“And as the last few words were spoken, he bent down his head, and his wives came along in single file to comply with his request, and before an hour was at an end, the Shah of Sperrispazuka was as bald as a snowball.”
“And wouldn’t it be easier for him to get a scissors and cut his hair and then distribute the locks, than to do anything so foolish,” said Micus.
“Wisha, I suppose it would,” said Padna. “But we all do foolish things when we are upset or excited. Well, when that part of the ceremony was all over, he ses, as the tears came to his eyes: ‘Ladies,’ ses he, ‘I have no more to say. My hour is come and I am ready to die. I have here with me on this table a cocktail which is a concoction of ground green bottles, prussic acid, and black beetles mixed with some cheese that was refused by the soldiers at the fall of Rome, and if that won’t send me to glory or perdition, may I never again drown one of you in the Canal for losing your beauty. However,’ ses he, ‘as a last request I would ask you to control your emotion. Let there be no singing of the National Anthem, no dancing of jigs, drinking or carousing, breaking of windows or skulls, or any other patriotic manifestation of public grief, until I am cold in my grave.’
“And then he lifted the fatal glass to his lips and drained its contents to the dregs, and so passed away the Shah of Sperrispazuka.”
“I feel like having a drink of something, myself,” said Micus.
“So do I,” said Padna. “I think we’ll stop when we’ll come to the Thrush and Magpie.”
The Mayor of Loughlaurna
“I wonder,” said Padna to Micus, as they wended their way along a lonely road after Mass on a Sunday morning, “if you ever heard tell of the black dog of Dooniskey that was gifted with seven senses, second sight, and an easy disposition, who followed my grandfather from the Bridge of the Hundred Arches to the Half Way House in Cromwell’s Glen on the night of the rising of ‘98. And how he caught a hold of the tail of his coat and dragged him from Owen Roe’s Cross to Cuchulain’s Boreen while the soldiers of England’s king were scouring the highways looking for some one to hang to the nearest finger post. And ’twas little they cared about any man, for one man looked as good as another to them, as he swung from a branch of a tree on the roadside or on a gibbet on the mountain top. And ’twas the selfsame black dog that saved him from the fairies of Galway on a dark windy night, when all the fairies of the world assembled in the Gap of Dunlow and made speeches in favour of women holding their tongues until the Judgment Day.”