Stories
& Legends of Ireland
It wasn't
long till I had the third dhrame, and as the moon was in the last quarter,
and the nights mighty dark, Peggy put down the grisset and made a lock
of candles; and so, throwin' the loy* over my showlder, and giving Michauleen
the shovel, we set out about twelve o'clock, and when we got to the
castle, it was as dark that you wouldn't see your hand before you; and
there wasn't a stir in the ould place, barrin' the owls that wor snorin'
in the chimley. To work we went just in the middle of the flure, and
cleared away the stones and the rubbish, for nearly the course of an
hour, with the candles stuck in pataties, resting on some of the big
stones a wan side of us. Of coorse, sorra word we said all the
while, but dug and shovelled away as hard as hatters, and a mighty tough
job it was to lift the flure of the same buildin'. Well, at last the
loy* struck on a big flag, and my heart riz within me, for I often heard
tell that the
crock was always covered with a flag, and so I pulled away for the bare
life, and at last I got it cleared, and was just lifting the edge of
it, when---
"was that a trout I heard lep there abroad?"
"No, Paddy, you know very well it wasn't. Go on with your story.
Didn't you see a big goat with four horns and terrible red eyes, sitting
on the flag, and guarding the gold. Now tell the truth."
" Oh, what's the use in tellin' you anything about it; sure, I
know by your eye you don't believe a word I am sayin'. The dickens a
goat was sitting on the flag; but when both of us were trying to lift
the stone, my foot slipped, and the clay and rubbish began to give way
under us.
"Lord
betune us and harm," says the gossoon; and then, in the clapping
of your hand, there wuz a wonderful wind rushed in through the dureway,
and quinched the lights, and pitched us both down into the hole ; and
of all the noises you ever heard, it was about us in a minute."
M'anum san.Deowl! but I thought it was all over with us, and sorra wan
of me ever thought of as much as crossin' myself; but I made out as
fast as I could, and the gossoon after
me, and we never stopped running 'till we stumbled over the wall of
the big intrance, and it was well we didn't go clane into the moat.
Troth, you wouldn't three haypence for me when I was standin' in the
road - the bouchal
itself was stouter - with the wakeness that came over me. Och, millia
murdher! I wasn't the same man for many a long day; but that was nawthin'
to the turmintin' I got from every body about findin' the goold, for
the shovel that we left after us was dishcovered, and there used to
be daelers and gintlemin from Dublin, - antitrarians, I think they call
them - comin' to the house continually, and axin' Peggy for some of
the coins we found in the ould castle. "There now, you have the
whole of it - wet the landin'-net agra and run after that beautiful
green-drake that's just gone over us, while I see whether there is anything
left in the bottle."
NOTES:
from Wilde
* Parlimint, used to refer to legal whiskey and not poteen
*The big
house, or Teach more, is the term applied by the people to the residences
of the gentry, except when they are of great extent or beauty, and then
"the coort" is the word made use of. Old castles or ancient
enclosures) are styled bawnes.
*Grisset,
a small narrow metal pan on three legs, used for melting grease, and
dipping rushes in. Sometimes a fragment of an old pot is employed for
the same purpose. The tongs are made red hot, and if there is no kitchen
stuff at hand, a bit of fat of any kind is squeezed between the hot
blades of the tongs into the grisset or its substitute, and the rushes,
peeled of their outer green bark, all except one narrow stripe, are
drawn through the melted grease, and laid across the stool to set. In
order to permit the grease to exude with greater freedom, all the old-fashioned
country pairs of tongs were made with holes In the flat of the blades.
The dipt rushes were generally kept in a piece of badger's skin, hung
to the roof. Rushlights are now scarcely known, nor the sconces in which
they were fixed. Pieces of two
dipped in resin are used instead.
*The loy
was the long, narrow, one-sided spade, with an unwieldy ash handle or
feck, the only agricultural instrument known to the bulk of the western
peasants twenty years ago.
