There was a big gathering of neighbours sitting round a fire, telling
stories of an evening, and some person says:
"There's the strongest bolt and lock in all Ireland on the door there
beyond, and it couldn't be broken at all."
With that the Good People were listening outside began for to
laugh. Didn't they whip the lock off the door and away with them
through the fields.
Says the man of the house: "I'm thinking there's danger abroad;
let the lot of you stop here till dawn."
But there was a big, venturesome man in it and he allowed he'd go
home no spite of the fairies.
He started off by his lone, and he had a wet sort of field to pass
through with a great shaking scraw to one side. It was an awful and
dangerous place to any person not used to the like, but he knew his
way by the pass.
He was travelling at a good speed when all on a sudden he heard the
tramping of a score of horses behind him. Then they came up round
himself, but he seen no person at all nor a sign of a horse or an ass.
"The fairies are in it," says he.
With that one of them took a hold of him by the collar and turned
him round on the path.
"Good-night, my brave Michael," says the horsemen.
Then another of them took him by the shoulder and faced him away
round again.
"Good-night, my brave Michael," says he. Well the whole score of
fairies kept turning him round until he seen the stars dropping
down from the sky and his ears were deafened with a sound like
the sea. And every one that took him by the shoulder would say:
"Good-night, my brave Michael, good-night!"
The poor fellow didn't know what in under the shining Heaven was he
to do. He seen they were setting him astray, but he couldn't continue
for to keep on the path, and he was in odious dread they'd furl him
into the shaking scraw where he'd sink from the sight of man.
A sudden thought struck his mind of a saying he heard from his ma. He
whipped the coat off his back and he put it on with the wrong side
turned out. And then he found he was standing alone in the field,
on the edge of the scraw, and no person near him at all. So he went
away home without any mishap, but indeed he was trembling with dread.