“Maybe no use at all, as you are after saying,” answers Kate Ellen. “But let you pay heed to my words or there’s like to be a queer story told at the end of time.”
“’Tis the raving of death is on you, my poor creature,” says the woman of the house. “Sure you’ll be the beautiful corpse and every one of us paying our best respects to the same.”
Not a long after Kate Ellen was found in her own house and she lying dead on the floor. All the friends and neighbours gathered in for the wake, and what had they along with them only a beautiful jar of the best whiskey. They could not think to give in to the arrangement herself set out, that they’d remain in the place with a parching drouth for company.
The whole party were sitting round, and the jar of itself was in the middle of the floor. There came a noise and shouting on the street, like as if there was a powerful assembly of people without; and then a great battering on the windows. The door opened wide and the disturbance came into the kitchen, yet no person sitting there seen a heth that was not in it from the start. It was a queer gathering surely, for the friends and neighbours of the dead were silent and still, and the crying went round them on the air.
After a while didn’t the jar of whiskey let a lep out of it and begin for to roll on the floor. It was turned again and every drop teemed from it before the watching eyes. Yet no person seen the Good People were handling the drink and roving through the house. Then the disturbance passed from the kitchen, and away down the field, whatever was last for to go closed the door behind all.
A man stood up and he says: “This is no right gathering surely, and we would do well to be gone.”
With that another opens the door, and all made ready to depart. But when they looked out and seen the fort all thronged with lights they grew fearful to quit the house.
There was the powerfullest laughter and cheering down among the thorn trees of the circle, and there came a blast of the loveliest music—fiddles and pipes and voices singing.
“It is the Good People are having the whole beautiful wake down there beyond,” says a man. “Sure it is well known Kate Ellen was in league with themselves.”
“By the powers, it is more like a wedding they are conducting this hour,” says another.