Darby O’Gill and the Good People

Although only one living man of his own free will ever went among them there, still, any well-learned person in Ireland can tell you that the abode of the Good People is in the hollow heart of the great mountain Sleive-na-mon. That same one man was Darby O’Gill, a cousin of my own mother.

Right and left, generation after generation, the fairies had stolen pigs, young childher, old women, young men, cows, churnings of butter from other people, but had never bothered any of our kith or kin until, for some mysterious rayson, they soured on Darby, and took the eldest of his three foine pigs.

The next week a second pig went the same way. The third week not a thing had Darby left for the Balinrobe fair. You may aisly think how sore and sorry the poor man was, an’ how Bridget his wife an’ the childher carried on. The rent was due, and all left was to sell his cow Rosie to pay it. Rosie was the apple of his eye; he admired and rayspected the pigs, but he loved Rosie.

Worst luck of all was yet to come. On the morning when Darby went for the cow to bring her into market, bad scrans to the hoof was there; but in her place only a wisp of dirty straw to mock him. Millia murther! What a howlin’ and screechin’ and cursin’ did Darby bring back to the house!

Now Darby was a bould man, and a desperate man in his anger, as you soon will see. He shoved his feet into a pair of brogues, clapped his hat on his head, and gripped his stick in his hand.

It was dark night when Darby stretched himself on the ground in Hagan’s meadow; the yellow rim of the moon just tipped the edge of the hills.

As he lay there in the long grass amidst the silence there came a cowld shudder in the air, an’ afther it had passed the deep cracked voice of a nearby bullfrog called loudly an’ ballyraggin’:

“The Omadhaun! Omadhaun! Omadhaun!” it said.

From a sloe three over near the hedge an owl cried, surprised and thrembling:

“Who‑o‑o? who‑o‑o?” it axed.

At that every frog in the meadow⁠—an’ there must have been tin thousand of them⁠—took up the answer, an’ shrieked shrill an’ high together. “Darby O’Gill! Darby O’Gill! Darby O’Gill!” sang they.

Sitting on a white stone, an’ working away like fury, hammering pegs into a little red shoe, half the size of your thumb, was a bald-headed ould cobbler of about twice the height of your hand. On the top of a round snub nose was perched a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, an’ a narrow fringe of iron-grey whuskers grew under his stubby chin. The brown leather apron he wore was so long that it covered his green knee-breeches an’ almost hid the knitted grey stockings.

The Leprechaun⁠—for it was he indade⁠—as he worked, mumbled an’ mutthered in great discontent.

“Oh, haven’t I the hard, hard luck!” he said. “I’ll never have thim done in time for her to dance in tonight. So, thin, I’ll be kilt intirely,” says he. “Was there ever another quane of the fairies as wearing on shoes an’ brogues an’ dancin’ slippers? Haven’t I the⁠—” Looking up, he saw Darby.

“The top of the day to you, dacint man,” says the cobbler, jumpin’ up. Giving a sharp cry, he pinted quick at Darby’s stomach. “But, wirra, wirra, what’s that woolly ugly thing you have crawlin’ an’ creepin’ on your weskit?” he said, purtendin’ to be all excited.

“Sorra thing on my weskit,” answered Darby, cool as ice, “or anywhere else, that’ll make me take my two bright eyes off’n you⁠—not for a second,” says he.

Halloween night, to all unhappy ghosts, is about the same as St. Patrick’s Day is to you or to me⁠—’tis a great holiday in every churchyard. An’ no one knew this betther or felt it keener than did Darby O’Gill, that same Halloween night, as he stood on his own doorstep with the paper of black tay for Eileen McCarthy safely stowed away in the crown of his top-hat.

No one in that barony was quicker than he at an act of neighbourly kindness, but now, as he huddled himself together in the shelter of his own eaves, and thought of the dangers before, an’ of the cheerful fire an’ comfortable bed he was leaving behint, black raybellion rushed shouting across his heart.

“Oh, my, oh, my, what a perishin’ night to turn a man out into!” he says. “It’d be half a comfort to know I was goin’ to be kilt before I got back, just as a warnin’ to Bridget,” says he.

The misthrayted lad turned a sour eye on the chumultuous weather, an’ groaned deep as he pulled closer about his chowldhers the cape of his greatcoat an’ plunged into the daysarted an’ flooded roadway.

Howsumever, ’twas not the pelting rain, nor the lashing wind, nor yet the pitchy darkness that bothered the heart out of him as he wint splashin’ an’ stumbling along the road. A thought of something more raylentless than the storm, more mystarious than the night’s blackness put pounds of lead into the lad’s unwilling brogues; for somewhere in