Fairies and Folk of Ireland

by William Henry Frost

"Well, the news of Lusmore's wonderful cure was told all through the country, and at last it came to a place a long way off, where there was another boy lived that had a hump on his back. And a different sort of boy he was from Lusmore. His temper was as bad as his body. He was ill-natured and spiteful and lazy, and he would always rather be making trouble than saving it. So when his mother heard the way Lusmore had had the hump taken off him, she thought maybe her boy could get rid of his own in the same way.

"With that she set off with the boy and a neighbor of hers, and they came to where Lusmore lived, and asked him would he tell them all about how it was that he had the hump taken off him. And he went over it all with them and told them everything that he did and everything that happened to him. And in the end he went with them to show them the very spot where he had sat down beside the rath, and there they left the little hunchback, and told him to do everything just as Lusmore had done it.

"He sat there listening for a long time and heard nothing, and so at last he went to sleep, and then all at once he was awakened by hearing the Good People singing in the rath. And they were singing much better now than when Lusmore heard them first, for they had the song now as he had improved it for them, and they were singing:

Da Luan, da Mort,
Da Luan, da Mort,
Da Luan, da Mort,
Augus da Cadine.

"And as soon as he heard it the little fellow, not waiting for time or tune, shouted out: 'Augus da Hena.' And if it was all put together right that would make it mean: 'Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday too, and Thursday too.' Only he didn't trouble to put it together right, but just bawled it out any way.

"Then the music stopped all at once, and he heard the people inside the rath shouting: 'Who is spoiling our tune? Who is spoiling our tune?' and out they all came and caught him up and hurried him inside the rath so that the breath nearly went out of his body. And one of them shouted: 'What shall we do to him for spoiling our tune?' and another said: 'Ask him what he wants us to do for him!' and another said: 'What do you want from us, anyway?'

"And he just found breath enough to say: 'I want the same that Lusmore had,' meaning by that he wanted them to reward him the same way they did Lusmore.

"But one of the Good People shouted: 'You'll get what Lusmore had, then; it was a hump on the back that Lusmore had, and we took it off him, but we don't want it and it's easy to give it to you. Be lively there now, some of you, and hand that hump down here.'

"And then some of the Good People got Lusmore's hump, that was hanging up under the roof, and they clapped it on his back, on the top of his own, and then they threw him out of the rath. And there his mother found him in the morning, more dead than alive and with a hump twice as big as before."

"A fine story that is, Mrs. O'Brien," Terence said, when the old woman had finished. "And why didn't the one of them get the same reward as the other? Sure he did the same as the other in lengthening the song for the fairies, didn't he?"