Fairies and Folk of Ireland

by William Henry Frost

"It's plain enough," Mrs. O'Brien said, as soon as she saw it. "It's one of the Good People. But it's quick enough we'll be rid of it and have back your own child. Bring me some eggs."

"I'll have nothing of the sort now," said Ellen. "It's bad the poor child is with some sickness or other, but it's my own child, and I'll have nothing done to it that's not to do it good. If you know anything that'll help it, Mrs. O'Brien, tell me that, but don't be sayin' it's not my child."

"I'll not hurt the child, whatever it is," said Mrs. O'Brien, "but there are ways to tell whether it's your own child at all or one of the Good People. If you find it's one of them, then it's easy to do more, but in the meantime it's not harmed."

"I'll not have you trying any of them things," said Ellen. "I'll not have you saying it's not my child, and I'll not be thinking of such a thing myself. You see how poor and sick it's looking. If there's anything you can do for the child, do it, but don't be talking that way any more."

"Ellen," said Mrs. O'Brien, "you don't know what you're talking about at all. Wait now till I tell you what was told to me when I lived in Dublin, and I think that it was not far from there that it happened. It's about a woman that talked as you do. A sailor's wife she was, and there was a child born to her while her husband was away at sea. She thought he'ld be home soon, and so she wanted to put off the christening of the child till he'ld be back. So she waited and waited for a long time, and her husband did not come. The neighbors told her she was doing wrong to wait so long and she ought to have the child christened before anything would happen to it. But she wouldn't listen to them.

"So it went on for a year and a half, and still the father didn't come home. But the boy was healthy and happy, and the mother never had any trouble with him. But the trouble came. One day she'd been working in the field, and she came home, and as soon as she was in the house she heard crying from the bed where the child used to sleep. She ran to look at him, and he lay there, looking sick and thin and weak, the way your boy does, and crying that he was hungry. He was like her child and he was not like him. He'd grown so pale and bad-looking that she thought he'd had a stroke from the Good People. But she went to get him some bread and milk, and she asked her other boy, that was about seven years old, when it was and how it was that he began to be sick.

"'I left him playing near the fire,' the boy said, 'and I was in the other room. And I heard a rushing noise, like a great flock of birds flying down the chimney, and then I heard a cry from my brother and then again the noise, like the birds were flying out at the chimney again. And then I ran in and found him there the way you see him now.'

"Well, if the poor woman had never had trouble with the child before, she had nothing but trouble now. Crying and squalling it was all the time, and it nearly ate her out of house and home, and yet it seemed always sick and weak and thin. The neighbors came and they told her it was not her child at all, but one of the Good People that had been put in the place of it, and it was all her own fault for not having it christened in the right time. But not a word of it all would she listen to, and she said all the time that, whatever was wrong with it, it was her own child and she'ld hear nothing to the contrary.

"It was an out-of-the-way place where they lived, and there was no priest near, or she never could have kept it from being christened as long as she did. But at last the neighbors themselves said that if she didn't see to it, they would. And they said to her: 'It's not your child at all that's in it, and if you'll have it christened you'll see. And if you won't take the child to the priest with us now, we'll go to him ourselves and tell him all about it. It's not right to keep it from him longer.'

"So with that she thought it was no use and she'ld have to do as they said, and she took the child and tried to dress him, ready to take him to the priest to be christened. But the roars and the screams that he let out of him were more than anybody could bear, and at the last she said: 'Oh, I can't do it; it's too terrible a thing for him; he won't bear it, and how can I make him?'