“Be the bones of Pether White,” he says, “what me and me subjects’ll do tonight to this parish’ll make the big wind seem like a cock’s breath!”
“But,” he says, again, “how’ll I hide meself till dark? Wirra! Wirra! if it were only sunset—the sun has melted every power and charm and spell out of me—the power has left my four bones. I can be seen and molested by any spalpeen that comes along; what’ll I do at all at all! I think I had best be getting through the fields back to Barney Casey’s. It’s little welcome they have for me there, but they must keep me saycret now for their own sakes.”
With that he got upon his legs, and houldin’ up his white dhress, climbed through the stile into Casey’s field.
The first thing he saw there was a thin but jolly-minded looking pig, pushing up roots with her nose and tossing them into the air through sheer divilment.
Dark-eyed Susan was she called, and she belonged to Tom Mulligan, the one-legged ballad-maker, who had named her after the famous ballad.
Mulligan was too tindher-hearted to sell her to be kilt, and too poor to keep her in victuals, so she roamed the fields, a shameless marauder and a nimble-footed freebooter.
“Be-gorr, here’s luck!” said the little King; “since ’tis in Casey’s field, this must be Casey’s baste. I couldn’t ask betther; whinever a pig is frightened it runs to its own house; so I’ll just get on her back and ride down to Casey’s cabin.”
The King looked inquirin’ at Susan, and Susan looked impident suspicion at the King.
“Oh, ho, ye beauty, you know what’s in me mind!” says he, whistlin’ and coaxin’ and sidlin’ up to her. A pig likes a compliment if it’s well tould, so Susan hung her head, grunted coquettish, and looked away. Taking adwantage of her head being turned, without another word, his Rile Highness ran over, laid hould of her ear, and with one graceful jump took an aisy saddle-sate on her back.
This was the last thing the pig expected, so with one frightened squeal from Susan both of them were off like the wind through the fields toward Mulligan’s house, taking stones, ridges, and ditches like hurdle jumpers till they came in sight of a mud-plasthered cabin which stood on the hillside. A second afther the King’s hair stood straight up and his heart grew cowld, for there, sitting on the thrashold, with her family in a little crowd about her, was the woman who, misconsthruing him for her own child, had fled with him from Barney Casey’s, and, finding her mistake, had trun him into the high road.
About the ballad-maker’s door was gathered his whole family, listening to the wondherful tale being tould by Ann Mulligan. A frightened woman she was.
Indade, whin Ann Mulligan, afther dhropping the King in the road, raiched home she fell unconscionable in the door before her husband and her frightened childher, an’ she never come to till little Pether sprinkled a noggin of wather on her; thin she opened her eyes and began telling how Ould Nick had stole the baby and had taken little Patsy’s place in her own two arms.
There she sat wringing her hands and waving back and forth. The fairy-man could aisily guess the story she was telling, and his flying steed was hurrying straight toward the house and nothing could stop it. They’d both be there in tin seconds.
“Well, this time, anyhow, I’ll be kilt intirely,” says the King.
Mrs. Mulligan turned to pint down the road to the place where she had dhropped the King, when, lo and behold, up the boreen and through the field they saw, coming at a thraymendous pace, Dark-eyed Susan and the King, riding her like a dhragoon.
Mrs. Mulligan gave one screech and, lifting her petticoats, flew; the childher scurried off afther her like young rabbits.
Tom, not being able to run bekase of his wooden leg, stood his ground, but at the same time raymembering more prayers an’ raypentin’ of more mane things he’d done than ever before since he was born.
He was sure it was Ould Nick himself that was in it.
And now a new danger jumped suddenly before the King. The pig headed for her favourite hole through the hedge, and whin the King saw the size of the hole he let a howl out of him, for he knew he’d be trun. He scrooched close to the baste’s back and dhrew up his legs. Sure enough he was slithered off her back and left sitting on the hard ground, half the clothes torn from his rile back.
That howl finished Tom entirely, so that whin his Majesty crawled through the hole afther the pig and came over to him, the ballad-maker wouldn’t have given tuppence for his sowl’s salvation. Howsumever, he put on the best and friendliest face he could undher the sarcumstances. Scraping with his wooden leg and pulling at a tuft of carroty hair on his forehead, Tom said, mighty wheedling:
“The top o’ the day to your Honour. Sure, how’s Mrs. Balzebub and the childher. I hear it’s a fine, bright family your Lordship has. Arrah, it isn’t the likes of me, poor Tom Mulligan, the ballad-maker, that your riverence’d be wanting.”
Hearing them words, the King looked mighty plazed. “If you’re Tom Mulligan, the ballad-maker,” he says, coming over smiling, “it’s proud and happy I am to meet you! I’m no less than Brian Connors, the King of the Good People,” he says, dhrawing himself up and trying to look grand. “It’s many’s the fine ballad of yours we sing in Sleive-na-mon.”
“But little Patsy,” stammered Tom; “sure your Majesty wouldn’t take him from us; he’s our twelfth and rounds out the dozen, you know.”
“Have no fear,” says the fairy; “Patsy’ll be here
