“‘Sweet is your hand in a pitcher of honey, my jewel,’ says I, though all the time I thought within myself that I don’t much trust you; but there was no help, so I caught the gander by the leg, and away I and the other geese flew after him as fast as hops.
“We flew, and we flew, and we flew, until we came right over the wide ocean. I knew it well, for I saw Cape Clear to my right hand, sticking up out of the water. ‘Ah! my lord,’ said I to the goose, for I thought it best to keep a civil tongue in my head, any way, ‘fly to land if you please.’ ‘It is impossible, you see, Dan,’ said he, ‘for a while, because, you see, we are going to Arabia.’ ‘To Arabia!’ said I; ‘that’s surely some place in foreign parts, far away. Oh! Mr. Goose: why, then, to be sure, I’m a man to be pitied among you.’ ‘Whist, whist, you fool,’ said he, ‘hold your tongue; I tell you Arabia is a very decent sort of place, as like West Carbery as one egg is like another, only there is a little more sand there.’
“Just as we were talking, a ship hove in sight, scudding so beautiful before the wind; ‘Ah! then, sir,’ said I, ‘will you drop me on the ship if you please?’ ‘We are not fair over her,’ said he. ‘We are,’ said I. ‘We are not,’ said he; ‘If I dropped you now you would go splash into the sea.’ ‘I would not,’ says I; ‘I know better than that, for it is just clean under us, so let me drop now, at once.’ ‘If you must, you must,’ said he; ‘there, take your own way,’ and he opened his claw, and, ‘deed, he was right—sure enough, I came down plump into the very bottom of the salt sea! Down to the very bottom I went, and I gave myself up then for ever, when a whale walked up to me, scratching himself after his night’s sleep, and looked me full in the face, and never the word did he say, but, lifting up his tail, he splashed me all over again with the cold, salt water till there wasn’t a dry stitch on my whole carcase; and I heard somebody saying—’twas a voice I knew, too—‘Get up, you drunken brute, off o’ that’; and with that I woke up, and there was Judy with a tub full of water which she was splashing all over me—for, rest her soul! though she was a good wife, she never could bear to see me in drink, and had a bitter hand of her own. ‘Get up,’ said she again: ‘and of all places in the parish would no place sarve your turn to lie down upon but under the ould walls of Carrigaphooka? an uneasy resting I am sure you had of it.’ And sure enough I had: for I was fairly bothered out of my senses with eagles, and men of the moons, and flying ganders, and whales driving me through bogs, and up to the moon, and down to the bottom of the green ocean. If I was in drink ten times over, long would it be before I’d lie down in the same spot again, I know that.”
Adventures of Gilla na Chreck an Gour.
(THE FELLOW IN THE GOAT SKIN).
From “Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts.”
By Patrick Kennedy (1801-1873).
(Told in the Wexford Peasant Dialect.)