“Ah, now, look! there they are!” cried Donald, as he pointed to the clouds in the lake.
“Where? where?” cried Hudden, and “Don’t be greedy!” cried Dudden, as he jumped his hardest to be up first with the fat cattle. But if he jumped first, Hudden wasn’t long behind.
They never came back. Maybe they got too fat, like the cattle. As for Donald O’Neary, he had cattle and sheep all his days to his heart’s content.
The Tail
There was a shepherd once who went out to the hill to look after his sheep. It was misty and cold, and he had much trouble to find them. At last he had them all but one; and after much searching he found that one, too, in a peat hag, half drowned; so he took off his plaid, and bent down and took hold of the sheep’s tail and he pulled! The sheep was heavy with water, and he could not lift her, so he took off his coat and he pulled!! but it was too much for him, so he spit on his hands, and took a good hold of the tail and he PULLED!! and the tail broke! and if it had not been for that this tale would have been a great deal longer.
Jack and the King who was a Gentleman
Well, children: wanst upon a time, when pigs was swine, there was a poor widdy woman lived all alone with her wan son Jack in a wee hut of a house, that on a dark night ye might aisily walk over it by mistake, not knowin’ at all, at all, it was there, barrin’ ye’d happen to strike yer toe agin’ it. An’ Jack an’ his mother lived for lee an’ long, as happy as hard times would allow them, in this wee hut of a house, Jack sthrivin’ to ‘arn a little support for them both by workin’ out, an’ doin’ wee turns back an’ forrid to the neighbors. But there was one winter, an’ times come to look black enough for them—nothin’ to do, an’ less to ate, an’ clothe themselves as best they might; an’ the winther wore on, gettin’ harder an’ harder, till at length when Jack got up out of his bed on a mornin’, an’ axed his mother to make ready the drop of stirabout for their little brakwus as usual, “Musha, Jack, a-mhic,” says his mother, says she, “the male-chist—thanks be to the Lord!—is as empty as Paddy Ruadh’s donkey that used to ate his brakwus at supper-time. It stood out long an’ well, but it’s empty at last, Jack, an’ no sign of how we’re goin’ to get it filled again—only we trust in the good Lord that niver yet disarted the widow and the orphan—He’ll not see us wantin’, Jack.”
“The Lord helps them that help themselves, mother,” says Jack back again to her.
“Thrue for ye, Jack,” says she, “but I don’t see how we’re goin’ to help ourselves.”
“He’s a mortial dead mule out an’ out that hasn’t a kick in him,” says Jack. “An’, mother, with the help of Providence—not comparin’ the Christian to the brute baste—I have a kick in me yet; if you thought ye could only manage to sthrive along the best way you could for a week, or maybe two weeks, till I get back again off a little journey I’d like to undhertake.”