“How are you to-day, father; are you anything better?”
“I got a good sleep,” said he, “but I’m not a taste better than I was last night; and indeed, if you’d believe me, I think there’s something inside of me running back and forwards.”
“Arrah, that can’t be,” says the daughter, “but it’s a cold you got and you lying out on the fresh grass; and if you’re not better in the evening we’ll send for the doctor.”
He was saying then that there was a pain on him, but that he did not know rightly what place the pain was in. He was in the same way in the evening, and they had to send for the doctor, and when the doctor was not coming quickly there was great fright on him. The people of the house were doing all they could to put courage in him.
The doctor came at last, and he asked what was on him, and he said again that there was something like a birdeen leaping in his stomach. The doctor stripped him and examined him well, but saw nothing out of the way with him. He put his ear to his side and to his back, but he heard nothing, though the poor man himself was calling out: “Now! now! don’t you hear it? Now, aren’t you listening to it jumping?” But the doctor could perceive nothing at all, and he thought at last that the man was out of his senses, and that there was nothing the matter with him.
He said to the woman of the house when he came out, that there was nothing on her husband, but that he believed himself to be sick, and that he would send her medicine the next day for him, that would give him a good sleep and settle the heat of his body. He did that, and the poor man swallowed all the medicines and got another great sleep, but when he awoke in the morning he was worse than ever, but he said he did not hear the thing jumping inside him any longer.
They sent for the doctor again, and he came; but he was able to do nothing. He left other medicines with them, and said he would come again at the end of a week to see him. The poor man got no relief from all that the doctor left with him, and when he came again he found him to be worse than before; but he was not able to do anything, and he did not know what sort of sickness was on him. “I won’t be taking your money from you any more,” says he to the woman of the house, “because I can do nothing in this case, and as I don’t understand what’s on him, I won’t let on[25] to be understanding it. I’ll come to see him from time to time, but I’ll take no money from you.”
The woman of the house could hardly keep in her anger. Scarcely ever was the doctor gone till she gathered the people of the house round her and they took counsel. “That doctor braduch,” says she, “he’s not worth a traneen; do you know what he said—that he wouldn’t take any money from me any more, and he said himself he knew nothing about anything; suf on him, the behoonuch, he’ll cross this threshold no more; we’ll go to the other doctor; if he’s farther from us, itself, I don’t mind that, we must get him.” Everybody in the house was on one word with her, and they sent for the other doctor; but when he came he had no better knowledge than the first one had, only that he had knowledge enough to take their money. He came often to see the sick man, and every time he would come he would have every name longer than another to give his sickness; names he did not understand himself, nor no one else, but he had them to frighten the people.
They remained that way for two months, without anyone knowing what was on the poor man; and when that doctor was doing him no good they got another doctor, and then another doctor, until there was not a doctor in the county, at last, that they had not got, and they lost a power of money over them, and they had to sell a portion of their cattle to get money to pay them.
They were that way for half a year, keeping doctors with him, and the doctors giving him medicines, and the poor man that was stout and well-fed before, getting bare and thin, until at last there was not an ounce of flesh on him, but the skin and the bones only.