Irish Folk Tales (23 page)

The words weren’t out of his mouth when a fine-looking gentleman stood before him and asked: “What trouble is on you, good man?”

James Murray told the gentleman.

“Well, my poor man, you would like to be at home tonight?”

“Indeed, then, I would, and but for I forgot the day of the month, it isn’t here I’d be now, poor as I am.”

“Where do you live?”

“Near the foot of Slieve Mish, in Kerry.”

“Bring out your horse and creels, and you will be at home.”

“What is the use in talking? ’Tis too far for such a journey.”

“Never mind. Bring out your horse.”

James Murray led out the horse, mounted, and rode away. He thought he wasn’t two hours on the road when he was going in at his own door. Sure, his wife was astonished and didn’t believe that he could be home from Cork in that time. It was only when he showed the money they paid him for the other man’s butter that she believed.

“Well, this is Saint Martin’s Eve!”

“It is,” said she. “What are we to do? I don’t know, for we have nothing to kill.”

Out went James and drove in the cow.

“What are you going to do?” asked the wife.

“To kill the cow in honor of Saint Martin.”

“Indeed, then, you will not.”

“I will, indeed,” and he killed her. He skinned the cow and cooked some of her flesh, but the woman was down in the room at the other end of the house lamenting.

“Come up now and eat your supper,” said the husband.

But she would not eat, and was only complaining and crying. After supper the whole family went to bed. Murray rose at daybreak next morning, went to the door, and saw seven gray cows, and they feeding in the field.

“Whose cows are those eating my grass?” cried he, and ran out to drive them away. Then he saw that they were not like other cattle in the district, and they were fat and bursting with milk.

“I’ll have the milk at least, to pay for the grass they’ve eaten,” said James Murray. So his wife milked the gray cows and he drove them back to the field. The cows were contented in themselves and didn’t wish to go away. Next day he published the cows, but no one ever came to claim them.

“It was the Almighty God and Saint Martin who sent these cows,” said he, and he kept them. In the summer all the cows had heifer calves, and every year for seven years they had heifer calves, and the calves were all gray, like the cows. James Murray got very rich, and his crops were the best in the county. He bought new land and had a deal of money put away. But it happened on the eighth year one of the cows had a bull calf. What did Murray do but kill the calf. That minute the seven old cows began to bellow and run away, and the calves bellowed and followed them, all ran and never stopped till they went into the sea and disappeared under the waves. They were never seen after that, but, as Murray used to give away a heifer calf sometimes during the seven years, there are cows of that breed around Slieve Mish and Dingle to this day, and every one is as good as two cows.

T
HE BEST ROAD TO HEAVEN

There was a woman I knew was very charitable to the poor; and she’d give them the full of her apron of bread, or of potatoes or anything she had. And she was only lately married. And one day, a poor woman came to the door with her children and she brought them to the fire, and warmed them, and gave them a drink of milk; and she sent out to the barn for a bag of potatoes for them.

And the husband came in, and he said: “Kitty, if you go on this way, you won’t leave much for ourselves.”

And she said: “He that gave us what we have, can give us more.”

And the next day when they went out to the barn, it was full of potatoes—more than were ever in it before.

And when she was dying, and her children about her, the priest said to her: “Mrs. Gallagher, it’s in Heaven you’ll be at twelve o’clock tomorrow.

T
HE MAN FROM KILMACOLIVER

Now the Cross at Ahenny is in the graveyard, and a man from Kilmacoliver was passing by one day (and he was so mean that his soul was as narrow as a knitting needle, and if you had a cold in the head he would grudge it to you)—well, when he saw the cross he said to himself: “That would make a grand hone for my scythe, if I sawed off an arm of it.”

He went home and got his saw, and he began to saw it off, and he looked up and saw his house on the opposite hill at Kilmacoliver was on fire, and he dropped his saw and ran to save his house, and when he got there it was no fire, only the setting sun shining on the windows.

Still and all, he would not be warned, and he called his son, who was a young lad, to go back with him. And the young lad was to carry back the arm of the Cross when it was sawed off. And they went back, and he picked up the saw, and began to saw again in the same notch, and as he sawed, drops of blood fell from the notch he had made and fell on him, and he gave one mighty skirl that was heard as far as Mullinahone, and the echo of it as far as Grangemockler and Toor, and even to Kilcash, and he fell down with the falling sickness, and the young lad ran off for help. And when the people came, he was wriggling like an eel, but no matter how he twisted, the blood drops still fell on him, and each place they dropped on was burned through to the bone, and in the latter end he died. And it was as well.

T
HE PIOUS MAN

There was a man there long ago, and he had a great name of being very holy. He was the first up the chapel on Sunday, and there was never a pattern or a mission that he wasn’t at, praying all around him. And he was being held up as a good example to the sinners as a very holy man that never missed his duty.

Well, he said to himself that it would be a good thing for him to count all the times he was at Mass, so he got a big timber box and he made a hole in the cover of it, and he locked the box so that no one could interfere with it in any way, and he hid the key where no one could possibly find it.

And every time he went to Mass he picked up a small pebble of a stone on his way home and dropped it in through the hole in the cover of the box.

And he was not satisfied with going to Mass on Sunday, and he started to go every single weekday as well, and sometimes he’d be at second Mass as well as at first Mass on the Sunday, and all the time he was putting the stone into the box every time he came home from Mass.

Well, the years were going on and, like all the rest of us, he was getting old, and he was saying to himself that there must be a great heap of stones inside in the box, and that maybe he would have to get a new box, that the old one must be nearly full.

He called in the servant boy. “Pull out that box for me, boy, until I open it. And mind yourself, because it must be very heavy.”

The boy handled it. “It is not a bit heavy, sir, but as light as you like,” says the boy.

He opened it and there were only five stones inside in it. He couldn’t understand it, and off with him to the parish priest with his complaint—after all his Masses was he only going to get credit for five of them, or was it how someone was bad enough to steal the stones out of his box, but how could they do that, and it locked and the key hidden, and no sign that it was ever meddled with?