“Well, what do you want now?”
“Nothing, sir, only I have another bottle.”
“Oh! ho! is it as good as the first?”
“Yes, sir, and better; if you like, I will show it to you before all the ladies and gentlemen.”
“Come along, then.” So saying Mick was brought into the great hall, where he saw his old bottle standing high up on a shelf. “Ah! ha!” says he to himself, “maybe I won’t have you by-and-by.”
“Now,” says his landlord, “show us your bottle.” Mick set it on the floor, and uttered the words: in a moment the landlord was tumbled on the floor; ladies and gentlemen, servants and all, were running, and roaring, and sprawling, and kicking, and shrieking. Wine cups and salvers were knocked about in every direction, until the landlord called out, “Stop those two devils, Mick Purcell, or I’ll have you hanged.”
“They never shall stop,” said Mick, “till I get my own bottle that I see up there at top of that shelf.”
“Get it down to him, give it down to him, before we are all killed!” says the landlord.
Mick put his bottle in his bosom: in jumped the two men into the new bottle, and he carried them home. I need not lengthen my story by telling how they got richer than ever; how his son married his landlord’s only daughter, how he and his wife died when they were very old, and how some of the servants fighting at their wake, broke the bottles; but still the hill has the name upon it; ay, and so ’twill be always Bottle Hill to the end of the world, and so it ought, for it is a strange story.