The Ashes of Old Wishes

by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

  There's some do be saying to this day that the Fairies wor mixed up in the thransaction, but as I'll aylucidate to yez now, the Good People had no more hand in that same crime than yerself or meself or the pony there. It's many a charge of stayling cattle and butther and fowls is left to the Good People, so that I believe hardly half I hear agin them anymore. Maybe as I grow old, I'm getting shuperstitious. I don't believe half the ghost stories I hear these days ayther.

  Well, as I was saying: If a person stayles a cow or a horse or money or anything like that, the guilt and the disgrace of it rests only on himself and his childher. Many a dacint man has committed murdher. Mild as I look this minute, taking all the length of me days together, I dare say I've kilt in cowld blood no less than fifty people. I've kilt Jimmy Carroll that keeps the public house in Carrickton not less than tin times in the last two years for slighting the feed in me horse's manger and for putting rain water in me own whiskey. Of course, it's only in me own mind I've kilt them, but Father Cassidy says a sin of the intention is as black as a sin of the hand, and the only difference is that, in the one case, the police aren't botherin' you. Well, to me mind, that makes a raymarkable dale of difference.

  There was a great thraveler once tould me that in some parts of England, a man is counted great by the number of sheep he has purloined, but in this counthry of Ireland, to stayle a sheep is the most dayspicable, unforgivable crime mentioned in the Tin Commandments. It lasts as a rayproach on his daycendents, down to and including his fourth cousins, and his ancestors must hang their heads at the mention of his name back to the time of the flood.

  If the ould saying stands thrue that the darkest hour is just before the dawn, doesn't it as often come out that the merriest, lightest-hearted minutes turn into the sudden forerunners of black misfortune?

  Well anyway, that's how it came about that the merriest night in the lives of Joey Hooligan, the big, giant smith, and of his wife, Nancy, and of his eight purty childher changed to a miserable and bitter memory on Christmas morning twunty years ago.

  That night, the four rooms in the cottage glowed with candles. Nancy had been moulding them in all sizes during a month past. A big candle stood in every corner, and one as tall as Nancy herself and as thick as yer wrist beckoned and laughed at every windy. A fire of sea coals in the big grate sent a thousand gleams cavorting and glinting to the dishes on the dhresser, to the shiny tin pans on the walls, and intil the eyes and hearts of the childher as they romped and roared and galloped about the cottage.

  Joey, like all big, strong men, was slow of speech and solemn of mind. "Nancy," he whispered to his wife, "I'm so happy tonight, I'm almost afeared."

  The center of all the play and divorsion was Blackie, the pet lamb. Sure it's almost like one of the childher, the young baste carried on. They put a nightcap on the black head of him, and you could hear Joey himself roaring half a field away when Poudeen showed how much the lamb raysembled long-faced Julius Callaghan; and when they put a fur cap over the sheep's ears, the childher rowled helpless on the floor, laughing and shrieking at the way Blackie raysembled solemn-faced Maurteen Cavanaugh, the schoolmasther. Well, it was nothing but fun and noisy merriment for the childher and hugs and twistings and caresses for Blackie till Eileen, the youngest of the childher, worn out from very happiness, dhropped asleep undher the table. That was a sign that the happy Christmas Eve was spent. Joey tied the cord about Blackie's neck.

  The smithy fronting the road stands, as ye may see, half a stone's throw from the cottage, and it was in a box filled with sthraw hard by the forge fire that the little pet med his bed.

  "Isn't Tim Malowney, the carman, coming to ye early in the morning for a shoe to go on the horse's foot?" asked Nancy.

  "Bad manners to him, but he is! Christmas morning and all," answered the smith, stopping on the threshold. The lamb was frisking and bunting at Joey's knees in its hurry to be off to bed.

  "Wait a bit!" called Nancy. "He'll be opening the forge door in the morning before you're out, and that villain of a sheep'll get away and keep us the whole day hunting him, as he did last fortnight."

  Joey nodded and stepped into the dark, but he called back, "I'll twist the kay in the lock so Malowney can't be opening it."

  The sheep darted from the smith's hand into the shop at the smithy door, and Joey stood for a minute to look at the wondherful night. He was the kind of man who felt things instead of thinking them. A sift of snow, dhry and light as flour, had just began to fluther down from a sky that hung so low that one'd aymagine he could almost raise up and touch it with a long stick. A pack of blaggard grey clouds were hunting a frightened grey moon to its shelter on the Sleive-na-mon Mountains. Joey looked up and down the clear road. Everything waited, still as death, except that, far as sound could raich, the dogs were barking. He raymimbered afterwards how, for a second, the shadow of a man seemed to stir just undher the big oak across the way. Afar over the fields, happy lights still twinkled in neighbors' windows. When he looked back to the oak three again, no shadow stirred at all, so he blamed the ould age in his eyes.

  Then he turned to padlock the closed dure. But the kay, bekase of the rust, wouldn't budge for all the famous strength of the Hooligan fingers. For a full minute, he tugged and he twisted; he bit his lip, and he braced his heels, but bad manners to the creak the kay gave. "I must get the wrench," he muttered. It was only till all the strength of his great arm got on the wrench that the kay turned and the dure locked. While he worked, there crept a queer, uneasy feeling in his bones that someone very evil or very miserable was watching him. He took the wrench with him intil the kitchen for use on the morrow's morn.

  It was a sthrange, wondherful thing for Joey Hooligan, the smith, not to be able to sleep. He hadn't his like in seven counties for snoring. Most times, his thrumpeting would be rattling the tin pans on the walls while Nancy wouldn't have finished threatening the giggling childher into quiet. But tonight of all nights, for some hidden rayson, Joey couldn't shut an eye. Long afther the cottage was so still that the click of the clock sounded daystinct as the hit of a hammer, he rowled and he turned his head as hot as a new baked loaf of bread.

  Once he could have sworn that sly fingers thrifled with the dure latch, but listening close, the sound didn't come again. The head of his bed lay right up against the windy-sill. At last, just as the worn-out man was beginning to doze, something tapped softly on the windy-pane above his head. He lifted himself to his elbow and parted the windy curtains. Nothing at all! The full moon, stopped in her flight, shimmered down a flood of shplendor.

  Already the snow had stopped filtering down. Only a half inch or an inch or so had fallen, but it covered, quiet and sparkling, the meadows, the glistening branches of the trees, and the far roofs of the neighbors' cottages. The restfulness and the beauty stole soothering in on him, so that he must have fallen asleep as he looked, for it seemed to him only a few minutes afther that Nancy poked him in the ribs and said, "Get up; it's late. Tim Maylowney'll be at the door. Get up till I fix the gifts and the breakfus' for the childher."

  With no one on the outside to push it along, a new idea thraveled a long hard journey before it was able to get undher the thatch of Joey Hooligan's great tangle of black hair. His long leather apron hung on a nail that was in the wall just over Blackie's bed. The smith stood a minute, thumbing with his stiff apron strings, all the time staring down at the empty sthraw, mind ye, and never till he'd just turned to give a pump at the bellows did he hould his hand to say, "Tare an' ages, what's become of Blackie?"

  Then, for another few minutes, he stood pumping the bellows and searching with puckered brows under the shelves and benches into the shadowy corners of the room. "Well, on my sowl, I think the baste is gone! Now that's quare," he says. "I shut the dure careful when I came in, so he couldn't scoot past me. He couldn't melt away like a crock of butther, could he?"

  At that, in his heavy way, the puzzled man began to rayson.

  "I'd
say maybe," he went on, "that he broke a pane of glass and jumped out the windy, but how could he, since there never was a windy in the smithy from the hour me gran'father built it? Then how could be break a pane of glass in the windy if there wasn't any glass or any windy?"

  He bent, peering afther the curl of blue smoke that was darting up the wide chimney.

  "If it was coming into the place Blackie was, I'd say it's down the chimney he might have lepped, even if he'd be smothered in the live coals that wor laying all night on the forge hearth. But as for climing up the chimney, I'd dayfy any baste in Ireland to do it. No it must be the dure. But who in Ireland's ground could have twisthed the kay in that dure?"

  The new idea by this time had got well in its home behind Joey's puckered forehead.

  "I'll have a look at the dure," he said, "and the thracks in the new fallen snow'll till what way he wint."

  Only an inch of snow lay on the ground. Except the marks of Joey's own brogues, not a trace or a thrack of human or of baste showed in the soft, white carpet. Hands locked behind and body bent, Joey was searching about outside the smithy, when his wife, Nancy, came, too. One by one, the childher came out and joined the search. Out in the high road, not a wheel had passed during the night, nor lay there a footstep of man or baste or even of fowl.

  Blackie had never come out of the forge on his four visible feet, nor had any flesh-and-bone feet carried him. What had come to him? Of all the mysteries of the world, was there a bate of this one?

  "Go in to yer horseshoeing. Here comes Maylowney. Say nothing. It's no use looking farther. Don't yer see who took him?" Nancy whispered, pulling at his sleeve.

  But Joey the smith lifted his great fist to the sky and shook it at the clouds.

  "Now may the curse"—he was beginning to say when his wise wife put her hands on his lips.

  "Are ye mad, Joey Hooligan?" she warned. "Don't anger them. Don't ye know well that it's one of the childher itself they might be taking next for spite. They have the lamb—they're welcome. Maybe they have more nade for it than we. Good luck to them!"

  My, but the Hooligans were sore-hearted!

  For a good week, the parish searched high an' low, but nayther hide nor hair of the baste was ever seen again. So complete, so suddint, an' so mystarious had been the taking that the wisest heads in the townland settled down to the unanswerable conclusion that no human thief at all had taken Blackie, but that the poor little crachure had been a-pro-pry-ayted by the Good People. Not that anyone was bould enough or foolish enough to say as much aloud. As everyone knows, if the Fairies carry away a cow or a pig or, say, a couple of ducks, the laste said, the soonest mended. If you go raising any ructions with the Good People, maybe out of spite, it's one of yer childher they'd next be afther taking with them to their home in Sleive-na-mon.

  Howandever, one stormy morning, a matther of five or six weeks afther, when a crowd of neighbors purty well filled the smithy, and they idling the time with their pipes and their jokes and their chat, Joey himself suddenly laid down the horse's hoof he was houlding and, rubbing his hands hard and scowling around at them, said a thing that they spread afther over the scandalized barony. No one at all had been speaking of the misdaymeanor of taking Blackie, but Joey broke in: "I've an idea in me head," he says, "that the thief who stole my sheep never rode the wind at all," says he, "but walks in two brogues—and something in the back of me skull tells me that one day I'll lay me two livin' hands on him, an' when I do, God help him!"

  And Pether McCarthy, looking at the width and the thickness of Joey's two grimed hands, says afther him, "If ye do, God help him. But 'tis in the heart of Sleive-na-mon Mountain yer sheep is being hid."

  And Joey, in the folly and foolishness of his madness, burst out with a saying that sent a chill intil the heart of everyone who listened: "Then the curse of the crows light on them that took him and them that has him—man or immortal," says he.

  For a good many weeks follying afther, the women of Ballinderg would sigh anxious at each other when anyone of the Hooligan childher'd be passing down the village street, and of a Sunday morning, the crowd of men gathered at the chapel steps would blink owl's eyes together and grow talkative as the stumps of dead threes when Joey jined in on the crowd.

  Well, as the saying is, that throuble passed as all throubles must, an' it was a good foive months after that dismal Christmas Day before Joey Hooligan heard anything more of the sheep-staylin'. But whin he did get worrud of it, the bewildherin' news started the sleepin' mysthery into a roaring blaze.

  This is how it came: One May mornin', the smith was alone at his worruk, whustling a chune, when who should come fast galloping down the road an' dhraw up, slap dash, at the forge door, but Terror, Father Cassidy's black hunther, and on Terror's back sat Father Cassidy himself.

  "Come out, Joey Hooligan! Come out, me dacint man!" cries the priest, his voice hoarse with agytation.

  At the call, the towering smith came to the door and stood there in his apron, gawpin', for the priest's face was in a blaze of excitement, an' the good man couldn't sit quiet on the horse's back.

  "Hould out yer hand, me lad," says the clargyman. "Stretch it over here," he says.

  An' thin, whin the smith put over his great, dusty paw, Father Cassidy dhropped intil the hard palm a fistful of shinin' silver.

  A minute the good man stammered, for the words seemed hard set to force themselves from behind his teeth, while Joey, with wrinkled, bewildered forehead stared from the shinin' silver in his grimy hand to the face of the priest and from that to the snorting excited nostrils of Terror and back again to the clump of money.

  "There's the pay for yer sheep, an' with it, two crowns more than the pay," says his riverence. "The thief who stole Blackie sinds it, an' he humbly axes yer forgiveness, an' he begs God's pardon, too. I charge ye on yer conscience not to breathe a whusper of this to a livin' sowl," cautioned the priest. "Tut, tut, ye're to ax no questions," he says.

  Joey Hooligan has a powerful mind, as everyone knows, only it worruks slow, as I tould ye; so Father Cassidy was off and away down as far as the Widdy Deegan's before the truth had wormed itself full length intil the smith's hard head. But whin the lad at last rayalized that no fairy at all had taken Blackie, but that some sneakin', murdher-hound of a rapscallion had stole his little colleen's pet lamb, an' that all the heartaches of his childher were med by some red-handed, unfeeling robber, thin it was that a wild fury sayzed the big smith, so that the surge of blood in his head dhrove the sight from his eyes. What was the money? Musha, wasn't he just crazy! He was fair conglomerated.

  Smashin' his apron hard upon the floor, the lad charged down the road, follyin' Father Cassidy, shoutin' abuse an' wituperation ag'in the thief as he ran. You'd think, to see him, that 'twas ould Nick himself that was in it. All he wanted of Father Cassidy was to get from the priest the name of the malayfacthor. And so hot was this purpose in his heart that he paid no attintion to the people he mat up with on the way, but with his head lowered, he rushed heedless past thim down the road like a mad bull. Some thought the smith had gone daft, but Bothered Bill Donohue, the tinker, who had seen Father Cassidy ride away from the forge, spread the rayport that Hooligan was only doin' a hard pinnance put upon him by the priest, for not putting all the nails complete in the horse shoes. Maurteen Cavanaugh, the schoolmasther, shook his head sorrowful and said, "I always thought there was some kind of saycrit villany in that Joey Hooligan."

  Well, anyways, the time I'm tellin' ye of, Joey ran on till he was halfway up to the mountains. There the lad's breath failed him, an' he sat down upon the stone by the lonely roadside, his head in his hands. Bime-bye, the anger cooled a bit so that, little by little, he began thinkin'. Sure it wasn't long, thin, till he raymimbered how the clargyman had put it hard on his conscience not to ax questions. At that raymimbrance, he wondhered an' he pondhered an' he mumbled an' he grumbled. But at the ind of all his osculaytions an' pondherations, he was only lef
t where he began. His mind, so to speak, was up agin a stone wall, an' the mysthery having woke from its sleep famershinger than ever was once more atin' its fill from the core of the smith's big, warm heart. So up he rose an' home he wint, an' the next morning found him at his worruk as before.

  Not a word did he say to the childher, not a whisper to Nancy, his wife, although night and day for a fortnight she was twisting his heartstrings this way and that to find out the throuble that was on him. Many's the neighbor wondhered at the sourness that had come over Joey, the smith, for to bide his feelings, Hooligan would sing and whustle or take offince where there was no cause. But thry what he would—sing, whustle, or quarrel—through four long weeks, the bother stayed fretting at his mind, an' 'twould maybe have been there till this good day, had he not been forced to bring a cow an' two fat pigs up to the fair at Clonmel.

  At that time, the fair at Clonmel had such a grand repitation for fun an' jolity that Joey wint early; an' afther sellin' the cattle an' gettin' a good price for them, he turned his attintion from the haggling of the cattle-buyers, as was only natural, to the wondhers and divarsions of the fair. Whilst so bint an' inclined, he was sthrollin' about here an' there, amusin' his idle eyes with the sthrange sights, whin what should he see as it was coming out and standin' at the door of a brown tint, but a wuzzard. And Joey stopped ferninst him and stood wondhering and pulling his whiskers. Now, ould Mrs. Casey could read taycups to make yer hair stand, so, if she wasn't a witch herself, she had daylins with them; and the beggar woman, Sally Foley, would put the black blight on the petaties if ye didn't give her the fill of her fist of coppers. To his sorrow, Joey knew both of thim well, but in all his born days before, he'd never met up with a wuzzard. Still and all, by rayson of the pictures he had seen and the tales he had heard, Hooligan knew without being tould that this was a soothersayer.