The dhriver lifted the tail of his coat an’ wiped the head’s two weepin’ eyes. “ ’Twas in Ballinthubber I was born an’ in Ballinthubber I was rared; an’ it’s there I came to me misfortune through love of a purty, fair maid named Margit Ellen O’Gill. There was a song about it,” he says.
“I’ve heerd it many an’ many the time,” says the King, noddin’, sympathisin’, “though not for the last hundhred years or so.” Darby glared, scornful, at the King.
“Vo! Vo! Vo!” wailed the head, “but you’re like her. If it wasn’t for yer bunchy red hair, an’ for the big brown wen that was on her forehead, ye’d be as like as two pase.”
“Arrah,” says Darby, brustlin’, “I’m ashamed to see a man of yer sinse an’ station,” he says, “an’ high dictation—”
“Lave off!” broke in the King, pulling Darby be the sleeve. “Come inside! Whatever else you do, rayspect the sintimintalities—there all we have to live for, ghost or mortial,” says he.
So, grumbling, Darby took a place within the coach beside his friend. He filled his poipe, an’ was borrying a bit of fire from that of the King, whin looking up he saw just back of the dhriver’s seat, and opening into the carriage, a square hole of about the height an’ the width of yer two hands. An’ set agin the hole, starin’ affectionate down at him, was the head, an’ it smiling langwidging.
“Be this an’ be that,” Darby growled low to the King, “if he don’t take his face out of that windy, ghost or no ghost, I’ll take a poke at him!”
“Be no manner of manes,” says the King, anxious. “What’d we do without him? We’ll be at Croaghmah in a few minutes, then he needn’t bother ye.”
“Why don’t ye dhrive on?” says Darby, lookin’ up surly at the head. “Why don’t ye start?”
“We’re goin’ these last three minutes,” smiled Shaun; “we’re comin’ up to Kilmartin churchyard now.”
“Have you passed Tom Grogan’s public-house?” axed the King, starting up, anxious.
“I have, but I can turn back agin,” says the face, lighting up, intherested.
“They keep the best whusky there in this part of Ireland,” says the King. “Would ye mind steppin’ in an’ bringing us out a sup, Darby agra?”
Misthress Tom Grogan was a tall, irritated woman, with sharp corners all over her, an’ a timper that was like an east wind. She was standing at her own door, argyin’ with Garge McGibney an’ Wullum Broderick, an’ daling them out harrud names, whilst her husband, Tom, a mild little man, stood within laning on the bar, smoking saydately. Garge an’ Wullum were argying back at Misthress Grogan, tellin’ her what a foine-looking, rayspectable woman she was, an’ couldn’t they have one dhrop more before going home, whin they saw coming sliding along through the air toward them, about four feet above the ground, a daycint-dhressed man, sitting comfortable, his poipe in his mouth an’ one leg crossed over the other. The sthranger stopped in the air not foive feet away, and in the moonlight they saw him plain knock the ashes from his poipe an’ stick it in the rim of his caubeen.
They ketched hould of aich other, gasping as he stepped down out of the air to the ground, an’ wishin’ them the top of the avening, he brushed past, walked bould to the bar an’ briskly called for three jorums of whusky. Tom, obliverous—for he hadn’t seen—handed out the dhrinks, an’ the sthranger, natural as you plaze, imptied one, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand an’ started for the door, carrying the two other jorums.
Tom, of course, follyed out to see who was in the road, and then he clutched hould of the three others, an’ the four, grippin’ aich other like lobsters bilin’ in the pot, clung, spacheless, swaging back an’ forth.
An’ sure ’twas no wonder, for they saw the sthrange man lift the two cups into the naked air, an’ they saw plain the two jorums lave his hands, tip themselves slowly over until the bottoms were uppermost—not one dhrop of the liquor spillin’ to the ground. They saw no more, for they aich gave a different kind of roar whin Darby turned to bring back the empty vesels. The next second Tom Grogan was flying like a hunted rabbit over the muddy petatie-field behind his own stable, whilst Wullum Broderick an’ Garge McGibney were dashin’ furious afther him like Skibberberg hounds. But Mrs. Grogan didn’t run away, bekase she was on her own thrashol’, lying on the flat of her back, and for the first time in her life spacheless.
Howandever, with a rumble an’ a roar, the coach with its thravellers wint on its way.
The good liquor supplied all which that last sight lacked that was needful to put our three hayroes in good humour with thimselves an’ with aich other, so that it wasn’t long before their throubles, bein’ forgot, they were convarsing sociable an’ fumiliar, one with the other.
Darby, to improve his informaytion, was sthriving to make the best of the sitiwation be axin’ knowledgeable questions. “What kind of disposition has the banshee, I dunno?” he says, afther a time.
“A foine creachure, an’ very rayfined, only a bit too fond of crying an’ wailing,” says Shaun.
“Musha, I know several livin’ women that cap fits,” says the knowledgeable man. “Sure, does she do nothin’ but wail death keens? Has she no good love-ballads or songs like that? I’d think she’d grow tired,” he says.
“Arrah, don’t be talkin’!” says Shaun. “ ’Tis she who can sing them. She has one in purticular—the ballad of ‘Mary McGinnis’—that I wisht ye could hear her at,” he says.
“The song has three splendid chunes to it, an’ the chune changes at aich varse. I wisht I had it all, but I’ll sing yez what I have,” he says. With that the head began
