Fairies and Folk of Ireland

by William Henry Frost

"Oh, child," he said, "I'ld give all the money I'll be earning in the next ten years if I could play like he does. Don't you see I can't do half the things he does with it?"

"I know that," Kathleen said; "it isn't the way he plays a bit that makes everybody talk so about him; it's just the things he does. When he plays a tune it just doesn't mean anything, and when you play a tune it does."

And that was as near as Kathleen could ever come to telling why she did not care about Terence's playing. Everybody else said that it was wonderful, but she said that it didn't mean anything. And when Kathleen talked in this way they said that she was too critical. That is what people will always tell you when you can see through a fraud and they cannot.

You will suppose, without my telling you, that as soon as Kathleen was old enough to listen to them, her grandmother began telling her the old stories of Ireland. Often Terence would come and listen to them, too, for he seemed to be less afraid of Mrs. O'Brien as he grew a little older. But it never seemed to be because of the stories that he came; he only wanted to be near Kathleen.

Mrs. O'Brien told the children stories about the Good People, and about the old heroes and kings of Ireland who had fought to save the country from its enemies. Terence never liked the stories about the Good People. "Don't be telling us about them fairies all the time," he would say. "Tell us about men; that's what I like better."

"Don't call them by that name," Mrs. O'Brien would answer. "They don't like it, and if you call them by it they may do you harm."

"I'll call them what I like," Terence would say, "and they'll do me no harm. It's a worthless lot they are, and you know that same yourself, Mrs. O'Brien, if you'ld only think so. They can do no harm to you, or to any woman or man that knows how to deal with them. Why will you bother with them all the time?"

And all this made Mrs. O'Brien think the more that Terence was one of them.

One day Mrs. O'Brien happened to tell the children a ghost story. I don't know whether your mother allows you to read ghost stories. I don't see any harm in them myself, any more than Mrs. O'Brien did, but some people do, and if your mother does, then it is lucky that you are skipping this part. I think that your mother will be very glad that you skipped this part with the ghost story in it. That is, of course, she won't really be glad, because, since you are skipping it, you won't know that there is any ghost story here, and so you won't tell your mother that you skipped a ghost story, and so she won't really care whether you skipped it or not. What I mean is that if you had read it instead of skipping it, so that you could tell your mother that there was a ghost story, she would be glad that you had skipped—well, what is the use of my trying to tell you what I mean, as long as you are skipping it, anyway? I had better go on with the story.

"Once a man was coming home from a funeral," said Mrs. O'Brien. "As he was walking along the road, near a churchyard, he found the head of a man. He took it up and left it in the churchyard. Then he went on his way, and soon he met a man who looked like a gentleman.