Darby, scowling mighty important, raised his hand. “Whist a bit,” he says; “you raymind me of the ballad about Lord Skipperbeg’s lovely daughter and the farmer’s only son.” Stretching his legs an’ wagging his head, he sang:
“Her cheeks were like the lily white,
Her neck was like the rose.”
“Oh, my! oh, my!” said the King, surprised, “was her neck as red as that?”
“By no manes,” said Darby. “I med a mistake; ’twas this away:
“Her neck was like the lily white,
Her cheeks were like the rose,
She quickly doffed her silk attire
And donned a yeoman’s clothes.“ ‘Rise up, rise up, my farmer’s son,
Rise up thrue love,’ says she,
‘We’ll fly acrost the ragin’ main
Unto Amer-i—’ ”
“Have done you’re fooling, Darby,” says Maureen; “you have the King bothered.”
“I wisht you hadn’t shtopped him, agra,” says the King. “I niver heard that song before, an’ it promised well. I’m fond of love songs,” he says.
“But the omadhaun,” coaxed the colleen.
“I forgot where I was,” the King says, scratching his head. “But, spaking of ould Bob,” he wint on, “no one ever thought how evil and bitther he could be, until his son, the foolish lad, a few days before the ind of his schooling, wrote to the father that he wanted to marry Norah whin he came home, and that he would be home in a few days, he thought. He was breaking the news aisy to the family, d’ye see!
“ ‘Whew! Hullabaloo! Out of the house with her—the sly, conniving hussy!’ shouted ould Bob, whin he read the letter. ‘Into the road with all we’ve given her! Pull the roof off Costello’s house and dhrive off the place his whole brood of outraygeous villians!’
“So they packed Norah’s boxes—faix, an’ many a fine dhress was in them, too—and bade her begone. The Misthress slipped a bag of goold sovereigns with a letther into one of the chests. Norah took the letther, but she forbade them sending so much as a handkerchief afther her.
“She wouldn’t even ride in the coach that the Misthress had waiting for her outside the grand gate; and all alone, in her brown poplin dhress, she marched down the gravel path, proud, like a queen going to be crowned. Nor did she turn her head when the servants called blessings afther her; but oh, asthore, her face was marble white; and whin she was on her way down the lonely high road how she cried!
“ ’Twas a bitther time entirely, the night young Roger came home, and, hearing of all this, rushed up the stairs to face his father. What happened betwixt them there no one knows, only they never passed aich other a friendly look nor gave one to the other a pleasant word from that good hour to this.
“To make matthers worse, that same night young Roger wint and axed Norah Costello to marry him. But all the counthry-side knows how the girl rayfused him, saying she wouldn’t beggar and rune the man she loved.
“Well, he took her at her word, but disbelieved and mocked at the raysons she gave—the omadhaun!
“He wasn’t much good afther that, only for galloping his horse over the counthry like a madman, so I said to meself, says I, that we might as well take him with us into the Sleive-na-mon. I gave the ordhers, and there he is.”
“Oh, the poor lad!” says Maureen; “does ould Bob suspect the boy is with the fairies?”
“Not in the laste,” says the King. “You know how it is with us; whinever we take a person we lave one of our own in his place, who looks and acts and talks in a way that the presner’s own mother can’t tell the differ. By-and-by the fairy sickens and purtends to die, and has his wake and his burial. When the funeral’s over he comes back to us hale and spiling for more sport. So the lad the O’Briens put into their tomb was one of our own—Phadrig Oge be name.
“Many a time Phadrig has taken the place of the genthry and quality in every county of Ireland, and has been buried more than a hundhred times, but he swears he never before had a dacinter funeral nor a rattliner wake.”
“And the girl!” cried Maureen—“Norah, where is she?”
“Faith, that’s strange, too,” says the King. “She was the first person ould Bob axed for afther the funeral. He begged her to come back to them and forgive him, and the poor girl went agin to live at the big house.”
“He’ll get her another good husband yet,” said Darby.
“Oh, never!” says Maureen, crying like a child. “She’ll die of a broken heart.”
“I’ve seen in me time,” says the King, “people die from being pushed off houses, from falling in wells, and every manner of death you can mention, and I saw one ould woman die from ating too much treacle,” he says, “but never a person die from a broken heart.”
This he said to make light of what he had been telling, because he saw by Maureen’s face that she was growing sick with pity. For Maureen was thinking of the black days when she herself was a presner in Sleive-na-mon.
For an answer to the jest, the girl, with her clasped hands held up to the King, moaned, “Oh, King, King, lave the poor lad go! lave him go. Take the black spell off him and send him home. I beg you lave him go!”
“Don’t bother him,” says Darby; “what right have we to interfere with the Good People?” Though at the same time he took the pipe from his mouth and looked kind of wistful at the little man.
But Maureen’s tears only fell faster and faster.
“I can’t do what you ask, avick,” says the King, very kindly. “That day I let you and Darby go from us the power to free anyone was taken away from me by my people. Now every fairy
