a bowl of the punch, for daycency’s sake, and stood quiet a minute. At last he says, “Happiness to you and forgiveness to you, and my heart’s pity folly you!” says he, raising the noggin to his lips.
He dhrained the cup thoughtful and solemn, for he didn’t know rightly whether ’twas a vaynial sin or a mortial sin he’d committed by the bad example he was giving Darby.
“I wisht I could do something for yez,” he says, putting on his cloak, “but I have only pity and kind wishes to give you!”
He turned agin when his hand was on the doorknob, and was going to say something else, but changed his mind, and wint out to where Darby was houlding the horse.
Manewhile, the Little People were consultin’ eager in a knot beside the fireplace, until the King broke away an’ follyed Father Cassidy out.
“Wait a minute!” the fairy says. “There’s somethin’ important your Riverence should know about,” he says. “There’s two speckled hins that sthrayed away from your own door over to the black pond, an’ they’ve been there this twelvemonth. I’m loathe to say it, but in yer own mind your honour a‑ccused Bothered Bill Donahue, the tinker, with takin’ thim. Well, they’ve raised two great clutches of chickens an’ they’re all yours. We thought we’d tell ye,” he says.
“An’ last Chewsday night Nancy Burke bate her husband Dicky for being ’toxicated. I think she bate him too scan’lous,” says little Nial, the fiddler, comin’ out. “An’ Dicky is too proud to complain of her to your honour. He says ’twould be makin’ a kind of informer out of himself. But maybe she’ll bate him agin, so I thought to mintion it,” he says. With that Phadrig Oge broke in from where he stood on the thrashol’:
“Tom Healy’s family, up the mountainy way, is all down with the faver; they have no one to send worrud!” cried Phadrig; “your honour ought to know about it,” he says.
Be this time the Good People were all outside, crowded about the horse, an’ aich one excited, shouting up some friendly informaytion.
Father Cassidy, from Terror’s back, sat smilin’ down kind, first on this one, then on that, an’ then on the other.
“Wisha!” says he, “ain’t ye the kindly crachures! I’ve heard more news of me own parish in the last foive minutes than I’d have learned in a twelvemonth. But there’s one thing I’d liked mighty well to know. Maybe yez could tell me,” says he, “who committed the mystarious crime in this parish a year ago last Christmas? Who stole the six shillin’s from ould Mrs. Frawley? She counted them at Mrs. McGee’s, an’ she felt them in her pocket at Mrs. Donovan’s; the crowd jostled her at the chapel door, an’ afther that they were gone,” he says.
Well, the fairies were splittin’ with laughter as he spoke.
“No one stole thim at all,” says Shaun Rhue, the tears of merriment rollin’ down his face. “The disraymemberin’ woman only aymagins she counted thim at Mrs. McGee’s an’ felt thim at Mrs. Donovan’s. She was only thinkin’ about the money at thim places, an’ that’s how she got the ideeh. She hid the shillin’s in the blue taypot with the broken spout, that stands in the left-han’ corner of the mayhogany dhresser, an’ thin forgot it entirely,” he says.
“Well, look at that, now,” says the priest, “an’ all the turmile there’s been about that same six shillin’s, an’ she afther hidin’ them in the taypot herself. Now isn’t there something I can do in rayturn for all your kindness?” he says.
“There’s one thing,” says King Brian Connors, lookin’ a good dale confuged. “If your Riverence could just as well—if it’d be no positive inconvaynience—we’d like mightilly for ye not to be singin’ pious hymns as you go riding along the highway afther dark. If you’d sing ballads, now, or Tom Moore’s melodies. You mane no harrum, of course, as it is, but last week you broke up a dance we were having at Murray’s rath, an’ Saturday night you put a scatther on a crowd of us as we were coming by McGrath’s meadow,” he says, anxious.
’Twas a quare bargain for a clargyman to make, an’ faix it wint agin his conscience, but he hadn’t the heart to rayfuse. So he bint down an’ shook the King’s hand. “I promise,” he says.
A wild, shrill cheer broke from the throng of Little People.
“Now I’ll go home an’ lave yez in peace,” says Father Cassidy, grippin’ his bridle-rein. “I came yer inemy, but I’m convarted. I’ll go back yer friend,” he says.
“Ye won’t go home alone, we’ll escorch ye!” shouted Phadrig Oge.
Wullum Fagin, the poacher, was sneakin’ home that night about one o’clock, with a bag full of rabbits undher his arrum, whin hearing behind him the bate of horse’s hoofs and the sound of maylodious music, he jumped into the ditch and lay close within the shadow.
Who should come canthering up the starlit road but Father Cassidy, on his big black hunter, Terror.
Wullum looked for the musicianers who were singing and playing the enthrancing music, but sorra one could he see, and what was more, the sounds came from the air high above Father Cassidy’s head.
“ ’Tis the angels guarding the good man,” says Wullum.
Sure ’twas only the Good People escorching his Riverence from Darby O’Gill’s house, and to cheer him on his way, singing the while, “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.”
How the Fairies Came to Ireland
The most lonesome bridle-path in all Ireland leads from Tom Healy’s cottage down the sides of the hills, along the edge of the valley, till it raiches the high road that skirts the great mountain, Sleive-na-mon.
One blusthering, unaisy night, Father Cassidy, on his way home from a sick call, rode over that same path. It wasn’t strange that the priest, as his horse ambled along, should be thinking of that other night in Darby O’Gill’s kitchen—the night when he met with the
