Darby O’Gill and the Good People

in goold.”

Well, the King gave a roar of anger that was heard in the next barony.

“Ye high-handed, hard-hearted robber,” he says, “I’ll never consent!” he says.

“Plase yerself,” says Darby. “I see Father Cassidy comin’ down the hedge,” he says, “an’ he has a prayer for ye all in his book that’ll burn ye up like wisps of sthraw ef he ever catches ye here,” says Darby.

With that the roaring and bawling was pitiful to hear, and in a few minutes a bag with ten thousand goold sovereigns in it was trun at Darby’s threshold; and fifty people, young an’ some of them ould, flew over an’ stood beside the king. Some of them had spent years with the fairies. Their relatives thought them dead an’ buried. They were the lost ones from that parish.

With that Darby pulled the bit of twine again, opening the trap, and it wasn’t long until every fairy was gone.

The green coat of the last one was hardly out of sight when, sure enough, who should come up but Father Cassidy, his book in his hand. He looked at the fifty people who had been with the fairies standin’ there⁠—the poor crathures⁠—thremblin’ an’ wondherin’, an’ afeard to go to their homes.

Darby tould him what had happened.

“Ye foolish man,” says the priest, “you could have got out every poor prisoner that’s locked in Sleive-na-mon, let alone those from this parish.”

One could have scraped with a knife the surprise off Darby’s face.

“Would yer Reverence have me let out the Corkonians, the Connaught men, and the Fardowns, I ask ye?” he says hotly. “When Mrs. Malowney there goes home and finds that Tim has married the Widow Hogan, ye’ll say I let out too many, even of this parish, I’m thinkin’.”

“But,” says the priest, “ye might have got ten thousand pounds for aich of us.”

“If aich had ten thousand pounds, what comfort would I have in being rich?” asked Darby again. “To enjoy well being rich, there should be plenty of poor,” says Darby.

“God forgive ye, ye selfish man!” says Father Cassidy.

“There’s another rayson besides,” says Darby. “I never got betther nor friendlier thratement than I had from the Good People. An’ the divil a hair of their heads I’d hurt more than need be,” he says.

Some way or other the King heard of this saying, an’ was so mightily pleased that next night a jug of the finest poteen was left at Darby’s door.

After that, indade, many’s the winter night, when the snow lay so heavy that no neighbor was stirrin’, and when Bridget and the childher were in bed, Darby sat by the fire, a noggin of hot punch in his hand, argying an’ getting news of the whole world. A little man, with a goold crown on his head, a green cloak on his back, and one foot thrown over the other, sat ferninst him by the hearth.

Darby O’Gill and the Leprechaun

The news that Darby O’Gill had spint six months with the Good People spread fast and far and wide.

At fair or hurlin’ or market he would be backed be a crowd agin some convaynient wall, and there for hours men, women, and childher, with jaws dhroppin’, and eyes bulgin’d stand ferninst him listening to half-frightened questions or to bould mystarious answers.

Alway, though, one bit of wise adwise inded his discoorge: “Nayther make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies,” Darby’d say. “If you’re going along the lonely boreen at night, and you hear, from some fairy fort, a sound of fiddles, or of piping, or of sweet woices singing, or of little feet pattering in the dance, don’t turn your head, but say your prayers an’ hould on your way. The pleasures the Good People’ll share with you have a sore sorrow hid in them, an’ the gifts they’ll offer are only made to break hearts with.”

Things went this a-way till one day in the market, over among the cows, Maurteen Cavanaugh, the schoolmasther⁠—a cross-faced, argifying ould man he was⁠—contradicted Darby pint blank. “Stay a bit,” says Maurteen, catching Darby by the coat collar. “You forget about the little fairy cobbler, the Leprechaun,” he says. “You can’t deny that to catch the Leprechaun is great luck entirely. If one only fix the glance of his eye on the cobbler, that look makes the fairy a presner⁠—one can do anything with him as long as a human look covers the little lad⁠—and he’ll give the favours of three wishes to buy his freedom,” says Maurteen.

At that Darby, smiling high and knowledgeable, made answer over the heads of the crowd.

“God help your sinse, honest man!” he says. “Around the favors of thim same three wishes is a bog of thricks an’ cajoleries and con‑ditions that’ll defayt the wisest.

“First of all, if the look be taken from the little cobbler for as much as the wink of an eye, he’s gone forever,” he says. “Man alive, even when he does grant the favours of the three wishes, you’re not safe, for, if you tell anyone you’ve seen the Leprechaun, the favours melt like snow, or if you make a fourth wish that day⁠—whiff! they turn to smoke. Take my adwice⁠—nayther make nor moil nor meddle with the fairies.”

“Thrue for ye,” spoke up long Pether McCarthy, siding in with Darby. “Didn’t Barney McBride, on his way to early mass one May morning, catch the fairy cobbler sewing an’ workin’ away under a hedge. ’Have a pinch of snuff, Barney agra,’ says the Leprechaun, handing up the little snuffbox. But, mind ye, when my poor Barney bint to take a thumb an’ finger full what did the little villain do but fling the box, snuff and all, into Barney’s face. An’ thin, whilst the poor lad was winkin’ and blinkin’, the Leprechaun gave one leap and was lost in the reeds.

“Thin again, there was Peggy O’Rourke, who captured him fair an’ square in a hawthorn-bush. In spite of his wiles she wrung from him the