Maureen and Darby slipped into Grogan’s for a bit of warmth and a mouthful to ate, laving the Master of Sleive-na-mon well wrapped up at the bottom of the cart—his head on a sack of oats and his feet against the cart-side—and as I said, him singing.
He had the finest, liftenest way for a ballad you ever heard! At the end of every verse he eleywated the last word and hildt it high, and put a lonesome wobble into his woice that would make you cry.
Peggy Collins, the tall, thieving ould beggar-woman who used to wear the dirty red cloak, an’ looked like a sojer in it, was sleeping inside the hedge as the cart came along; but when it stopped she peeped out to see who had the good song with him.
When she saw it was an infant not much longer than your two hands, “God presarve us and save us!” she gasped, and began to say her prayers. The King went on singing, clear and doleful and beautiful, the ballad of Donnelly and Cooper.
“Come all ye thrue-born Irishmen wherever you may be,
I hope you’ll pay attintion and listen unto me‑e‑e,
And if you’ll pay attintion the truth I will declare
How Donnelly fought Cooper on the Curraah of Kildare”
Prayers were never from Peggy’s heart, so as she listened to the enthrancing song she turned from praying to plotting.
“If I had that child,” she says, “I could go from fair to fair and from pathron to pathron, and his singing’d fill my apron with silver.”
The King turned to another ditty, and you’d think he was a thrush.
“They’ll kiss you, they’ll car‑r‑ress you,” he sang.
“They’ll spind your money free,
But of all the towns in Ire-eland Kilkenny for me‑e‑e‑e.”
The gray-haired ould rascal, Peggy, by this was creeping ever and ever till she raiched the cart. Up then she popped, and the first thing me poor Captain knew the shawl was slapped fast on his face, and two long, thin arms were dragging him out over the wheel. He thried to cry out, but the shawl choked him, and scrambling and kicking did him no good.
Over the nearest stile bounced Peggy, and into the nearest field she flew, her petticoat lifted, her white hair streaming, and her red cloak fluttering behind. She crunched the chief man of the fairies undher her left elbow, his head hanging behind, with as little riverence as if, saving your presence, he were a sthray gander.
Well, your honour, Peggy ran till there wasn’t a breath in her before she slowed down to a walk, and then she flung the King over her right chowldher, his face on her back in that way some careless women carry childher. This set his head free.
When he saw who it was had stolen him, oh, but he was vexed; for all that he didn’t say a word as they went, but lay there on her collarbone, bobbing up and down, blinking his eyes, and thinking what he should do to her. At last he quietly raiched over with his teeth and took a bite at the back of her neck that she felt to her toes. Wow! Your honour should have heard the screech Peggy let out of her!
Well, as she gave that screech she gave a jerk at the King’s legs, pulling him down. As he flopped intil her arms he took a wisp of her hair with him. For a second’s time the spiteful little eyes in the ould weazened face, looking up at her own from undher the goold crown, froze her stiff with terror, and then, giving a yell that was ten times louder than the first screech, she flung his Majesty from her down upon the hard ground. Leaping a ditch, she went galloping wildly across the meadow. The King fell flat on his back with an unraysonable joult.
That wasn’t the worst of his bad luck. If Peggy had dhropped him at any other place in the field he might have crawled off into the ditch and hid till sunset, but oh, asthore, there not ten rods away, with eyes bulging and mouth gaping, stood Barney Casey, the Man without Childher!
Barney looked from the little bundle on the ground to Peggy as she went skimming, like a big red bird, over the low-lying morning fog. Through his surprise a foine hope slowly dawned for him.
He said: “Good fortune folly you, and my blessing rest on you wherever you go, Peggy Bawn, for the throuble you’ve lifted this day; you’ve given me a Moses in the bull rushers or a Pharyoah’s daughter, but I disremember which, God forgive me for forgetting my rayligion!”
He stood for a minute slyly looking to the north, and the south and the ayst and the west. But what he saw, when he turned to look again for the baby, would have made any other man than one in Barney Casey’s mind say his prayers and go on his way.
The baby was gone, but in its place was a little ould man with a goold crown on his head, a silver-covered noggin in his hand, and the most vexed expression in the world on his face, and he thrailing a shawl and throtting toward the ditch.
’Twas a hard fall for the Man without Childher, and hard he took it.
When Barney was done with bad langwidge, he says: “A second ago, me ould lad, you were, or you purtended to be, an innocent child. Well, then, you’ll turn back again every hair and every look of you; you’ll be a smiling, harmless, purty baby agin, or I’ll know the rayson why,” he says, gritting his teeth.
With that he crept over and scooped up the King. There was the struggling and wiggling!
“Lave me down! Lave me down! You murthering spalpeen!” shouted the King, kicking vicious at Barney’s chist. “I’m Brian Connors, the King of the Good People, and I’ll make you sup sorrow in tay-cups for this!” cries he.
Well, Casey, his lips shut tight and
