At daylight the old man came to himself, and he lying on the field by the big lake. He was a long journey from home, and he was weary travelling round the water and over the hills to his own place. But the worst of all was the sacks of gold: didn’t every bit of the fortune melt away and leave him poor, the way he was before he came in with the Good People.
II
THE COW OF A WIDOW OF BREFFNY
In the ancient times a man the name of M’Gauran ruled in these parts. He was a cruel tyrant surely and prouder than the High King of Ireland or O’Rourke was a Prince in Breffny. He conceited for to build a house would stand to the end of time, a stronghold past the art of man to overthrow or the fury of the wind to batter down. He gave out that all the bullocks in his dominions were to be slaughtered and mortar wet with the blood of them. Evenly the cows were not spared at the latter end, the way a powerful lamentation went up from the poor of the world were looking on the lonesome fields.
You that are young will be thinking the blackness of his spirit and the cruelty of his heart brought a curse on him to rot the flesh off his living bones. You will be expectant of the story of a king, and he walking the provinces of Ireland a skeleton and a warning to the eyes of man. But the aged and wise have understanding to know of the tribulation laid out for the good and the just, they putting their sorrows over them in this world where the evil have prosperity. The like will be enduring for a short space only, and a queer fate waits the wicked in the age-long hours of eternity. Proud is the tyrant and wealthy till they set him in the clay: humbled with fear is his spirit at the journey’s end.
There was a widow woman had her little dwelling convenient to where M’Gauran was building his castle. Gold she had none, nor evenly a coin was of silver, one cow only was her riches on the earth. (And surely them that had heart to molest her like would be robbing the dead of the raiment is with them in the grave.) Herself was more nor horrid lonesome the day she seen the creature driven from her by a man of the chiefs, he having a lengthy knife in his hand.
At the fall of night a traveller came to the poor woman’s cabin door. He was a bent, aged man with a sorrowful countenance on him, and the garments did cover him were rags. She invited him within, giving him the kindly welcome, and she set out what food was in the place for his refreshment.
“It is destroyed I am with a parching drouth is splitting my gullet,” says he, “and I walking the mountainy ways since the screech of dawn. The sun was splitting the bushes at the noon of day, and the fury of it was eating into my skin. But no person took compassion on me at all.”