Etta Blaisdell McDonald

“ Danny was waiting for them at the boat landing, and Patrick made haste to gather his party into a boat and row them out upon the blue water, so that they could watch the happy crowds coming and going along the shore. Kathleen looked back across the fields and saw hundreds of men, women, and children, all dressed in their very best, trooping toward the lake, carrying lunch-baskets for their May-day picnic on Lough Gara.
“Oh, Molly darling,” she whispered, “it’s better than anything we ever thought of in Donegal. It’s a wish come true.” ”

“ 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.
[vi]
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. ”

“ There was a happy ending to Kathleen’s hard day’s work in the bog, when, sitting among the flowers of the old rath, with the soft wind blowing through the trees over their heads, Bee told them about the time when the men of Ireland were famous workers in metal. ”

“ Then she left the little girls to play by themselves, and Mary Ellen lay on the grass among the spring blossoms while Kathleen sat down beside her to tell her a long story.
“This is a truly fairy rath,” she began, “and Cousin Bee’s farm is the fortune fairy’s palace.”
And Cousin Bee, putting her cream into the churn, said to herself, “Sure, the farm is big enough to keep both the children for awhile. I’ll let Kathleen stay on with Mary Ellen till her Aunt Hannah sends for her again.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Grandmother Barry, who talked often in Gaelic about the fairies with Great-grandmother Connell, had told the children many times not to play too near the fairy rath.
“There be many such mounds scattered over the hills and glens of ould Ireland,” she said. “The good people live in them and may do harm to childer that make too bold with their haunts.”
“They must be bad people if they would do harm to little Mary Ellen,” Kathleen replied.
“Hush, child!” her grandmother reproved her. “They are like all men and women, liker to do good if they be called good.” ”

“ He tosses the blocks to his helper who stands waiting for them, and who carries them to a barrow or creel. When the barrow is filled it is wheeled away to higher ground where the blocks of turf are stacked up and dried in the sun and wind.
Kathleen begged to be Danny’s helper, and on the morning when he began cutting in the bog she stood beside him. As fast as he filled her arms with the peat she trudged sturdily away and stacked it up to dry, just as Patrick had taught her. ”

“ Danny asked. “That is the way I used to gather it for Farmer Flynn. See the big pile of it they have; and there is one man loading it into a cart.”
“And look, Kathleen, there’s a castle up there on the rocks,” said Feena, turning to point out to her cousin the gray towers of an ancient castle perched high on a rugged cliff.
“That’s Dunluce Castle,” Uncle Tom told them. “It has stood there a long time, and could tell many a tale of old Irish wars.”
“I’ll tell you a tale about it now; it’s easy to make up stories about castles like that,” Feena whispered to Kathleen. ”

“ CHAPTER V 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. ”

“ Kathleen stood still, hardly daring to breathe, but Mary Ellen stepped boldly into the tiny room. “It’s the father himself,” she said, and Kathleen followed her sister, astonished indeed to find her father sitting on his work-bench and gently touching the strings of a small harp.
“I’m glad it wasn’t the fairy music we heard,” she said, after the surprise was over. “Grandma Barry says a spell is cast over him that hears it, and after the spell is taken off he pines away and dies in a year and a day.” ”

“ After that the maiden followed him gladly for love of the music.
“It was the first music ever heard in all Ireland, but since that day we have had harpers from one end of the land to the other. ’Tis a wonderful country for music, and we put the harp on our green flag to show that we’re proud of the sweet songs of Erin.”
Kathleen sighed when the story was finished. “I wish it were the days of gods and giants and beautiful maidens now,” she said.
“I’d wish for the days of the harpers and story-tellers,” said Mary Ellen wistfully. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of couples there’s a many,
At Malone’s in old Kilkenny,
And we’d like to count you two, too, at Malone’s!
Never did two travellers receive a noisier or heartier greeting than the ten young Malones gave to Danny and Kathleen on the night of their arrival from Tonroe. From twenty-four-year-old Tara to three-year-old [79] Victoria there was nothing but bright faces, merry voices, and outstretched hands. ”

“ It is from these ancient Gaelic books that we learn much about the life and customs of the people.”
“There were books of laws for the kings and the people, too,” said the peddler.
“Did the kings have to obey laws?” asked Kathleen, who supposed kings did just as they chose.
“That they did,” replied the peddler. “There was a law that no man could rule at Tara who was not perfect in his looks; so when Cormac mac Art lost an eye he had to give up being king.” ”

“ Danny waited until they heard the baying of the hounds and the halloo of the riders, and then he went on with his work.
“They may kill harmless animals if they like; but I’d rather be able to hit your hands with a brick of turf,” he said, suiting the action to the word, “than to hit a handsome deer with a bullet.”
Kathleen’s thoughts were busy with the hunters for a long time and she asked her brother endless questions about them,—Where did they live? What did they do with the deer? How did the horses go over the stone walls and fences? ”

“ Danny answered, stopping a moment to look at the tiny green sloes on the blackthorn hedge.
“What do they hunt?” she asked.
“Sometimes they hunt a deer; and sometimes it’s foxes or rabbits they are after,” he replied.
“If they are hunting a deer I hope they won’t catch it,” Kathleen said earnestly.
But when the sound of the hunting-horn rang merrily across the bog, from the direction of Uncle Barney’s house in Killaraght, she was full of excitement over the chase.
“Listen!” she cried, standing with outstretched arms to catch the brick of turf Danny was ready to throw to her ”

“ She and Mary Ellen had been to the old rath after flowers for the May-baskets, and were returning to the cottage, where Cousin Bee was waiting to take them to Lough Gara for the May-day picnic. A breeze was scattering the petals from the trees, which were “as white with bloom as the snow of one night,” and Mary Ellen turned her face to the sky so that she, too, might feel the soft shower.
“Sure, nature has a cute way,” Kathleen repeated. “When a cloud hides the bright sun and you’d think an Irish rain was going to fall the next minute, the wind gives a laugh and sends a snowstorm instead ”

“ A prince came riding by on a horse as black as night. He saw the princess standing at the tower window, looking out over the sea, and he fell in love with her sad, sweet face. So he rode down to the cave where the Witch of the Sea lived all alone,—”
“Here we are, at the end of our car ride,” her father interrupted. “Now for a walk along the shore and a climb over the rocks of the Causeway.”
The Giant’s Causeway is a low rocky pier which stretches out into the ocean about six hundred feet, gradually sinking below the waves. ”

“ Once she saw a flash of scarlet-coated riders far beyond the bog, the horses at a gallop; and again a stray hound bounded past her, within a few yards of the mound where she was stacking the turf.
A little before noon Danny sent her home for her dinner. “You are too little to work as steadily [74] as you did yesterday,” he said kindly. “Uncle Barney and Patrick are coming down this afternoon, and they are going to bring two more to help, so the work will go faster.”
So Kathleen left her work and hurried down the road, little dreaming that she herself was soon to take part in the hunt. ”

“ 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 [8] soil. Those are the men for you to be thinking of, instead of the leprecaun. ”

“ 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," [4] 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. ”

“ To-morrow is market-day. Ask Kathleen to go with you down through the city streets to see the old peddler women in their bright shawls, selling their wares in the little booths and tents. That will be a strange sight to the child, after lonely Donegal; and she’ll like it better than battles.”
After supper that night she took Kathleen within the cosy shelter of her arms and talked with her about little Mary Ellen and her life in Tonroe. ”

“ Danny explained.
“Then she’ll like to ride over to Boyle with Bee on market days,” said Patrick kindly; “there’s houses a-plenty there. But the plains of Boyle will look flat enough to her after the mountains of her own county.”
“Oh, Mary Ellen, come here!” cried Kathleen, who had gone to the back door for another look at the village. “There’s a church steeple far away beyond a hilleen, and there’s the fine National School building that Grandma Barry used to tell us about. It’s on the little hill, and I can see it every time I look out at the door. But the mountains are far away. ”

“ Belike by Friday they will begin to cut the turf. It is better than Donegal, even if Father is not with us.”
“Oh, Mary Ellen, I doubt they’ll begin cutting out peat on a Friday. It will bring them bad luck.” ”

“ Come into the house and we’ll see what Bee has been baking the morn. Then, after the hounds are well out of the way, we’ll open the barn door and see the deer take himself off to the woods.”
That afternoon, when they were all working in the bog, Kathleen heard Patrick telling Danny and Uncle Barney the story of her deer hunt. “There was Tim Keefe, on his old nag, with his pipe in his mouth,” he said, “thinking he was the grand whipper-in, and would get the pound for himself.” ”

“ Danny answered carelessly. “But if they needed thirty men to catch one poor deer, they could find them easily. There’s the surgeon from the hospital in Boyle, for one. Bee says he is over here to-day for the hunting.”
“The surgeon from the Boyle hospital,” Kathleen repeated, under her breath.
“Oh, if I could just see him, and tell him about Mary Ellen’s eyes!” she thought. “Perhaps he could make her well before I have to go to Kilkenny, if I only had the money.” ”