'John,' he said, in shaking English, 'have you got "Larry Grogan,"
for it is an agreeable air?'
I had not, so some of the young men danced again to the 'Black
Rogue,' and then the party broke up. The altercation was still going
on at the cottage below us, and the people were anxious to see what
was coming of it.
About ten o'clock a young man came in and told us that the fight was
over.
'They have been at it for four hours,' he said, 'and now they're
tired.'
Indeed it is time they were, for you'd rather be listening to a man
killing a pig than to the noise they were letting out of them.'
After the dancing and excitement we were too stirred up to be
sleepy, so we sat for a long time round the embers of the turf,
talking and smoking by the light of the candle.
From ordinary music we came to talk of the music of the fairies, and
they told me this story, when I had told them some stories of my
own: -
A man who lives in the other end of the village got his gun one day
and went out to look for rabbits in a thicket near the small Dun. He
saw a rabbit sitting up under a tree, and he lifted his gun to take
aim at it, but just as he had it covered he heard a kind of music
over his head, and he looked up into the sky. When he looked back
for the rabbit, not a bit of it was to be seen.
He went on after that, and he heard the music again.
Then he looked over a wall, and he saw a rabbit sitting up by the
wall with a sort of flute in its mouth, and it playing on it with
its two fingers!
'What sort of rabbit was that?' said the old woman when they had
finished. 'How could that be a right rabbit? I remember old Pat
Dirane used to be telling us he was once out on the cliffs, and he
saw a big rabbit sitting down in a hole under a flagstone. He called
a man who was with him, and they put a hook on the end of a stick
and ran it down into the hole. Then a voice called up to them -
'"Ah, Phaddrick, don't hurt me with the hook!"
'Pat was a great rogue,' said the old man. 'Maybe you remember the
bits of horns he had like handles on the end of his sticks? Well,
one day there was a priest over and he said to Pat - "Is it the
devil's horns you have on your sticks, Pat?" "I don't rightly know"
said Pat, "but if it is, it's the devil's milk you've been drinking,
since you've been able to drink, and the devil's flesh you've been
eating and the devil's butter you've been putting on your bread, for
I've seen the like of them horns on every old cow through the
country."'
The weather has been rough, but early this afternoon the sea was
calm enough for a hooker to come in with turf from Connemara, though
while she was at the pier the roll was so great that the men had to
keep a watch on the waves and loosen the cable whenever a large one
was coming in, so that she might ease up with the water.
