“Open, open, cake that we have made and mingled with blood!” they cried again.

“I cannot,” said the cake, “for I am broken and bruised, and my blood is on the lips of the sleeping children.”

Then the witches rushed through the air with great cries, and fled back to Slievenamon, uttering strange curses on the Spirit of the Well, who had wished their ruin. But the woman and the house were left in peace, and a mantle dropped by one of the witches was kept hung up by the mistress as a sign of the night’s awful contest; and this mantle was in possession of the same family from generation to generation for five hundred years after.

Lady Wilde.

erence Mooney was an honest
boy and well to do; an’ he
rinted the biggest farm on this
side iv the Galties; an’ bein’
mighty cute an’ a sevare worker,
it was small wonder he turned a
good penny every harvest. But, unluckily, he was
blessed with an ilegant large family iv daughters,
an’ iv coorse, his heart was allamost bruck,
striving to make up fortunes for the whole of them.
An’ there wasn’t a conthrivance iv any
soart or description for makin’ money out iv the
farm but he was up to.

“Well, among the other ways he had iv gettin’ up in the world he always kep a power iv turkeys, and all soarts iv poultrey; an’ he was out iv all rason partial to geese—an’ small blame to him for that same—for twice’t a year you can pluck them as bare as my hand—an’ get a fine price for the feathers, an’ plenty of rale sizable eggs—an’ when they are too ould to lay any more, you can kill them, an’ sell them to the gintlemen for goslings, d’ye see, let alone that a goose is the most manly bird that is out.

“Well, it happened in the coorse iv time that one ould gandher tuck a wondherful likin’ to Terence, an’ divil a place he could go serenadin’ about the farm, or lookin’ afther the men, but the gandher id be at his heels, an’ rubbin’ himself agin his legs, an’ lookin’ up in his face jist like any other Christian id do; an’, begorra, the likes iv it was never seen—Terence Mooney an’ the gandher wor so great.