‘I dreamed that I was back in the lil’ islan’ an’ I was at a house with a thorn-tree at the chimley of it, and if I would dig there I would find a fortune. But I wouldn’ go, for it was only foolishness.’
Then he told him so plainly about the house that the first man knew it was his own, so he went back to the Island. When he got home he dug under the little thorn-tree by the chimney and he found an iron box. He opened the box and it was full of gold, and there was a letter in it, but he could not read the letter because it was in a foreign language. So he put it in the smithy window and challenged any scholar who went by to read it. None of them could, but at last one big boy said it was Latin and it meant:
‘Dig again and you’ll find another.’
So the man dug again under the thorn-tree, and what did he find but another iron box full of gold!
And from that day till the day of his death, that man used to open the front door before going to bed, and call out: ‘My blessing with the Little Fellows!’
II
Here is a true story that was told me by a man named James Moore when I was sitting with him by the fire one evening. He said:
‘I’m not much of a believer in most of the stories some ones is telling, but after all a body can’t help believing a thing they happen to see for themselves.
‘I remember one winter’s night—we were living in a house at the time that was pulled down for the building of the Big Wheel. It was a thatched house with two rooms, and a wall about six foot high dividing them, and from that it was open to the scrahs, or turfs, that were laid across the rafters. My Mother was sitting at the fire busy spinning, and my Father was sitting in the big chair at the end of the table taking a chapter for us out of the Manx Bible. My brother was busy winding a spool and I was working with a bunch of ling, trying to make two or three pegs.