Darby O'Gill and the Good People

by Herminie Templeton Kavahagh

  Any man so parsecuted with admiration an' hayrofication might aisily feel his chest swell out a bit, so it's no wondher that Darby set himself up for a knowledgeable man.

  He took to talkin' slow an' shuttin' one eye whin he listened, and he walked with a knowledgeable twist to his chowlders. He grew monsthrously fond of fairs and public gatherings where people made much of him, and he lost every ounce of liking he ever had for hard worruk.

  Things wint on with him in this way from bad to worse, and where it would have inded no man knows, if one unlucky morning he hadn't rayfused to bring in a creel of turf his wife Bridget had axed him to fetch her. The unfortunate man said it was no work for the likes of him.

  The last word was still on Darby's lips whin he rayalised his mistake, an' he'd have given the world to have the sayin' back again.

  For a minute you could have heard a pin dhrop. Bridget, instead of being in a hurry to begin at him, was crool dayliberate. She planted herself in the door, her two fists on her hips, an' her lips shut.

  The look Julius Sayser'd trow at a servant-girl he'd caught stealing sugar from the rile cupboard was the glance she waved up and down from Darby's toes to his head, and from his head to his brogues agin.

  Thin she began an' talked steady as a fall of hail that has now an' then a bit of lightning an' tunder mixed in it.

  The knowledgeable man stood purtendin' to brush his hat and tryin' to look brave, but the heart inside of him was meltin' like butther.

  Bridget began aisily be carelessly mentioning a few of Darby's best known wakenesses. Afther that she took up some of them not so well known, being ones Darby himself had sayrious doubts about having at all. But on these last she was more savare than on the first. Through it all he daren't say a word—he only smiled lofty and bitther.

  'Twas but natural next for Bridget to explain what a poor crachure her husband was the day she got him, an' what she might have been if she had married ayther one of the six others who had axed her. The step for her was a little one, thin, to the shortcomings and misfortunes of his blood relaytions, which she follyed back to the blaggardisms of his fourth cousin, Phelim McFadden.

  Even in his misery poor Darby couldn't but marvel at her wondherful memory.

  By the time she began talking of her own family, and especially about her Aunt Honoria O'Shaughnessy, who had once shook hands with a Bishop, and who in the rebellion of '98 had trun a brick at a Lord Liftenant, whin he was riding by, Darby was as wilted and as forlorn-looking as a roosther caught out in the winther rain.

  He lost more pride in those few minutes than it had taken months to gather an' hoard. It kept falling in great drops from his forehead.

  Just as Bridget was lading up to what Father Cassidy calls a pur-roar-ration—that being the part of your wife's discoorse whin, after telling you all she's done for you, and all she's stood from your relaytions, she breaks down and cries, and so smothers you entirely—just as she was coming to that, I say, Darby scrooged his caubeen down on his head, stuck his fingers in his two ears, and, making one grand rush through the door, bolted as fast as his legs could carry him down the road toward Sleive-na-mon Mountains.

  Bridget stood on the step looking afther him, too surprised for a word. With his fingers still in his ears, so that he couldn't hear her commands to turn back, he ran without stopping till he came to the willow-tree near Joey Hooligan's forge. There he slowed down to fill his lungs with the fresh, sweet air.

  'Twas one of those warm-hearted, laughing autumn days which steals for a while the bonnet and shawl of the May. The sun, from a sky of feathery whiteness, laned over, telling jokes to the worruld, an' the goold harvest-fields and purple hills, lasy and continted, laughed back at the sun. Even the blackbird flying over the haw-tree looked down an' sang to those below, "God save all here;" an' the linnet from her bough answered back quick an' sweet, "God save you kindly, sir!"

  With such pleasant sights and sounds an' twitterings at every side, our hayro didn't feel the time passing till he was on top of the first hill of the Sleive-na-mon Mountains, which, as everyone knows, is called the Pig's Head. .

  It wasn't quite lonesome enough on the Pig's Head, so our hayro plunged into the walley an' climbed the second mountain—the Divil's Pillow—where 'twas lonesome and desarted enough to shuit anyone.

  Beneath the shade of a three, for the days was warm, he sat himself down in the long, sweet grass, lit his pipe, and let his mind go free. But, as he did, his thoughts rose together like a flock of frightened, angry pheasants, an' whirred back to the owdacious things Bridget had said about his relations.

  Wasn't she the mendageous, humbrageous woman, he thought, to say such things about as illegant stock, as the O'Gills and the O'Gradys?

  Why, Wullum O'Gill, Darby's uncle, at that minute, was head butler at Castle Brophy, and was known far an' wide as being one of the foinest scholars an' as having the most beautiful pair of legs in all Ireland!

  This same Wullum O'Gill had tould Bridget in Darby's own hearing, on a day when the three were going through the great picture-gallery at Castle Brophy, that the O'Gills at one time had been Kings in Ireland.

  Darby never since could raymember whether this time was before the flood or afther the flood. Bridget said it was durin' the flood, but surely that sayin' was nonsinse.

  Howsumever, Darby knew his Uncle Wullum was right, for he often felt in himself the signs of greatness. And now as he sat alone on the grass he said out loud:

  "If I had me rights I'd be doing nothing all day long but sittin' on a throne, an' playin' games of forty-five with the Lord Liftenant an' some of me generals. There never was a lord that likes good ating or dhrinking betther nor I, or who hates worse to get up airly in the morning. That last disloike I'm tould is a great sign entirely of gentle blood the worruld over," says he.

  As for the wife's people, the O'Hagans an' the O'Shaughnessys, well—they were no great shakes, he said to himself, at laste so far as looks were consarned. All the handsomeness in Darby's childher came from his own side of the family. Even Father Cassidy said the childher took afther the O'Gills.

  "If I were rich," said Darby, to a lazy ould bumble-bee who was droning an' tumbling in front of him, "I'd have a castle like Castle Brophy, with a great picture-gallery in it. On one wall I'd put the picture of the O'Gills and the O'Gradys, and on the wall ferninst them I'd have the O'Hagans an' the O'Shaughnessys."

  At that ideah his heart bubbled in a new and fierce deloight. "Bridget's people," he says agin, scowling at the bee, "would look four times as common as they raylly are, whin they were compared in that way with my own relations. An' whenever Bridget got rampageous I'd take her in and show her the difference betwixt the two clans, just to punish her, so I would."

  How long the lad sat that way warming the cowld thoughts of his heart with drowsy, pleasant dhrames an' misty longings he don't rightly know, whin—tack, tack, tack, tack, came the busy sound of a little hammer from the other side of a fallen oak.

  "Be jingo!" he says to himself with a start, " 'tis the Leprechaun that's in it."

  In a second he was on his hands an' knees, the tails of his coat flung across his back, an' he crawling softly toward the sound of the hammer. Quiet as a mouse he lifted himself up on the mossy log to look over, and there before his two popping eyes was a sight of wondheration.

  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 hoight of your hand. On the top of a round, snub nose was perched a pair of hornrimmed spectacles, an' a narrow fringe of iron-gray whuskers grew undher his stubby chin. The brown leather apron he wore was so long that it covered his green knee-breeches an' almost hid the knitted gray 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 i
n time for her to dance in tonight. So, thin, I'll be kilt entirely," 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 crawling 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.

  "Well! Well! Will you look at that, now?" laughed the cobbler. "Mark how quick an' handy he took me up! Will you have a pinch of snuff, clever man?" he axed, houlding up the little box.

  "Is it the same snuff you gave Barney McBride a while ago?" axed Darby, sarcastic. "Lave off your foolishness," says our hayro, growin' fierce, "and grant me at once the favours of the three wishes, or I'll have you smoking like a herring in my own chimney before nightfall," says he.

  At that the Leprechaun, seeing that he but wasted time on so knowledgeable a man as Darby O'Gill, surrendhered, and granted the favours of the three wishes.

  "What is it you ask?" says the cobbler, himself turning on a sudden very sour an' sullen.

  "First an' foremost," says Darby, "I want a home of my ansisthers, an' it must be a castle like Castle Brophy, with pictures of my kith an' kin on the wall, and then facing them pictures of my wife Bridget's kith an' kin on the other wall."

  "That favour I give ye, that wish I grant ye," says the fairy, making the shape of a castle on the ground with his awl.

  "What next?" he grunted.

  "I want goold enough for me an' my generations to enjoy in grandeur the place forever."

  "Always the goold," sneered the little man, bending to dhraw with his awl on the turf the shape of a purse.

  "Now for your third and last wish. Have a care!"

  "I want the castle set on this hill—the Divil's Pillow—where we two stand," says Darby. Then sweeping with his arm, he says, "I want the land about to be my demesne."

  The Leprechaun stuck his awl on the ground. "That wish I give you, that wish I grant you," he says. With that he straightened himself up, and grinning most aggravaytin' the while, he looked Darby over from top to toe. "You're a foine, knowledgeable man, but have a care of the fourth wish!" says he.

  Bekase there was more of a challenge than friendly warning in what the small lad said, Darby snapped his fingers at him an' cried:

  "Have no fear, little man! If I got all Ireland ground for making a fourth wish, however small, before midnight I'd not make it. I'm going home now to fetch Bridget an' the childher, and the only fear or unaisiness I have is that you'll not keep your word, so as to have the castle here ready before us when I come back."

  "Oho! I'm not to be thrusted, amn't I?" screeched the little lad, flaring into a blazing passion. He jumped upon the log that was betwixt them, an' with one fist behind his back shook the other at Darby.

  "You ignorant, auspicious-minded blaggard!" says he. "How dare the likes of you say the likes of that to the likes of me!" cried the cobbler. "I'd have you to know," he says, "that I had a repitation for truth an' voracity ayquil if not shuperior to the best, before you were born!" he shouted. "I'll take no high talk from a man that's afraid to give words to his own wife whin she's in a tantrum!" says the Leprechaun.

  "It's aisy to know you're not a married man," says Darby, mighty scornful, "bekase if you—"

  The lad stopped short, forgetting what he was going to say in his surprise an' aggaytation, for the far side of the mountain was waving up an' down before his eyes like a great green blanket that is being shook by two women, while at the same time high spots of turf on the hillside toppled sidewise to level themselves up with the low places. The enchantment had already begun to make things ready for the castle. A dozen foine threes that stood in a little grove bent their heads quickly together, and thin by some inwisible hand they were plucked up by the roots an' dhropped aside much the same as a man might grasp a handful of weeds an' fling them from his garden.

  The ground under the knowledgeable man's feet began to rumble an' heave. He waited for no more. With a cry that was half of gladness an' half of fear, he turned on his heel an' started on a run down into the walley, leaving the little cobbler standing on the log, shouting abuse after him an' ballyraggin' him as he ran.

  So excited was Darby that, going up the Pig's Head, he was nearly run over by a crowd of great brown building stones which were moving down slow an' ordherly like a flock of driven sheep,—but they moved without so much as bruising a blade of grass or bendin' a twig, as they came.

  Only once, and that at the top of the Pig's Head, he trew a look back.

  The Divil's Pillow was in a great commotion; a whirlwind was sweeping over it—whether of dust or of mist he couldn't tell.

  Afther this, Darby never looked back again or to the right or the left of him, but kept straight on till he found himself, panting and puffing, at his own kitchen door. 'Twas tin minutes before he could spake, but at last, whin he tould Bridget to make ready herself and the childher to go up to the Divil's Pillow with him, for once in her life that raymarkable woman, without axing, How comes it so, What rayson have you, or Why should I do it, set to work washing the childher's faces.

  Maybe she dabbed a little more soap in their eyes than was needful, for 'twas a habit she had; though this time if she did, not a whimper broke from the little hayros. For the matther of that, not one word, good, bad or indifferent, did herself spake till the whole family were trudging down the lane two by two, marching like sojers.

  As they came near the first hill along its sides the evening twilight turned from purple to brown, and at the top of the Pig's Head the darkness of a black night swooped suddenly down on them. Darby hurried on a step or two ahead, an' resting his hand upon the large rock that crowns the hill, looked anxiously, over to the Divil's Pillow. Although he was ready for something foine, yet the greatness of the foineness that met his gaze knocked the breath out of him.

  Across the deep walley, and on top of the second mountain, he saw lined against the evening sky the roof of an imminse castle, with towers an' parrypets an' battlements. Undher the towers a thousand sullen windows glowed red in the black walls. Castle Brophy couldn't hould a candle to it.

  "Behold!" says Darby, flinging out his arm, and turning to his wife, who had just come up—"behold the castle of my ansisthers who were my forefathers!"

  "How," says Bridget, quick and scornful—"how could your aunt's sisters be your four fathers?"

  What Darby was going to say to her he don't just raymember, for at that instant from the right-hand side of the mountain came a cracking of whips, a rattling of wheels, an' the rush of horses, and, lo and behold! a great dark coach with flashing lamps, and drawn by four coal-black horses, dashed up the hill and stopped beside them. Two shadowy men were on the driver's box.

  "Is this Lord Darby O'Gill?" axed one of them, in a deep, muffled woice. Before Darby could reply Bridget took the words out of his mouth.

  "It is!" she cried, in a kind of a half cheer, "an' Lady O'Gill an' the childher."

  "Then hurry up!" says the coachman. "Your supper's gettin' cowld."

  Without waiting for anyone Bridget flung open the carriage-door, an' pushin' Darby aside jumped in among the cushions. Darby, his heart sizzlin' with vexation at her audaciousness, lifted in one after another the childher, and then got in himself.

  He couldn't undherstand at all the change in his wife, for she had always been the odherliest, modestist woman in the parish.

  Well, he'd no sooner shut the door than crack went the whip, the horses gave a spring, the carriage jumped, and down the hill they went. For fastness there was never another carriage-ride like that before nor since. Darby hildt tight with both hands to the window, his face pressed aga
inst the glass. He couldn't tell whether the horses were only flying or whether the coach was falling down the hill into the walley. By the hollow feeling in his stomach he thought they were falling. He was striving to think of some prayers when there came a terrible joult which sint his two heels against the roof an' his head betwixt the cushions. As he righted himself the wheels began to grate on a gravelled road, an' plainly they were dashing up the side of the second mountain.

  Even so, they couldn't have gone far whin the carriage dhrew up in a flurry, an' he saw through the gloom a high iron gate being slowly opened.

  "Pass on," said a voice from somewhere in the shadows; "their supper's getting cowld."

  As they flew undher the great archway Darby had a glimpse of the thing which had opened the gate, and had said their supper was getting cowld. It was standing on its hind legs—in the darkness he couldn't be quite sure as to its shape, but it was ayther a Bear or a Loin.

  His mind was in a pondher about this when, with a swirl an' a bump, the carriage stopped another time, an' now it stood before a broad flight of stone steps which led up to the main door of the castle. Darby, half afraid, peering out through the darkness, saw a square of light high above him which came from the open hall door. Three sarvants in livery stood waiting on the thrashol.