Transcriber's Note
In the Vocabulary section on the last 4 pages of the project there are
many diacritical characters that won't render properly on many ereaders.—
See the end of the book.
Hence the following explanation:
[a+] = the letter 'a' with an uptack above.
Double vowels ee, aa, oo, show extended macron above.
Joining two letters such as oi, ow, ou shows the extended breve
below.
The use of =L= around a word indicates bold lettering.
Hyphenations have been standardised.
[Illustration: KATHLEEN AT HOME]
LITTLE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
KATHLEEN
IN IRELAND
BY ETTA BLAISDELL McDONALD
AND JULIA DALRYMPLE
Authors of "Manuel in Mexico," "Umé San in
Japan," "Rafael in Italy," etc.
[Illustration]
Illustrated
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1912
_Copyright, 1909_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Printers
S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
PREFACE
There is surely no country in the world where hearts so thinly covered
beat so warmly as in the Emerald Isle. Wherever one travels,—over the
bare mountains of Donegal and the rocks and cliffs of the northern
coast, or among the blue lakes and green fields of the South,—he will
always find a merry greeting and a hearty Irish welcome. The boys and
girls have a smile and a cheerful word for every wind that blows;
and that day is a rare one, indeed, which is not sunny with laughter
and singing, even while clouds hide the blue sky and Irish rains are
falling.
The wonder is that Irish boys and girls can find it in their hearts to
leave their beautiful, loving land of the shamrock. So many fairy lakes
were never found in any other country. Green meadows never offered
sweeter resting places than those of the Emerald Isle; yet its young
people turn their backs to it, and their blue eyes toward the more
barren worlds beyond the seas.
This story of Irish Kathleen gives glimpses of ancient Ireland, as
well as pictures of the life of to-day with its tales of wee folk and
giants, its picnics and turf-cutting, its dancing and sheep-shearing,
its hunting and farming.
Kathleen lives first with her father up among the mountains of lonely
Donegal; she goes with her little sister to spend a summer in County
Sligo, and she lives a year with her ten cousins, the Malones of old
Kilkenny, and a jolly, rollicking brood she finds them. She learns
something of the history of Ireland from her father, and hears the
story of the life of the good Saint Patrick; but she enjoys also the
Gaelic tales which her grandmother tells her about the fairies, and the
story of Finn MacCool, which she hears when she goes with her uncle to
see the Giant's Causeway.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SHOEMAKER OF DONEGAL 1
II. IN THE FAIRY RATH 9
III. THE OLD WOMAN IN RED 13
IV. ERIN'S HARP 19
V. THE LITTLE GREEN SHAMROCK 26
VI. GOOD SAINT PATRICK 31
VII. A RIDE WITH THE POSTMAN 39
VIII. COUSIN BEE'S FARM IN TONROE 46
IX. MAY-DAY ON LOUGH GARA 56
X. A BANK OF TURF 64
XI. KATHLEEN EARNS A POUND 71
XII. THE YOUNG MALONES 78
XIII. KATHLEEN'S COMPOSITION 85
XIV. THE WISHING SPRING 91
XV. GOOD NEWS FROM COUSIN BEE 99
XVI. THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 104
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Kathleen at Home _Frontispiece in Color_
"The old grandmother was spinning at the door" 2
The Hills of Donegal 21
"They are playing 'Green grow the rushes-O'" 42
Cousin Bee's Farmhouse in Tonroe 47
"A neighbor was driving his family down to the lake
in a jaunting-car" 58
Cutting bricks of peat and stacking them up to dry 67
O'Connell Street, Dublin 102
The Giant's Causeway 111
KATHLEEN IN IRELAND
CHAPTER I
THE SHOEMAKER OF DONEGAL
"Tell me the story again, Kathleen."
"I can't tell it to you here, Mary Ellen," whispered her sister. "Sure,
he might be under the hedge this minute and hear me talking about him.
Come to the top of the hill and I'll tell you."
Mary Ellen slipped her hand into Kathleen's, and the two children stole
softly away from the door-stone where they had been playing. Their
bare feet made no sound on the green grass, and the old grandmother,
who was spinning at the door of the cottage, did not even look up as
they passed.
A thick fuchsia hedge bordered the plot of green grass that surrounded
the cottage, shutting out the barren field behind the house. Slipping
through the hedge, the little girls followed the narrow foot-path that
led across the field to the top of the hill.
"I'm thinkin' of a riddle Danny gave me the morn," said Kathleen, as
they ran along the path.
"Give it to me," said Mary Ellen eagerly, and Kathleen laughed merrily
as she repeated:
"From house to house it goes,
A wanderer small and slight;
And whether it rains or snows,
It sleeps outside in the night."
"I'll never guess it; tell it to me now, alanna," begged her sister.
"If your blue eyes could see the little _path_ under your feet you
would _see_ the answer," replied Kathleen, as she led the blind child
carefully over the steep pathway to the long stone slab where they
loved to play. "We'll sit here a bit," she added, and drew Mary Ellen
down beside her on the stone.
"Now tell me why you put the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn bush
last night, and what became of it," asked the child, who could wait no
longer for the story.
"It was for the leprecaun," Kathleen told her. "He is the fairy
shoemaker, and he sits under the hedge all day tapping away on an old
shoe. He wears a scarlet cap and a green coat, and there are two rows
of buttons on his coat, with seven buttons in each row. He has a fairy
purse which is filled with gold, and he puts it down beside him on the
grass while he works; but he is always watching it. If I could just see
him once and hold his eye for a minute, I could snatch the purse of
gold and run away with it."
[Illustration:
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
"THE OLD GRANDMOTHER WAS SPINNING AT THE DOOR"
The cottage is of stone, plastered and whitewashed _Page 1_]
"Did you ever see him?" whispered Mary Ellen.
"No," replied her sister; "but I have heard him tapping on his shoe
many a time. Once I saw his scarlet cap under the hedge, but when I
knelt down to look closer he threw sand in my eyes, as he always does,
and was gone in a winkin'."
"Belike it was a humming-bird," said Mary Ellen. "Danny says the hedge
is full of their nests. But what would you do with the purse, Kathleen
dear?"
Kathleen's eyes filled with tears and she looked at her sister with
a sad face. "Oh, darlin', it's for you," she said, "to give you the
sight in your pretty blue eyes. I'm thinkin' of it all the time, and
faith, some day I'll find a way. That's why I took the dish of oaten
stirabout and put it under the hawthorn bush last night, and why I put
the bowl of milk on the window ledge. It's for the 'good people,' so
that they'll know we take thought of them."
"Did the 'good people' drink the milk?" asked the blind child eagerly.
"No, Mary Ellen," said her sister, "but, listen! The stirabout was gone
this morning, dish and all. The leprecaun must have taken it. I shall
watch for him the night, and if I do catch the old shoemaker's eye,
I'll hold it till he gives me his purse."
"I'm thinkin' that no one has ever held it yet," said Mary Ellen,
snuggling against Kathleen's shoulder, as if there might be some danger
in holding a fairy dwarf spellbound with the look of one's eye.
Kathleen lowered her voice and asked mysteriously, "Whist, Mary Ellen,
do you mind old Granny Connor?"
"She that lives beyond the bog?" questioned Mary Ellen.
"Yes," said Kathleen.
"I mind that she lives all alone, and that the father tells us not
to go near her," answered her sister. "She's too friendly with the
fairies."
"Last night," said Kathleen, taking her sister's hand, and looking into
her blue eyes while her own grew big and dark, "when I was driving the
little cow home across the bog, who should I meet under the old oak
tree but Granny Connor herself.
"I picked a bit of shamrock and held it tight in my hand, but she
stopped me and made me talk to her, and she told me that it is our own
father, himself, that has a purse from the leprecaun."
"I'll not believe it," said her sister quickly. "If he had, he'd not be
making shoes all day by himself."
But Kathleen shook her head. "Granny Connor told me," she confided,
"that he has made a bargain with the fairy dwarf, and must make shoes
all day long, or go wandering over the mountains a-tinkerin'."
"What's that you're saying, Kathleen?" a voice behind them asked
suddenly, and the children jumped up in surprise.
A man with a leather apron tied round his waist was standing beside the
stone slab. It was hard to tell where he had come from so quickly, for
there had been no sign of any one near when Kathleen climbed to the top
of the hill.
"It is the father himself," said Mary Ellen.
The shoemaker seated himself on the big stone and drew his little
daughters down beside him; but it was such an unusual thing for him to
spare any time from his work that they sat awkwardly within the shelter
of his arms, waiting for him to speak.
Kathleen wondered how much of their talk he had heard, and whether he
would scold her for listening to old Granny Connor, and repeating the
tales to her little sister. She hung her head in silence, and Mary
Ellen felt as if the sunshine had been darkened by a cloud; but the
father's arms were around both little girls to hold them, although he
did not speak for some time.
"So you have been listening to old Granny Connor," he said at last.
Kathleen stole a look into his face, which always had a kindly smile
for everyone. "I did not mean any wrong," she said timidly. "I was
only wanting to find some way to help Mary Ellen."
"What would you be doing for Mary Ellen?" he asked.
"I'd like to find some way to get money so that she might go to Dublin
and have a doctor cure her eyes," said the child simply.
"And so you put a dish of stirabout where the little old shoemaker
might see it?" asked her father.
Both the children nodded their heads.
"How did you find out about the fairy dwarf?"
"Great-grandmother Connell and Grandmother Barry talk about him in
Gaelic. Sometimes Grandmother Barry tells us what they are saying,"
answered Kathleen. "And last night I asked old Granny Connor to tell me
more."
"What did she say?" asked her father.
"She said that people call you the leprecaun of Donegal, because of the
two rows of buttons in sevens on your green frieze coat."
The shoemaker laughed. "And where do they think I keep my money?" he
asked.
"They say you have it hidden in a purse that can never grow empty, and
that you keep it in the place where you mend your shoes," the child
replied, looking away from her father and off across the bog to the
purple mountains. "And no one knows where it is that you have your
work-bench," she added with a sigh.
"Look at me, Kathleen," said her father.
The child turned her gray eyes up to his, gray and honest like her own.
"Did you think when you put the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn
bush last night, that you would see me take it up?"
"Oh, no, no!" cried Kathleen. "Sure, I thought it would be the tiny
man, himself, who would find it."
"But it was myself who found it and took it away, when you were sound
asleep in your bed," said her father.
Kathleen jumped up in surprise, but Mary Ellen nodded her curly head,
as if she knew all the time that it was not the fairy.
"I saw Granny Connor's red cloak bobbing across the bog last night, as
I stood at my bench mending an old shoe," her father continued, "and
I watched you stop under the oak tree to talk with her. When I found
the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn bush I knew it was time for
me to put an end to these foolish notions about the good people, and
tell you the true words about Ireland's brave men and women. You should
be learning about Brian Boru, who drove the Danes out of Ireland, and
Daniel O'Connell, the greatest orator ever born on Irish soil. Those
are the men for you to be thinking of, instead of the leprecaun."
Kathleen looked at him earnestly. "It's not one word I'm believin' of
all they say about you, Father," she said.
"It is what they say about the fairy people that's not for you to
believe," he answered, and rising from the stone slab, he took a hand
of each of the children and led them across the top of the hill to a
grassy mound which was encircled by a ring of jagged rocks.