“That’s queer,” said the Man, “for it couldn’t be anything you’d not want, indeed to glory.”
“Well, he came back to Ireland on the head of it. I forget what was his name.”
“Was it Corcoran, or Tool, or Horan?”
“No, none of those names. He let on it was a lonely place, not fit for living people or dead people, he said; nothing but trees and streams and beasts and birds.”
“What beasts and birds?”
“Rabbits and badgers, the elephant, the dromedary, and all those ancient races; eagles and hawks and cuckoos and magpies. He wandered in a thick forest for nights and days like a flea in a great beard, and the beasts and the birds setting traps and hooks and dangers for a poor feller; the worst villains of all was the sheep.”
“The sheep! What could a sheep do then?” asked Kilsheelan.
“I don’t know the right of it, but you’d not believe me if I told you at all. If you went for the little swim you was not seen again.”
“I never heard the like of that in Roscommon.”
“Not another holy soul was in it but himself, and if he was taken with the thirst he would dip his hand in a stream that flowed with rich wine and put it to his lips, but if he did it turned into air at once and twisted up in a blue cloud. But grand wine to look at, he said. If he took oranges from a tree he could not bite them, they were chiny oranges, hard as a plate. But beautiful oranges to look at they were. To pick a flower it burst on you like a gun. What was cold was too cold to touch, and what was warm was too warm to swallow, you must throw it up, or die.”