“Once upon a time when cows were kine and when eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of Giants, a little green-coated boy with a stick in his hand and a bundle of bannocks over his shoulder went out on the rainy roads to push his fortune——”
III
“I’m going to marry a prince when I get very old, mother,” said Norah, interrupting the story-teller. “Prince Charming, for that’s what the girl did in the fairy stories when she grew up and got old at twenty or twenty-one. She was very poor at first and did nothing grand, but stopped at home, sweeping the floor and washing dishes. Then one night an old woman came down the chimney and told the girl to go to a dance, and the girl didn’t leave the dance in time and she lost one of her slippers and—Oh! it was a great story, mother. I read it in a book that Fergus had.”
“You were reading those books, too!”
“Just only that one, mother, and Fergus didn’t like it at all. He said it was very silly!”
“So it was, alannah, when it put thoughts like that into your head. Marry Prince Charming, and you going to be a holy nun! Nuns never marry like that.”
“Don’t they? Well, I’ll not marry a Prince Charming. I’ll marry one of the White Horsemen who are under the mountain of Aileach.”
“But nuns never marry anybody.”
“They don’t?” exclaimed Norah in a puzzled voice. Then with childish irrelevance: “But tell me the story about the White Horsemen of Aileach, mother. That’s the best story of all.”
“Long, long ago, when the red-haired strangers came to Ireland, they put nearly everybody to the sword; the old and young, the fit and feeble, and mind you, Ireland was in worse than a bad way,” the mother began, drifting easily into her narrative. “Ireland was a great place in those days with castles and kings. Kings, Norah! There were five of them; now there isn’t even one in the four corners of the country. But the red-haired strangers came like a storm from the sea and there was no standing before them. Red were their swords, red as their hair, but not with rust but with the blood of men, women, and children. And the chieftains of Ireland and the men of Ireland could make no stand against the enemy atall. ‘What am I to do?’ cried the Ardrigh, the top king of the whole country, speaking from the door of his own castle. ‘There will soon be no Ireland belonging to me, it will all go to the red-haired strangers.’ Then up spoke an old withered stick of a man, that nobody knew, and who had been listening to the words of the King.