The dismal ould mountain glowered toward his Riverence, its dark look saying, plain as spoken words:
“How dare ye come here; how dare ye?”
“I wondher,” says Father Cassidy to himself, looking up at the black hill, “if the Good People are fallen angels, as some do be saying.
“Why were they banished from heaven? It must have been a great sin entirely they committed, at any rate, for at the same time they were banished the power to make a prayer was taken from them. That’s why to say a pious word to a fairy is like trowing scalding wather on him. ’Tis a hard pinnance that’s put on the poor crachures. I wisht I knew what ’twas for,” he says.
He was goin’ on pondherin’ in that way, while Terror was picking his steps, narvous, among the stones of the road, whin suddenly a frowning, ugly rock seemed to jump up and stand ferninst them at a turn of the path.
Terror shied at it, stumbled wild, and thin the most aggrewating of all bothersome things happened—the horse cast a shoe and wint stone lame.
In a second the priest had leaped to the ground and picked up the horseshoe.
“Wirra! Wirra!” says he, lifting the lame foot, “why did you do it, allannah? ’Tis five miles to a smith an’ seven miles to your own warm stable.”
The horse, for answer, raiched down an’ touched with his soft nose the priest’s cheek; but the good man looked rayproachful into the big brown eyes that turned sorrowful to his own.
With the shoe in his hand the priest was standin’ fretting and helpless on the lonesome hillside, wondhering what he’d do at all at all, whin a sudden voice spoke up from somewhere near Terror’s knees.
“The top of the avinin’ to your Riverence,” it said, “I’m sorry for your bad luck,” says the voice.
Looking down, Father Cassidy saw a little cloaked figure, and caught the glint of a goold crown. ’Twas Brian Connors, the King of the Fairies, himself, that was in it.
His words had so friendly a ring in them that the clargyman smiled in answering, “Why, thin, good fortune to you, King Brian Connors,” says the good man, “an’ save you kindly. What wind brought you here?” he says.
The king spoke back free an’ pleasant. “The boys told me you were comin’ down the mountainy way, and I came up just in time to see your misfortune. I’ve sent for Shaun Rhue, our own farrier—there’s no betther in Ireland; he’ll be here in a minute, so don’t worry,” says the King.
The priest came so near saying “God bless ye,” that the king’s hair riz on his head. But Father Cassidy stopped in the nick of time, changed his coorse, an’ steered as near a blessing as he could without hurting the Master of the Good People.
“Well, may you never hear of throuble,” he says, “till you’re wanted to its wake,” says he.
“There’s no throuble tonight at any rate,” says the king, “for while Shaun is fixing the baste we’ll sit in the shelter of that rock yonder; there we’ll light our pipes and divart our minds with pleasant discoorsin’ and wise convarsaytion.”
While the king spoke, two green-cloaked little men were making a fire for the smith out of twigs. So quick did they work, that by the time the priest and the fairy man could walk over to the stone and sit themselves in the shelther, a thousand goold sparks were dancin’ in the wind, and the glimmer of a foine blaze fought with the darkness.
Almost as soon, clear and purty, rang the cheerful sound of an anvil, and through the swaying shadows a dozen busy little figures were working about the horse. Some wore leather aprons and hilt up the horse’s hoof whilst Shaun fitted the red-hot shoe; others blew the bellows or piled fresh sticks on the fire; all joking, laughing, singing, or thrickin’; one couldn’t tell whether ’twas playing or workin’ they were.
Afther lighting their pipes and paying aich other an armful of complayments, the Master of Sleive-na-mon and the clargyman began a sayrious discoorse about the deloights of fox hunting, which led to the considheration of the wondherful wisdom of racing horses and the disgraceful day-ter-ray-roar-ation of the Skibberbeg hounds.
Father Cassidy related how whin Ned Blaze’s steeplechasin’ horse had been entered for the Connemarra Cup, an’ found out at the last minute that Ned feared to lay a bet on him, the horse felt himself so stabbed to the heart with shame by his master’s disthrust, that he trew his jockey, jumped the wall, an’, head in the air, galloped home.
The king then tould how at a great hunting meet, whin three magisthrates an’ two head excises officers were in the chase, that thief of the worruld, Let-Erin-Raymimber, the chief hound of the Skibberbeg pack, instead of follying the fox, led the whole hunt up over the mountain to Patrick McCaffrey’s private still. The entire counthry-side were dhry for a fortnit afther.
Their talk in that way dhrifted from one pleasant subject to another, till Father Cassidy, the sly man, says aisy ’an’ careless “I’ve been tould,” says he, “that before the Good People were banished from heaven yez were all angels,” he says.
The king blew a long thin cloud from betwixt his lips, felt his whuskers thoughtful for a minute, and said:
“No,” he says, “we were not exactly what you might call angels. A rale angel is taller nor your chapel.”
“Will you tell me what they’re like?” axed Father Cassidy, very curious.
“I’ll give you an idee be comparison what they’re like,” the king says. “They’re not like a chapel, and they’re not like a three, an’ they’re not like the ocean,” says he. “They’re different from a goint—a great dale different—and they’re dissembler to an aygle; in fact you’d not mistake one of them for anything you’d ever seen before in your whole life. Now
