Beside the Fire: A collection of Irish Gaelic folk stories

by Unknown

I am a boccugh who goes on one foot, I will travel airily,

I will buy frize in Kilkenny for the breeches(?)

I will put a well-ordered prepared coat and yellow buckles on my one foot,

And isn’t it good, my way of getting food and clothes since my feet lost their walk.

There is no boccuch or bagman from Sligo to Kinsale

And from Ballina to Ballybwee (Athboy) in Meath,

That I have not under high rent to me—a crown every quarter from them—

Or I’d pound their bones small with a green oak stick.

The memory of these formidable guests is nearly vanished, and the boccuch in our story is only a feeble old beggarman. I fancy this tale of evicting the alt-pluachra family from their human abode is fathered upon a good many people as well as upon the father of the present MacDermot. [Is the peasant belief in the Alp-Luachra the originating idea of the well-known Irish Rabelaisian 14th century tale “The Vision of McConglinny?”—A.N.]