stop here,’ I says; ‘we needn’t sarch farther, and we needn’t go back to Italy or Swizzerland, for of all places on the earth, this island is the nearest like heaven; and in it the County Clare and the County Tipperary are the purtiest spots of all.’ So we hollowed out the great mountain Sleive-na-mon for our home, and there we are till this day.”
The king stopped a while, and sat houldin’ his chin in his hands. “That’s the thrue story,” he says, sighing pitiful. “We took sides with nobody, we minded our own business, and we got trun out for it,” says he.
So intherested was Father Cassidy in the talk of the king that the singing and hammering had died out without his knowing, and he hadn’t noticed at all how the darkness had thickened in the valley and how the stillness had spread over the hillside. But now, whin the chief of the fairies stopped, the good man, half frightened at the silence, jumped to his feet and turned to look for his horse.
Beyond the dull glow of the dying fire a crowd of Little People stood waiting, patient and quiet, houlding Terror, who champed restless at his bit, and bate impatient with his hoof on the hard ground.
As the priest looked toward them, two of the little men wearing leather aprons moved out from the others, leading the baste slow and careful over to where the good man stood beside the rock.
“You’ve done me a faver this night,” says the clargyman, gripping with his bridle hand the horse’s mane, “an’ all I have to pay it back with’d only harry you, an’ make you oncomfortable, so I’ll not say the words,” he says.
“No faver at all,” says the king, “but before an hour there’ll be lyin’ on your own threshold a faver in the shape of a bit of as fine bacon as ever laughed happy in the middle of biling turnips. We borryed it last night from a magisthrate named Blake; who lives up in the County Wexford,” he says.
The clargyman had swung himself into the saddle.
“I’d be loath to say anything disrayspectful,” he says quick, “or to hurt sensitive feelings, but on account of my soul’s sake I couldn’t ate anything that was come by dishonest,” he says.
“Bother and botheration, look at that now!” says the king. “Every thrade has its drawbacks, but I never rayalized before the hardship of being a parish priest. Can’t we manage it some way? Couldn’t I put it some place where you might find it, or give it to a friend who’d send it to you?”
“Stop a minute,” says Father Cassidy. “Up at Tim Healy’s I think there’s more hunger than sickness, more nade for petaties than for physic. Now, if you sent that same bit of bacon—”
“Oh, ho!” says the king, with a dhry cough, “the Healy’s have no sowls to save, the same as parish priests have.”
“I’m a poor, wake, miserable sinner,” says the priest, hanging his head; “I fall at the first temptation. Don’t send it,” says he.
“Since you forbid me, I’ll send it,” says the king, chucklin’. “I’ll not be ruled by you. Tomorrow the Healy’s’ll have five tinder-hearted heads of cabbage, makin’ love in a pot to the finest bit of bacon in Tipperary—that is, unless you do your juty an’ ride back to warn them. Raymember their poor sowls,” says he, “an’ don’t forget your own,” he says.
The priest sat unaisy in the saddle. “I’ll put all the raysponsibility on Terror,” he says. “The baste has no sowl to lose. I’ll just drop the reins on his neck; if he turns and goes back to Healy’s I’ll warn them; if he goes home let it be on his own conscience.”
He dhropped the reins, and the dishonest baste started for home imagetly.
But afther a few steps Father Cassidy dhrew up an’ turned in the saddle. Not a sowl was in sight; there was only the lonely road and the lonesome hillside; the last glimmer of the fairy fire was gone, and a curtain of soft blackness had fallen betwixt him an’ where the blaze had been.
“I bid you good night, Brian Connors,” the priest cried. From somewhere out of the darkness a woice called back to him, “Good night, your Riverence.”
The Adventures of King Brian Connors
I
The King and the Omadhaun
Did your honour ever hear how Anthony Sullivan’s goat came to join the fairies?
Well, it’s a quare story and a wandhering, quarrelsome story, as a tale about a goat is sure to be. Howsumever, in the home of the Good People—which, as you know, is the hollow heart of the great mountain Sleive-na-mon—Anthony Sullivan’s goat lives and prospers to this day, a pet and a hayro among the fairies.
And this is the way it came about:
All the world knows how for months Darby O’Gill an’ his purty sister-in-law, Maureen McGibney, were kept presners by the Good People; an’ how, afther they were relaysed by the King, that same little fairy, King Brian Connors, used often to visit thim an’ sit with thim colloguin’ and debaytin’ an’ considherin’ in Darby O’Gill’s kitchen.
One lonesome Decimber night, when Bridget and the childher were away visiting Bridget’s father at Ballingher, and the angry blast was screaming and dhrifting the first white flakes of winther around Darby’s house, thin it was that Darby O’Gill, Brian Connors, the King of the Good People, and Maureen McGibney sat with their heads together before the blazing hearth. The King, being not much higher than your two hands, sat on the child’s stool betwixt the other two, his green cloak flung back from his chowlders, and the goold crown on his head glistening in the firelight.
It was a pleasant sight to watch them there in the flickering hearth glow. From time to time, as he talked, the ould King patted Maureen’s hands and looked smiling up into her purty gray eyes. They had been
