“You don’t think!” shouted the Ballad Singer. “Of course, you don’t think, you’ve nothing whatever to do it with!”
The crowd laughed. The poor young man bought a ballad.
“There now,” cried the Singer, “you’re the broth of a boy after all! Who’ll be after buying the next one off of me?”
His eyes lighted on the Twins. They shook in their shoes. “He’ll be clapping one of them on us next,” Larry said to
Eileen. “We’d best be going along;” and they crept out of the crowd just as he began to roar out a new song.
An old woman, with a white cap and a shawl over her head and a basket on her arm, smiled at them as they slipped by. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the Ballad Singer. “Melodious is the closed mouth,” she said.
“Indeed, ma’am, I’ve often heard my Mother say so,” Eileen answered politely. She curtsied to the old woman.
The old woman looked pleased. “Will you come along with me out of the sound of this—the both of you?” she said. “And I’ll take you to hear things that will keep the memory of Ireland green while there’s an Irishman left in the world.”
She led them to a raised platform some distance away. Over the platform there floated a white flag with a green harp on it. The old woman pointed to it. “Do you remember the old harp of Tara?” she said to the Twins. “’Tis nowhere else at all now but on the flag, but time was, long, long years ago, when the harp itself was played on Tara’s hill. And in those days there were poets to praise Ireland, and singers to sing her songs. And here they