There lived on the borders of the county of Tipperary a decently honest
couple whose names were Mick Flanigan and Judy Muldoon. These poor
people were blessed, as the saying is, with four children, all boys:
three of them were as fine, stout, healthy, good-looking children as
ever the sun shone upon; and it was enough to make any Irishman proud
of his countrymen to see them about one o’clock on a fine summer day
standing at their father’s cabin door, with their beautiful flaxen hair
hanging in curls about their heads, and their cheeks like two rosy
apples, and a big laughing potato smoking in their hands. A proud man
was Mick of these fine children, and a proud woman, too, was Judy;
and reason enough they had to be so. But it was far otherwise with the
remaining one, which was the third eldest: he was the most miserable,
ugly, ill-conditioned brat you ever saw: he was so ill-thriven that he
never was able to stand alone, or to leave the cradle; he had long,
shaggy, matted, curled hair, as black as the soot; his face was of a
greenish-yellow colour; his eyes were like two burning coals, and were
for ever moving in his head, as if they had had the perpetual motion.
Before he was a twelvemonth old he had a mouthful of great teeth; his
hands were like kite’s claws, and his legs were no thicker than the
handle of a whip, and about as straight as a reaping hook: to make the
matter worse, he had the appetite of a cormorant, and the whinge, and
the yelp, and the screech, and the yowl was never out of his mouth.
The neighbours all suspected that he was something not right,
particularly as it was observed, when people, as they do in the
country, got about the fire and began to talk of religion and good
things, the brat, as he lay in the cradle, which his mother generally
put near the fire-place that he might be snug, used to sit up, as they
were in the middle of their talk, and begin to bellow as if the devil
was in him in right earnest: this, as I said, led the neighbours to
think that all was not right, and there was a general consultation
held one day about what would be best to do with him. Some advised one
thing, and some another; at last one spoke of sending for the priest,
who was a very holy and a very learned man, to see it. To this Judy of
course had no objection, but one thing or another always prevented her
doing so, and the upshot of the business was that the priest never saw
him.
Things went on in the old way for some time longer. The brat continued
yelping and yowling, and eating more than his three brothers put
together, and playing all sorts of unlucky tricks, for he was mighty
mischievously inclined; till it happened one day that Tim Carrol, the
blind piper, going his rounds, called in and sat down by the fire to
have a bit of chat with the woman of the house. So after some time,
Tim, who was no churl of his music, yoked on the pipes, and began
to bellows away in high style; when the instant he began, the young
fellow, who had been lying as still as a mouse in his cradle, sat up,
began to grin and twist his ugly face, to swing about his long tawny
arms, and to kick out his crooked legs, and to show signs of great
glee at the music. At last nothing would serve him but he should get
the pipes into his own hands, and to humour him his mother asked Tim
to lend them to the child for a minute. Tim, who was kind to children,
readily consented; and as Tim had not his sight, Judy herself brought
them to the cradle, and went to put them on him; but she had no
occasion, for the youth seemed quite up to the business. He buckled
on the pipes, set the bellows under one arm, and the bag under the
other, worked them both as knowingly as if he had been twenty years
at the business, and lilted up “Sheela na guira” in the finest style
imaginable.
All were in astonishment: the poor woman crossed herself. Tim, who, as
I said before, was dark, and did not well know who was playing, was
in great delight; and when he heard that it was a little prechan not
five years old, that had never seen a set of pipes in his life, he
wished the mother joy of her son; offered to take him off her hands
if she would part with him, swore he was born a piper, a natural
_genus_, and declared that in a little time more, with the help of a
little good instruction from himself, there would not be his match in
the whole county. The poor woman was greatly delighted to hear all
this, particularly as what Tim said about natural genus quieted some
misgivings that were rising in her mind, lest what the neighbours said
about his not being right might be too true; and it gratified her
moreover to think that her dear child (for she really loved the whelp)
would not be forced to turn out and beg, but might earn decent bread
for himself. So when Mick came home in the evening from his work, she
up and told him all that had happened, and all that Tim Carrol had
said; and Mick, as was natural, was very glad to hear it, for the
helpless condition of the poor creature was a great trouble to him. So
next day he took the pig to the fair, and with what it brought set off
to Clonmel, and bespoke a brand-new set of pipes of the proper size for
him.
In about a fortnight the pipes came home, and the moment the chap in
his cradle laid eyes on them, he squealed with delight and threw up his
legs, and bumped himself in his cradle, and went on with a great many
comical tricks; till at last, to quiet him, they gave him the pipes,
and he immediately set to and pulled away at “Jig Polthog,” to the
admiration of all that heard him.
The fame of his skill on the pipes soon spread far and near, for there
was not a piper in the next six counties could come at all near him in
“Old Moderagh rue,” or “The Hare in the Corn,” or “The Fox-Hunter’s
Jig,” or “The Rakes of Cashel,” or “The Piper’s Maggot,” or any of
the fine Irish jigs which make people dance whether they will or no:
and it was surprising to hear him rattle away “The Fox Hunt”; you’d
really think you heard the hounds giving tongue and the terriers
yelping always behind, and the huntsman and the whippers-in cheering or
correcting the dogs; it was, in short, the very next thing to seeing
the hunt itself.
The best of him was he was noways stingy of his music, and many a merry
dance the boys and girls of the neighbourhood used to have in his
father’s cabin; and he would play up music for them, that they said
used as it were to put quicksilver in their feet; and they all declared
they never moved so light and so airy to any piper’s playing that ever
they danced to.
But besides all his fine Irish music, he had one queer tune of his
own, the oddest that ever was heard; for the moment he began to play
it everything in the house seemed disposed to dance; the plates and
porringers used to jingle on the dresser, the pots and pot-hooks used
to rattle in the chimney, and people used even to fancy they felt
the stools moving from under them; but, however it might be with the
stools, it is certain that no one could keep long sitting on them, for
both old and young always fell to capering as hard as ever they could.
The girls complained that when he began this tune it always threw them
out in their dancing, and that they never could handle their feet
rightly, for they felt the floor like ice under them, and themselves
every moment ready to come sprawling on their backs or their faces. The
young bachelors that wished to show off their dancing and their new
pumps, and their bright red or green and yellow garters, swore that it
confused them so that they never could go rightly through the _heel
and toe_, or _cover the buckle_, or any of their best steps, but felt
themselves always all bedizzied and bewildered, and then old and young
would go jostling and knocking together in a frightful manner; and when
the unlucky brat had them all in this way, whirligigging about the
floor, he’d grin and chuckle and chatter, for all the world like Jacko
the monkey when he has played off some of his roguery.
The older he grew the worse he grew, and by the time he was six years
old there was no standing the house for him; he was always making his
brothers burn or scald themselves, or break their shins over the pots
and stools. One time, in harvest, he was left at home by himself, and
when his mother came in she found the cat a-horseback on the dog, with
her face to the tail, and her legs tied round him, and the urchin
playing his queer tune to them; so that the dog went barking and
jumping about, and puss was mewing for the dear life, and slapping her
tail backwards and forwards, which, as it would hit against the dog’s
chaps, he’d snap it and bite, and then there was the philliloo. Another
time, the farmer with whom Mick worked, a very decent, respectable man,
happened to call in, and Judy wiped a stool with her apron, and invited
him to sit down and rest himself after his walk. He was sitting with
his back to the cradle, and behind him was a pan of blood, for Judy
was making pig’s puddings. The lad lay quite still in his nest, and
watched his opportunity till he got ready a hook at the end of a piece
of twine, which he contrived to fling so handily that it caught in
the bob of the man’s nice new wig, and soused it in the pan of blood.
Another time his mother was coming in from milking the cow, with the
pail on her head: the minute he saw her he lilted up his infernal tune
and the poor woman, letting go the pail, clapped her hands aside and
began to dance a jig, and tumbled the milk all atop of her husband,
who was bringing in some turf to boil the supper. In short there would
be no end to telling all his pranks, and all the mischievous tricks he
played.
Soon after, some mischances began to happen to the farmer’s cattle. A
horse took the staggers, a fine veal calf died, and some of his sheep;
the cows began to grow vicious, and to kick down the milk pails, and
the roof of one end of the barn fell in; and the farmer took it into
his head that Mick Flanigan’s unlucky child was the cause of all the
mischief. So one day he called Mick aside and said to him: “Mick, you
see things are not going on with me as they ought, and to be plain with
you, Mick, I think that child of yours is the cause of it. I am really
falling away to nothing with fretting, and I can hardly sleep on my bed
at night for thinking of what may happen before the morning. So I’d be
glad if you’d look out for work somewhere else; you’re as good a man as
any in the country, and there’s no fear but you’ll have your choice of
work.”
To this Mick replied, that he was sorry for his losses, and still
sorrier that he and his should be thought to be the cause of them; that
for his own part he was not quite easy in his mind about that child,
but he had him and so must keep him. And he promised to look out for
another place at once.
So Mick gave out that he was about to leave his work at John Riordan’s,
and immediately a farmer who lived a couple of miles off, and who
wanted a ploughman (the last one having just left him), came up to
Mick, and offered him a house and garden, and work all the year round.
Mick, who knew him to be a good employer, immediately closed with him;
so it was agreed the farmer should send a car to take his little bit of
furniture, and that he should remove on the following Thursday.
When Thursday came, the car came according to promise, and Mick loaded
it, and put the cradle with the child and his pipes on the top, and
Judy sat beside it to take care of him, lest he should tumble out. They
drove the cow before them, the dog followed, but the cat was of course
left behind; and the other three children went along the road picking
skee-hories (haws) and blackberries, for it was a fine day towards the
latter end of harvest.
They had to cross a river, but as it ran through a bottom between two
high banks, you did not see it till you were close on it. The young
fellow was lying pretty quiet in the bottom of the cradle, till they
came to the head of the bridge, when hearing the roaring of the water
(for there was a great flood in the river, as it had rained heavily
for the last two or three days), he sat up in his cradle and looked
about him; and the instant he got a sight of the water and found they
were going to take him across it, oh! how he did bellow and how he did
squeal!--no rat caught in a snap-trap ever sang out equal to him.
“Whisht! a lanna,” said Judy, “there’s no fear of you; sure it’s only
over the stone bridge we’re going.”
“Bad luck to you, you old rip!” cried he, “what a pretty trick you’ve
played me, to bring me here!” And still he went on yelling, and the
further they got on the bridge the louder he yelled, till at last Mick
could hold out no longer, so giving him a skelp with the whip he had
in his hand, “You brat!” he said, “will you never stop bawling? A body
can’t hear their ears for you.”
The moment he felt the thong of the whip, he leaped up in the cradle,
clapped the pipes under his arm, gave a most wicked grin at Mick, and
jumped clean off the cart over the side of the bridge down into the
water.
“O my child, my child!” shouted Judy, “he’s gone for ever from me.”
[Illustration: Sitting cross-legged on the top of a wave]
Mick and the rest of the children ran to the other side of the bridge,
and looking over, they saw him coming out from under the arch of the
bridge, sitting cross-legged on the top of a white-headed wave, and
playing away on the pipes as merrily as if nothing had happened. The
river was running very rapidly, so he was whirled away at a great rate;
but he played as fast, ay and faster, than the river ran; and though
they set off as hard as they could along the bank, yet, as the river
made a sudden turn round the hill, about a hundred yards below the
bridge, by the time they got there he was out of sight, and no one ever
laid eyes on him more; but the general opinion was that he went home
with the pipes to his own relations, the good people, to make music for
them.
* * * * *
“They must have been well-rid of such an uncomfortable child,” said
King Oberon, though it was noticed that he and most of the fairies were
laughing to think of the astonishment which must have been shown by
Mick and Judy when the young piper went plump over into the river off
the cart-load of furniture.
They were still laughing when a voice exclaimed,
“Mine is a short story with a long name.”
[Illustration: Jumped clean off the cart over the bridge down into the
water]
At once the laughter stopped and all turned to the stool on which a
quaint Gnome was sitting with one leg over the knee of the other and
with his hands clasping his foot was rocking backwards and forwards
until he saw that everybody’s attention was directed to him, when he
went on to say:
“Sometimes when fairy-folk who are not so good as they might be, try
to do harm to people by pretending to do them good, they are not so
successful, as you will learn from my tale of
[Illustration: The gnome]
[Illustration: The miller’s daughter]