knew the black spell was on him, an’ that all that was left for him to do was to sink down in the road an’ thin to die.
But at that minute there floated from a great way off the faint cry of a woice the dispairing man knew well.
“Keep up your heart, Darby O’Gill,” cried Brian Connors; “we’re coming to resky you,” an’ from over the fields a wild cheer follyed thim worruds.
“Faugh-a-balla—clear the way!” sprang the shrill war-cry of a thousand of the Good People.
At the first sound of the King’s worruds there rose about Darby the mighty flurrying an’ rushing of wings in the darkness, as if thraymendous birds were rising sudden an’ flying away, an’ the air emptied itself of a smothering heaviness.
So fast came the King’s fairy army that the great cheer was still aychoing among the threes when the goold crown of Brian Connors sparkled up from beside the knowledgeable man’s knees. At that the parsecuted man, sobbin’ with joy, knelt down in the muddy road to shake hands with his friend, the masther of the Good People.
Brian Connors was not alone, for there crowded about Darby, sympathisin’ with him, little Phelim Beg, an’ Nial the fiddler, an’ Shaun Rhue the smith, an’ Phadrig Oge. Also every instant, flitthering out of the sky into the road, came be the score green-cloaked and red-hooded men, follying the King an’ ready for throuble.
“If ever a man needed a dhrop of good whusky, you’re the hayro, an’ this is the time an’ place for it,” says the King, handin’ up a silver-topped noggin. “Dhrink it all,” he says, “an’ then we’ll escorch ye home. Come on,” says he.
The masther of the nighttime turned an’ shouted to his subjects. “Boys,” he cried, “we’ll go wisible, the betther for company sake. An’ do you make the ’luminaytion so Darby can see yez with him!”
At that the lovely rosy light which, as you may raymember, our hayro first saw in the fairy’s home at Sleive-na-mon, lighted up the roadway, an’ undher the leafy arches, bobbin’ along like a ridgement of sojers, all in their green cloaks an’ red caps, marched at laste a thousand of the Little People, with Phadrig Oge at their head actin’ as gineral.
As they passed the mill foive dayfiant pipers med the batthered ould windys rattle with “Garry Owen.”
IV
The Costa Bower
I
So the green-dhressed little army, all in the sweet, rosy light they made, wint marchin’, to the merry music of the pipes, over the tree-bowered roadway, past the ha’nted brakes up the shivering hills, an’ down into the waiting dales, making the grim night maylodious.
For a long space not a worrud, good, bad, or indifferent, said Darby.
But a sparrow woke her dhrowsy childher to look at the beautiful purcession, an’ a robin called excited to her sleepy neighbours, the linnets an’ the rabbits an’ the hares, an’ hundhreds like them crowded daylighted through the bushes, an’ stood peerin’ through the glistening leaves as their well-known champyions wint by. A dozen wentursome young owls flew from bough to bough, follying along, crackin’ good-natured but friendly jokes at their friends, the fairies. Thin other birds came flying from miles around, twitthering jubilaytion.
But the stern-jawed, frowny-eyed Little People for once answered back never a worrud, but marched stiff an’ silent, as sojers should. You’d swear ’twas the Enniskillins or ’twas the Eighteenth Hussars that ’twas in it.
“Isn’t that Gineral Julius Sayser at the head?” says one brown owl, flapping an owdacious wing at Phadrig Oge.
“No!” cries his brother, another young villian. “ ’Tis only the Jook of Wellington. But look at the bothered face on Darby O’Gill! Musha, are the Good People goin’ to hang Darby?”
And faix, thin, sure enough, there was mighty little elaytion on the faytures of our hayro. For, as he came marchin’ along, silent an’ moody, beside the King, what to do with the banshee’s comb was botherin’ the heart out of him. If he had only trun it to the ghosts whin he was there at the mill! But that turrible laugh had crunched all sense an’ rayson out of him, so that he forgot to do that very wise thing. Ochone, now the ghosts knew he had it; so, to trow it away’d do no good, onless they’d find it afther. One thing was sartin—he must some way get it back to the banshee, or else be ha’nted all the rest of his days.
He was sore-hearted, too, at the King, an’ a bit crass-timpered bekase the little man had stayed away so long frum wisitin’ with him.
But at last the knowledgeable man found his tongue. “Be me faix, King,” he complained, “ ’tis a cure for sore eyes to see ye. I might have been dead an’ buried an’ you none the wiser,” says he, sulky.
“Sure, I’ve been out of the counthry a fortnit,” says the King. “And I’ve only rayturned within the hour,” he says. “I wint on a suddin call to purvent a turrible war betwixt the Frinch fairies and the German fairies. I’ve been for two weeks on an island in the River Ryan, betwixt France an’ Germany. The river is called afther an Irishman be the name of Ryan.”
“At laste ye might have sint me wurrud,” says Darby.
“I didn’t think I’d be so long gone,” says the fairy; “but the disputaytion was thraymendous,” he says.
The little man dhrew himself up dignayfied an’ scowled solemn up at Darby. “They left it for me to daycide,” he says, “an’ this was the contintion:
“Fufty years ago a swan belongin’ to the Frinch fairies laid a settin’ of eggs on that same island, an’ thin comes along a German swan, an’ what does the impident craythure do but set herself down on the eggs laid be the Frinch swan an’ hatched thim. Afther the hatchin’ the German min claimed the young ones, but the Frinchmen pray-imp-thurribly daymanded thim back, d’ye mind. An’ the German min dayfied thim, d’ye see. So, of course, the trouble started. For fufty years it has been growin’, an’ before fightin’, as a last ray sort, they sint for me.
“Well, I saw at once that at the bottom of all was the ould, ould question, which has been disthurbin’ the worruld an’ dhrivin’ people crazy for three thousand years.”
“I know,” says Darby, scornful, “ ’twas whither the hin that laid the egg or the hin that hatched the egg is the mother of the young chicken.”
“An’ nothin’ else but that!” cried the King, surprised. “Now, what d’ye think I daycided?” he says.
Now, yer honour, I’ll always blame Darby for not listening to the King’s daycision, bekase ’tis a matther I’ve studied meself considherable, an’ never could rightly con‑clude; but Darby at the time was so bothered that he only said, in rayply to the King:
“Sure, it’s little I know, an’ sorra little I care,” he says, sulky. “I’ve something more important than hin’s eggs throubling me mind, an’ maybe ye can help me,” he says, anxious.
“Arrah, out with it, man,” says the King. “We’ll find a way, avourneen,” he says, cheerful.
With that Darby up an’ toult everything that had happened Halloween night an’ since, an’, indeed, be sayin’: “Now, here’s that broken piece of comb in me pocket, an’ what to do with it I don’t know. Will ye take it to the banshee, King?” he says.
The King turned grave as a goat. “I wouldn’t touch that thing in yer pocket, good friends as we are, to save yer life—not for a hundhred pounds. It might give them power over me. Yours is the only mortial hand that ever touched the banshee’s comb, an’ yours is the hand that should raystore it.”
“Oh, my, look at that, now,” says Darby, in despair, nodding his head very solemn.
“Besides,” says the King, without noticin’ him, “there’s only one ghost in Croaghmah I ’ssociate with—an’ that’s Shaun. They are mostly oncultavayted, an’ I almost said raydundant. Although I’d hate to call anyone raydundant onless I had to,” says the just-minded ould man.
“I’ll trow it here in the road an’ let some of them find it,” says Darby, dusperate. “I’ll take the chanst,” says he.
The King was shocked, an’, trowing up a warnin’ hand, he says:
“Be no manner of manes,” the fairy says, “you forget that thim ghosts were once min an’ women like yerself, so whin goold’s consarned they’re not to be thrusted. If one should find the comb he mightn’t give it to the banshee at all—he might turn ’bezzler an’ ’buzzle it. No, no, you must give it to herself pursnal, or else you an’ Bridget an’ the childher’ll be ha’nted all yer days. An’ there’s no time to lose, ayther,” says he.
“But Bridget an’ the childher’s waitin’ for me this minute,” wailed Darby. “An’ the pony, what’s become of her? An’ me supper?” he cried.
A little lad who was marchin’ just ahead turned an’ spoke up.
“The pony’s tied in the stable, an’ Bothered Bill has gone sneakin’ off to McCloskey’s,” the little man says. “I saw thim as I flew past.”
“Phadrig!” shouted the King. “Donnell! Conn! Nial! Phelim!” he called.
With that the little min named rose from the ranks, their cloaks spread, an’ come flyin’ back like big green buttherflies, an’ they sthopped huvering in the air above Darby an’ the King.
“What’s wanted?” axed Phelim.
“Does any of yez know where the banshee’s due at this hour?” the King rayplied.
“She’s due in County Roscommon at Castle O’Flinn, if I don’t misraymimber,” spoke up the little fiddler. “But I’m thinking that since Halloween she ain’t worrukin’ much, an’ purhaps she won’t lave Croaghmah.”
“Well, has any one of yez seen Shaun the night, I dunno?” axed the master.
“Sorra one of me knows,” says Phadrig. “Nor I,” “Nor I,” “Nor I,” cried one afther the other.
“Well, find where the banshee’s stayin’,” says King Brian. “An’ some of yez, exceptin’ Phadrig, go look for Shaun, an’ tell him I want to see him purtic’lar,” says the King.
The foive huvering little lads wanished like a candle that’s blown out.
“As for you, Phadrig,” wint on the masther fairy, “tell the ridgiment they’re to guard this townland the night, an’ keep the ghosts out of it. Begin at once!” he commanded.
The worruds wern’t well said till the whole ridgiment had blown itself out, an’ agin the night closed in as black as yer hat. But as it did Darby caught a glimpse from afar of the goolden light of his own open door, an’ he thought he could see on the thrashol the shadow of Bridget, with one of the childher clinging to her skirt, an’ herself watchin’ with a hand shading her eyes.
“Do you go home to yer supper, me poor man,” says the King, “an’ meantime I’ll engage Shaun to guide us to the banshee. He’s a great comerade of hers, an’ he’ll paycificate her if anyone can.”
The idee of becomin’ acquainted pursonal with the ghosts, an’ in a friendly, pleasant way have dalings with them, was a new sinsation to Darby. “What’ll I do now?” he axed.
“Go home to yer supper,” says the King, “an’ meet me by the withered three at Conroy’s crass-roads on the sthroke of twelve. There’ll be little danger tonight, I’m thinkin’, but if ye should run against one of thim spalpeens trow the bit of comb at him; maybe he’ll take it to the banshee an’ maybe he won’t. At any rate, ’tis the best yez can do.”
“Don’t keep me waitin’ on the crass-roads, whatever else happens,” warned Darby.
“I’ll do me best endayvour,” says the King. “But be sure to racognise me whin I come; make no mistake, for ye’ll have to spake first,” he says.
They were walking along all this time, an’ now had come to Darby’s own stile. The lad could see the heads of the childher bunched up agin the windy-pane. The King sthopped, an’, laying a hand on Darby’s arrum, spoke up umpressive:
“If I come to the crass-roads as a cow with a rope about me horns ye’ll lade me,” he says. “If I come as a horse with a saddle on me back, yez’ll ride me,” says he. “But if I come as a pig with a rope tied to me lift hind leg, ye’ll dhrive me,” says the King.
“Oh, my! Oh, my! Oh, tare an’ ages!” says Darby.
“But,” says the King, wavin’ his hand aginst inthurruptions, “so that we’ll know aich other we’ll have a by-worrud bechuxt us. An’ it’ll be poethry,” he says. “So that I’ll know that ’tis you that’s in it ye’ll say ‘Cabbage an’ bacon’; an’ so that ye’ll know that ’tis me that’s in it I’ll answer, ’Will sthop the heart achin’.’ Cabbage an’ bacon will sthop the heart achin’,” says the King, growin’ unwisible. “That’s good, satisfyin’ poethry,” he says. But the last worruds were sounded out of the empty air an’ a little way above, for the masther of the nighttime had wanished. At that Darby wint in to his supper.
I won’t expaytiate to yer honour on how our hayro spint the avenin’ at home, an’ how, afther Bridget an’ the childher were in bed, that a growin’ daysire to meet an’ talk sociable with a ghost fought with tunty black fears an’ almost bate them. But whinever his mind hesitayted, as it always did at the thought of the Costa Bower, a finger poked into his weskit pocket where the broken bit of comb lay hid, turned the scale.
Howandever, at length an’ at last, just before midnight our hayro, dhressed once more for the road, wint splashin’ an’ ploddin’ up the lane toward Conroy’s crass-roads.
II
A man is never so brave as whin sittin’ ferninst his own comfortable fire, a hot supper asleep in his chist, a steamin’ noggin of flaygrant punch in his fist, an’ a well-thried pipe betwixt his teeth. At such times he rumynates on the ould ancient hayroes, an’ he daycides they were no great shakes, afther all. They had the chanst to show themselves, an’ that’s the only difference betwixet himself an’ themselves. But whin he’s flung sudden out of thim pleasant surcumstances, as Darby was, to go chargin’ around in the darkness, hunting unknown an’ unwisible dangers, much of that courage oozes out of him.
An’ so the sthrangest of all sthrange things was, that this night, whin ’twas his fortune to be taken up be the Costa Bower, that a dhread of that death-coach was present in his mind from the minute he shut the door on himself, an’ it outweighed all other fears.
In spite of the insurance that King Brian had given, in spite of the knowledge that his friends, the Good People, were flyin’ hither an’ thither over that townland, there crept into his sowl an’ fastened itself there the chanst that the headless dhriver might slip past thim all an’ gobble him up.
In wain he tould himself that there were a million spots in Ireland where the death-carriage was more likely to be than in his own path. But in spite of all raysons, a dhreading, shiverin’ feelin’ was in his bones, so that as he splashed along he was flinging anxious looks behind or thremblin’ at the black, wavering shadows in front.
Howsumever, there was some comfort to know that the weather was changin’ for the betther. Strong winds had swept the worst of the storm out over the ocean, where it lingered slow, growlin’ an’ sputtherin’ lightening.
A few scatthered, frowning clouds, trowing ugly looks at the moon, sulked behind.
“Lord love your shining face,” says Darby, looking up to where the full moon, big as the bottom of a tub, shone bright an’ clear over his head. “An’ it’s I that hopes that the blaggard of a cloud I see creeping over at you from Sleive-na-mon won’t raich you an’ squinch your light before I meet up with Brian Connors.”
The moon, in answer, brushed a cloud from her face, and shed a clearer, fuller light, that made the flooded fields an’ dhropping threes quiver an’ glisten.
On top of the little mound known as Conroy’s Hill, an’ which is just this side of where the roads crass, the friend of the fairies looked about over the lonesome counthry-side.
Here and there gleamed a distant farmhouse, a still white speck in the moonlight. Only at Con Kelley’s, which was a good mile down the road, was a friendly spark of light to be seen, an’ that spark was so dim and so far that it only pressed down the loneliness heavier on Darby’s heart.
“Wisha,” says Darby, “how much I’d druther be there merry-makin’ with the boys an’ girls than standin’ here lonesome and cowld, waiting for the divil knows what.”
He sthrained his eyes for a sight of a horse, or a cow, or a pig, or anything that might turn out to be Brian Connors. The only thing that moved was the huge dark cloud that stretched up from Sleive-na-mon, and its heavy edge already touched the rim of the moon.
He started down the hill.
The withered three at the crossroads where he was to meet the King waved its blackened arms and lifted them up in warning as he came toward it, an’ it dhripped cowld tears upon his caubeen and down his neck when he stood quaking in its shadows.
“If the headless coachman were to ketch me here,” he whumpered, “and fling me into his carriage, not a sowl on earth would ever know what became of me.
“I wish I wasn’t so knowledgeable,” he says, half cryin’. “I wish I was as ignorant about ghosts an’ fairies as little Mrs. Bradigan, who laughs at them. The more you know the more you need know. Musha, there goes the moon.”
And at them words the great blaggard cloud closed in on the moon and left the worruld as black as yer hat.
That wasn’t the worst of it by no manner of manes, for at the same instant there came a rush of wind, an’ with it a low, hollow rumble that froze the marrow in Darby’s bones. He sthrained his eyes toward the sound, but it was so dark he couldn’t see his hand before his face.
He thried to run, but his legs turned to blocks of wood and dayfied him.
All the time the rumble of the turrible coach dhrew nearer an’ nearer, an’ he felt himself helpless as a babe. He closed his eyes to shut out the horror of the headless dhriver an’ of the poor, dead men laning back agin the sate.
At that last minute a swift hope that the King might be within hearing lent him a flash of strength, and he called out the byword.
“Cabbage an’ bacon!” he cried out, dispairing. “Cabbage an’ bacon’ll stop the heart achin’!” he roared, dismally, an’ then he gave a great gasp, for there was a splash in the road ferninst the three, an’ a thraymendous black coach, with four goint horses an’ a coachman on the box, stood still as death before him.
The dhriver wore a brown greatcoat, the lines hung limp in his fingers, an’ Darby’s heart sthopped palpitaytin’ at the sight of the two broad, headless chowlders.
The knowledgeable man sthrove to cry out agin, but he could only croak like a raven.
“Cabbage an’ bacon’ll stop the heart achin’,” he says.
Something moved inside the coach. “Foolish man,” a woice cried, “you’ve not only guv the byword, but at the same time you’ve shouted out its answer!”
At the woice of the King—for ’twas the King who spoke—a great wakeness came over Darby, an’ he laned limp agin the three.
“Suppose,” the King went on, “that it was an inemy you’d met up with instead of a friend. Tare an’ ’ounds! he’d have our saycret and maybe he’d put the comeither on ye. Shaun,” he says, up to the dhriver, “this is the human bean we’re to take with us down to Croaghmah to meet the banshee.”
From a place down on the sate on the far side of the dhriver a deep, slow woice, that sounded as though it had fur on it, spoke up:
“I’m glad to substantiate any sarvice that will in any way conjuice to the amaylyro-ra-tion of any friend of the raynounded King Brian Connors, even though that friend be only a human bean. I was a humble human bean meself three or four hundhred years ago.”
At that statement Darby out of politeness thried to look surprised.
“You must be a jook or an earl, or some other rich pillosopher, to have the most raynouned fairy in the worruld take such a shine to you,” wint on the head.
“Haven’t ye seen enough to make yerself like him?” cried the King, raising half his body through the open windy. “Didn’t ye mark how ca’m an’ bould he stood waitin’ for ye, whin any other man in Ireland would be this time have wore his legs to the knees runnin’ from ye? Where is the pillosopher except Darby O’Gill who would have guessed that ’twas meself that was in the coach, an’ would have flung me the by-worrud so careless and handy?” cried the King, his face blazing with admyration.
The worruds put pride into the heart of our hayro, an’ pride the worruld over is the twin sisther of courage. And then, too, whilst the King was talkin’ that deep, obsthreperous cloud which had covered the sky slipped off the edge of the moon an’ hurried to jine its fellows, who were waiting for it out over the ocean. And the moon, to make a-minds for its late obscuraytion, showered down sudden a flood of such cheerful, silver light that the drooping, separate leaves and the glistening blades of grass lept up clane an’ laughin’ to the eye. Some of that cheer wint into Darby’s breast, an’ with it crept back fresh his ould confidence in his champyion, the King.
But the headless dhriver was talking. “O’Gill,” says the slow woice agin, “did I hear ye say O’Gill, Brian Connors? Surely not one of the O’Gills of Ballinthubber?”
Darby answered rayluctant an’ haughty, for he had a feeling that the monsther was goin’ to claim relaytionship, an’ the idee put a bad taste in his mouth. “All me father’s people came from Ballinthubber,” he says.
“Come this or come that,” says the deep woice, thremblin’ with excitement, “I’ll have one look at ye.” No sooner said than done; for with that sayin’ the coachman thwisted, an’ picking up an extra’onary big head from the sate beside him, hilt it up in his two hands an’ faced it to the road. ’Twas the face of a goint. The lad marked that its wiry red whuskers grew close undher its eyes, an’ the flaming hair of the head curled an’ rowled down to where the chowlders should have been. An’ he saw, too, that the nose was wide an’ that the eyes were little. An uglier face you couldn’t wish to obsarve.
But as he looked, the boy saw the great lips tighten an’ grow wide; the eyelids half closed, an’ the head gave a hoarse sob; the tears thrickled down its nose. The head was cryin’.
First Darby grew oncomfortable, then he felt insulted to be cried at that way be a total sthranger. An’ as the tears rowled faster an’ faster, an’ the sobs came louder an’ louder, an’ the ugly eyes kep’ leering at him affectionate, he grew hot with indignaytion.
Seeing which, the head spoke up, snivelling:
“Plaze don’t get pugnaycious nor yet disputaytious,” it begged, betwixt sobs. “ ’Tisn’t yer face that hurts me an’ makes me cry. I’ve seen worse—a great dale worse—many’s the time. But ’tis the amazin’ fam’ly raysimblance that’s pathrifying me heart.”
The dhriver lifted the tail of his coat an’ wiped the head’s two weepin’ eyes. “ ’Twas in Ballinthubber I was born an’ in Ballinthubber I was rared; an’ it’s there I came to me misfortune through love of a purty, fair maid named Margit Ellen O’Gill. There was a song about it,” he says.
“I’ve heerd it many an’ many the time,” says the King, noddin’, sympathisin’, “though not for the last hundhred years or so.” Darby glared, scornful, at the King.
“Vo! Vo! Vo!” wailed the head, “but you’re like her. If it wasn’t for yer bunchy red hair, an’ for the big brown wen that was on her forehead, ye’d be as like as two pase.”
“Arrah,” says Darby, brustlin’, “I’m ashamed to see a man of yer sinse an’ station,” he says, “an’ high dictation—”
“Lave off!” broke in the King, pulling Darby be the sleeve. “Come inside! Whatever else you do, rayspect the sintimintalities—there all we have to live for, ghost or mortial,” says he.
So, grumbling, Darby took a place within the coach beside his friend. He filled his poipe, an’ was borrying a bit of fire from that of the King, whin looking up he saw just back of the dhriver’s seat, and opening into the carriage, a square hole of about the height an’ the width of yer two hands. An’ set agin the hole, starin’ affectionate down at him, was the head, an’ it smiling langwidging.
“Be this an’ be that,” Darby growled low to the King, “if he don’t take his face out of that windy, ghost or no ghost, I’ll take a poke at him!”
“Be no manner of manes,” says the King, anxious. “What’d we do without him? We’ll be at Croaghmah in a few minutes, then he needn’t bother ye.”
“Why don’t ye dhrive on?” says Darby, lookin’ up surly at the head. “Why don’t ye start?”
“We’re goin’ these last three minutes,” smiled Shaun; “we’re comin’ up to Kilmartin churchyard now.”
“Have you passed Tom Grogan’s public-house?” axed the King, starting up, anxious.
“I have, but I can turn back agin,” says the face, lighting up, intherested.
“They keep the best whusky there in this part of Ireland,” says the King. “Would ye mind steppin’ in an’ bringing us out a sup, Darby agra?”
Misthress Tom Grogan was a tall, irritated woman, with sharp corners all over her, an’ a timper that was like an east wind. She was standing at her own door, argyin’ with Garge McGibney an’ Wullum Broderick, an’ daling them out harrud names, whilst her husband, Tom, a mild little man, stood within laning on the bar, smoking saydately. Garge an’ Wullum were argying back at Misthress Grogan, tellin’ her what a foine-looking, rayspectable woman she was, an’ couldn’t they have one dhrop more before going home, whin they saw coming sliding along through the air toward them, about four feet above the ground, a daycint-dhressed man, sitting comfortable, his poipe in his mouth an’ one leg crossed over the other. The sthranger stopped in the air not foive feet away, and in the moonlight they saw him plain knock the ashes from his poipe an’ stick it in the rim of his caubeen.
They ketched hould of aich other, gasping as he stepped down out of the air to the ground, an’ wishin’ them the top of the avening, he brushed past, walked bould to the bar an’ briskly called for three jorums of whusky. Tom, obliverous—for he hadn’t seen—handed out the dhrinks, an’ the sthranger, natural as you plaze, imptied one, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand an’ started for the door, carrying the two other jorums.
Tom, of course, follyed out to see who was in the road, and then he clutched hould of the three others, an’ the four, grippin’ aich other like lobsters bilin’ in the pot, clung, spacheless, swaging back an’ forth.
An’ sure ’twas no wonder, for they saw the sthrange man lift the two cups into the naked air, an’ they saw plain the two jorums lave his hands, tip themselves slowly over until the bottoms were uppermost—not one dhrop of the liquor spillin’ to the ground. They saw no more, for they aich gave a different kind of roar whin Darby turned to bring back the empty vesels. The next second Tom Grogan was flying like a hunted rabbit over the muddy petatie-field behind his own stable, whilst Wullum Broderick an’ Garge McGibney were dashin’ furious afther him like Skibberberg hounds. But Mrs. Grogan didn’t run away, bekase she was on her own thrashol’, lying on the flat of her back, and for the first time in her life spacheless.
Howandever, with a rumble an’ a roar, the coach with its thravellers wint on its way.
The good liquor supplied all which that last sight lacked that was needful to put our three hayroes in good humour with thimselves an’ with aich other, so that it wasn’t long before their throubles, bein’ forgot, they were convarsing sociable an’ fumiliar, one with the other.
Darby, to improve his informaytion, was sthriving to make the best of the sitiwation be axin’ knowledgeable questions. “What kind of disposition has the banshee, I dunno?” he says, afther a time.
“A foine creachure, an’ very rayfined, only a bit too fond of crying an’ wailing,” says Shaun.
“Musha, I know several livin’ women that cap fits,” says the knowledgeable man. “Sure, does she do nothin’ but wail death keens? Has she no good love-ballads or songs like that? I’d think she’d grow tired,” he says.
“Arrah, don’t be talkin’!” says Shaun. “ ’Tis she who can sing them. She has one in purticular—the ballad of ‘Mary McGinnis’—that I wisht ye could hear her at,” he says.
“The song has three splendid chunes to it, an’ the chune changes at aich varse. I wisht I had it all, but I’ll sing yez what I have,” he says. With that the head began to sing, an’ a foine, deep singin’ woice it had, too, only maybe a little too roarin’ for love-ballads:
“Come all ye thrue lovers, where’er yez may be,
Likewise ye decayvers be land or be sea;
I hope that ye’ll listen with pity to me
Since the jew’l of me life is a thraitor.”
“Here’s where the chune changes,” says the head, lickin’ his lips.
“On goin’ to church last Sunday me thrue love passed me by,
I knew her mind was changed be the twinklin’ of her eye;
I knew her mind was changed, which caused me for to moan,
’Tis a terrible black misfortin to think she cowld has grown.”
“That’s what I call rale poethry,” says Darby.
“There’s no foiner,” says the King, standing up on the sate, his face beaming.
“The next varse’ll make yez cry salt tears,” says Shaun. An’ he sang very affectin’:
“Oh, dig me a grave both large, wide, an’ deep,
Art lay me down gently, to take me long sleep;
Put a stone at me head an’ a stone at me feet,
Since I cannot get Mary McGinnis.”
“Faith, ’tis a foine, pittiful song,” says Darby, “an’ I’d give a great dale if I only had it,” says he.
“Musha, who knows; maybe ye can get it,” says the ould King, with a wink. “Ye may daymand the favours of the three wishes for bringing her what yer bringin’,” he whuspered. “Shaun!” he says, out loud, “do ye think the banshee’ll give that song for the bringing back of the lost comb, I dunno?”
“I dunno meself,” says the head, jubious.
“Bekase if she would, here’s the man who has the comb, an’ he’s bringin’ it back to her.”
The head gave a start and its eyes bulged with gladness.
“Then it’s the lucky man I am entirely,” he says. “For she promised to stick me head on and to let me wear it purmanent, if I’d only bring tidings of the comb,” says Shaun. “She’s been in a bad way since she lost it. You know the crachure can sing only whin she’s combing her hair. Since the comb’s broke her woice is cracked scand’lous, an’ she’s bitther ashamed, so she is. But here’s Croaghmah right before us. Will yez go in an’ take a dhrop of something?” says he.
Sticking out his head, Darby saw towering up in the night’s gloom bleak Croaghmah, the mountain of the ghosts; and, as he thought of the thousands of shivering things inside, an’ of the onpleasant feelings they’d given him at Chartres’ mill a few hours before, a doubt came into his mind as to whether it were best to trust himself inside. He might never come out.
Howandever, the King spoke up sayin’, “Thank ye kindly, Shaun, but ye know well that yerself an’ one or two others are the only ghosts I ’ssociate with, so we’ll just step out, an’ do you go in yerself an’ tell the banshee we’re waitin’. Rayturn with her, Shaun, for ye must take Darby back.”
With that the two hayroes dayscinded from the coach, an’ glad enough was Darby to put his brogues safe an’ sound on the road agin.
All at once the side of the mountain ferninst them opened with a great crash, an’ Shaun, with the coach an’ horses, disaypeared in a rush, an’ were swolleyd up be the mountain, which closed afther thim. Darby was blinkin’ an’ shiverin’ beside the King, when sudden, an’ without a sound, the banshee stood before them.
She was all in white, an’ her yallow hair sthrealed to the ground. The weight an’ sorrow of ages were on her pale face.
“Is that you, Brian Connors?” she says. “An’ is that one with you the man who grabbled me?”
“Your most obadient,” says the King, bowin’ low; “it was a accident,” says he.
“Well, accident or no accident,” she says, savare, “ ’tis the foine lot of throuble he’s caused me, an’ ’tis the illigant lot of throuble he’d a had this night if you hadn’t saved him,” she says. The banshee spoke in a hollow woice, which once in a while’d break into a squeak.
“Let bygones be bygones, ma’am, if you plaze,” says Darby, “an’ I’ve brought back yer comb, an’ by your lave I ax the favour of three wishes,” says he.
Some way or other he wasn’t so afeared now that the King was near, an’ besides one square, cool look at any kind of throuble—even if ’tis a ghost—takes half the dhread from it.
“I have only two favours to grant any mortial man,” says she, “an’ here they are.” With that she handed Darby two small black stones with things carved on thim.
“The first stone’ll make you onwisible if you rub the front of it, an’ ’twill make you wisible again if you rub the back of it. Put the other stone in yer mouth an’ ye can mount an’ ride the wind. So Shaun needn’t dhrive yez back,” she says.
The King’s face beamed with joy.
“Oh, be the hokey, Darby me lad,” says he, “think of the larks we’ll have thravellin’ nights together over Ireland ground, an’ maybe we’ll go across the say,” he says.
“But fairies can’t cross runnin’ water,” says Darby, wondherin’.
“That’s all shuperstition,” says the King. “Didn’t I cross the river Ryan? But, ma’am,” says he, “you have a third favour, an’ one I’m wishin’ for mightilly meself, an’ that is, that ye’ll taiche us the ballad of ‘Mary McGinnis.’ ”
The banshee blushed. “I have a cowld,” says she. “ ’Tis the way with singers,” says the King, winkin’ at Darby, “but we’ll thank ye to do yer best, ma’am,” says he.
Well, the banshee took out her comb, an’ fastening to it the broken ind, she passed it through her hair a few times an’ began the song.
At first her woice was purty wake an’ thrimblin’, but the more she combed the sthronger it grew, till at last it rose high and clear, and sweet and wild as Darby’d heerd it that Halloween night up at McCarthy’s.
The two hayroes stood in the shadow of a three, Darby listening and the King busy writing down the song. At the last worrud the place where she had been standing flashed empty an’ Darby never saw her again.
I wisht I had all the song to let your honour hear it, an’ maybe I’ll learn it from Darby be the next time ye come this way, an’ I wisht I had time to tell your honour how Darby, one day havin’ made himself onwisible, lost the stone, and how Bothered Bill Donahue found it, and how Bill, rubbin’ it be accident, made himself onwisible, an’ of the turrible time Darby had a-finding him.
But here’s Kilcuny, an’ there’s the inn, an’—thank ye! God bless yer honour!