"Oh, it's not easy to say!" he replied, evasively. "Some say she is, and more say she isn't."
Here was a mystery with a vengeance.
"Perhaps you can tell me, at least, what is the Phoul-a-Phooka?"
The landlord gave me a half-startled look.
"The blessin' of God be about us!" he ejaculated, piously. "I wonder now, ma'am dear, why you would care to be inquirin' into things of the sort."
"But what sort of thing is it?" I persisted. "Something, I am sure, which we do not have in America, where we claim to have so much. Our steam-whistles and the roar of our factories have driven from us what Ireland has kept—her legends and her poetry."
The man did not seem to relish this style of conversation, or, perhaps, to understand it; for he answered somewhat shortly:
"The Phoul-a-Phooka is a wild horse, the devil himself takin' that shape; and woe to any one whom he gets upon his back!"
"Oh, it can't be to see a wild horse that this child is going!" I remonstrated.