“You’re right, son,” says he. “The old fort is my playground, but the smoke—the smoke from the mill chimneys—chases me away at times, and I come up here for an airing. And, anyway, you mustn’t forget that I’m king of the fairies of Leath-Chuinn,” says he.
“And so you are,” says I. “I clean forgot that. And do you be in Donegal often?” I asked.
“Once in a spell,” says he. “I travel the townlands in turn from Uisneach to Malin,” says he, “and it takes me a year and a day to do the round. I saw you at Scrabo in June last,” says he, “but you didn’t see me.”
“When was that, Shan?” says I, thinking.
“On the night of the twenty-third,” says he. “There wasn’t a fire lighting as far as I could see; and I could see from Divis to the Horns of Boirche, and from that over to Vannin.”
A GAP BETWEEN THE HILLS.
A shadow darkened his queer little face. “Ah,” says he, “they’re changed times. I was an old man when Setanta got his hero-name,[(3)] and look at me now,” says he, “clean past my time. No one knows me, barring yourself there. No one can talk to me; and at Scrabo it’s worse than here. They’re all planters there,” says he, “all strange, dour folk, long in the jaw and seldom-spoken, and with no heart in the old customs. Never a John’s-Fire lighted, never a dance danced, never a blessing said, never a . . . .”
He stopped, and I turned to answer . . . . but Shan was gone! Nothing in sight for miles—nothing living—only a magpie walking the road, and a toit of blue smoke from a cabin away down in the glen.