THE LITTLE GREEN SHAMROCK
"Look, Kathleen," said Grandmother Barry, as the two children reached
the cottage door, "there's not another sod of peat in the house. Run
down to Farmer Flynn's to meet Danny, and tell him to bring some home
with him."
"I'll get the small creel Danny made for me, and bring some home
myself," said Kathleen, running into the cottage.
She was out again in a moment with two light wicker baskets. "Here's
your creel, too, Mary Ellen," she said, and hung it carefully over her
sister's shoulders.
Farmer Flynn lived a mile away on a big sheep farm, and Kathleen was
glad to be sent there for peat. She liked the work and bustle of the
farm life and always saw something new and interesting. Sometimes there
were baby lambs in the sheepfold, sometimes she saw a calf or a pair of
young donkeys, and then, best of all, there was the big flock of white
geese that belonged to the farmer's wife.
Kathleen loved to watch the geese, and she often told Mary Ellen funny
stories about them and their strange ways. "I'm going to ask Mrs. Flynn
to let me tend them for her next summer," she had confided to her
sister. "That will be one way to earn pennies for your eyes, darlin'."
Danny had worked for the farmer ever since the winter his father had
brought them all to live in Donegal. He had been a pale, shy little lad
at first, but now he was grown strong and sturdy, "able to do a day's
work with the best of them," he said proudly.
Farmer Flynn was proud of him, too, and often said, "I made of Dan
Barry the man that he is. He can thatch a roof or shear a sheep to-day
as well as I can myself."
And whenever little Kathleen caught the farmer's eye she would stand
straighter to hear him say, "There's a fine slip of a lass. She'll be a
good woman and a pride to you, Danny my boy."
The two children, with their creels on their backs, ran down the little
lane behind the house, followed the brook which chattered over the
rocks at the foot of the heather glen, crossed the bog and climbed the
hill, and then, at a quick turn of the path, there they were at the
peat-shed, and there was Danny standing at the door.
He was talking with a strange man who carried a bundle of blackthorn
sticks on his back; but just as the little girls came around the
corner Danny shook his head and turned to go into the shed.
"Oh, Mary Ellen," said Kathleen, "there's a peddler and he's trying to
sell Danny a shillalah."
"He'll not do it," said Mary Ellen. "Sure, Danny's saving every odd
shilling he earns. He has them in an old stocking, and he shook them
out and let me count them. He has near a pound."
"The peddler has a bundle of fine big sticks," said Kathleen, "but not
one of them is as thick and strong as the blackthorn Father has from
Great-grandfather Connell. I'm thinkin' Danny will have that some day."
The peddler smiled pleasantly at the two little girls as they drew
nearer, and put his hand so gently on Mary Ellen's curly head that
Kathleen took a liking to him at once.
"Where's your bit of green ribbon?" he asked with a laugh, looking at
the blue homespun dresses as if he thought they ought to be trimmed
with green.
Kathleen looked up into her brother's face to see if he knew what the
stranger meant by the question.
Before Danny could tell her the peddler added, "Mayhap you never heard
of our good St. Patrick in these parts," and he laughed again as if he
thought this question a better joke than the other.
"We know St. Patrick well," said Kathleen. "It's not more than a day's
journey from here to his mountain in County Mayo, where he drove all
the snakes out of Ireland into the sea."
"Then you should be wearing the green for him this day," said the
peddler, and he showed proudly a big knot of green ribbon on one of the
black-thorn sticks he carried, and a smaller knot on his worn coat.
"Tell the truth now, that you clean forgot this is the seventeenth of
March and St. Patrick's Day in the morning."
"Go away with you!" exclaimed Danny. "Where are your eyes, man? Don't
you see the green in my cap?"
Ireland is often called the Emerald Isle because of its setting of
green fields and hills, and the national color, which is green, is seen
everywhere. The English flag floats over the public buildings, but on
holidays and feast-days the green flag of Erin decorates the houses,
and on St. Patrick's Day every one wears a bit of green in memory of
the patron saint, and in honor of Ireland.
Danny, who had no green ribbon to wear to show his love for his
country, had tucked a sprig of green shamrock into his cap, but now the
tender leaves were wilted and hung drooping from their slender stems.
"It's St. Patrick's own little plant, and it was fresh and green
enough when I found it beside the brook this morning," he said, taking
off his cap and touching the withered leaves tenderly as if he loved
them.
"Come home with us now," he added, turning to the peddler, "and we'll
give you a good Irish welcome and a bite and a sup."
"I'll gladly go with you and the childer here," said the peddler
heartily. So he helped the little girls fill their creels with the sods
of dry peat and fastened a bit of shamrock on their dresses "for St.
Patrick and old Ireland." Danny finished up his work in a hurry, and
soon they were all on their way back along the lonely path. But it was
lonely no longer, for they sang as they marched along:
"There's a dear little plant that grows in our Isle,
'Twas Saint Patrick himself, sure, that set it;
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye often wet it.
It shines thro' the bog, thro' the brake, and the mireland,
And he called it the dear little shamrock of Ireland.
The dear little shamrock,
The sweet little shamrock,
The dear little, sweet little, shamrock of Ireland.