“Och! Ullagone!” cried Billy. “What’ll we do now! Och! you cruel, unnatural beast as to clift yourself, when you knowed as well as myself that we couldn’t do without you at all! For sure enough now the children will be crying for the drop of milk to their potatoes!”
Such was Billy’s lament, as with a sorrowful heart he made the best of his way to the Horses’ Glen. “Anyway,” thought he, “I’ll skin the carcass, and the meat will make fine broth for the children.”
It took him some time to find where the poor beast was lying, but at last he did find her, all smashed to pieces at the foot of a big rock. And he began to skin her as fast as he could, but having no one to help him, by the time the job was finished, the sun had gone down.
Now Billy was so intent on his work that he did not perceive the lapse of time, but when he raised his head and saw the darkness coming on, and listened to the murmuring wind, all the tales he had ever heard of the Pooka, the Banshee, and Little Redcap, the mischievous Fairy, floated through his mind, and made him want to get home as fast as possible. He snatched a tuft of grass, wiped his knife, and seized hold of the hide.
It so happened that in the little tuft of grass with which Billy wiped his knife was a Four-leaved Shamrock. And whether from grief or fear, Billy, instead of throwing away the grass, put it in his pocket along with his knife. And when he stood up and turned to take a last look at the carcass he saw, instead of his poor cow, a little old Curmudgeon sitting bolt upright, looking as if he had just been skinned alive!
“Billy Thompson! Billy Thompson,” cried the little old fellow in a shrill, squeaking voice. “You spalpeen! You’d better come back with my skin! A pretty time of day we’ve come to, when a gentleman like me cannot take a bit of sleep but a rude fellow must come and strip the hide off him! But you’d better bring it back, Billy Thompson, or I’ll make you remember how you dared to skin me, you spalpeen!”
Now Billy, though he was greatly frightened, remembered that he had a black-handled knife in his pocket, and whoever has that, ’tis said, can look all the Fairies of the world in the face without quaking. So he put his hand on the knife, and began backing away, with the skin under his arm.
“Why, then, your honour,” said he, “if it’s this skin you’re wanting, you must know it’s the skin of my poor cow that was clifted yonder there. And sore and sorrowful the children will be for the want of her little drop of milk!”
“Why, then, if that’s what you’d be after, Billy, my boy,” said the little fellow, at the same time jumping before him with the speed of a greyhound, “do you think I’m such a fool as to let you walk off with my skin? If you don’t drop it in the turn of a hand, you’ll sup sorrow!”
“Nonsense!” said Billy, drawing out his black-handled knife, and holding it so the little man could see it. “Never a one of me will let you have this skin till you give me back my cow. I know well enough she was not clifted at all, at all, and that you and the other Curmudgeons have got hold of her!”