Thinking the child might be scared at the commotion, herself took a light in her hand and went over to his bed.
“Is all well with you, sonny?” says she, for she had a fashion of speaking with him, evenly if it was no answers he’d give.
But the little fellow was not in it at all, he was away travelling the world with the Fairy horsemen were after coming for him.
The whole disturbance died out as speedy and sudden as it came. The music dwined in the far distance and the wind was still as the dawn of a summer’s day. Sure it was no right tempest at all but an old furl blast the Good People had out for their diversion.
The child was never restored to Nallagh and the wife. The fairies left them in peace from that out; they never heard the music on the distant hills, nor the regiments of horsemen passing by. The whole time it was lonesome they’d be, and they looking on the empty chair where the strange child delighted to sit silent, watching the turf was glowing red.
VIII
THE ENCHANTED HARE
There was a strong farmer one time and he had nine beautiful cows grazing on the best of land. Surely that was a great prosperity, and you’d be thinking him the richest man in all the countryside. But it was little milk he was getting from his nine lovely cows, and no butter from the milk. They’d be churning in that house for three hours or maybe for five hours of a morning, and at the end of all a few wee grains of butter, the dead spit of spiders’ eggs, would be floating on the top of the milk. Evenly that much did not remain to it, for when herself ran the strainer in under them they melted from the churn.