It was in a poor little cabin somewhere in Ireland. It does
not matter where. The walls were of rough stone, the roof was of
thatch, and the floor was the hard earth. There was very little
furniture. Poor as it was, the whole place was clean. It is right to
tell this, because, unhappily, a good many cabins in Ireland are not
clean. What furniture there was had been rubbed smooth and spotless,
and the few dishes that there were fairly shone. The floor was as
carefully swept as if the Queen were expected.
The three persons who lived in the cabin had eaten their
supper of potatoes and milk and were sitting before the turf fire. It
had been a poor supper, yet a little of it that was left—a few
potatoes, a little milk, and a dish of fresh water—had been placed on a
bench outside the door. There was no light except that of the fire.
There was no need of any other, and there was no money to spend on
candles that were not needed.
The three who sat before the fire, and needed no other
light, were a young man, a young woman, and an elderly woman. She did
not like to be called old, for she said, and quite truly, that sixty
was not old for anybody who felt as young as she did. This woman was
Mrs. O'Brien. The young man was her son, John, and the young-woman was
his wife, Kitty.
"Kitty," said John, "it's not well you're lookin' to-night. Are ye feelin' anyways worse than common?"
"It's only a bit tired I am," said Kitty, "wid the work I was afther doin' all day. I'll be as well as ever in the morning."
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| Scenic Ireland |
"It's a shame, that it is," said John, "that ye have to be
workin' that way, day afther day, and you not sthrong at all. It's a
shame that I can't do enough for the three of us, and the more, maybe,
that there'll be, but you must be at it, too, all the time."
"What nonsinse ye're talkin', John," Kitty answered. "What
would I be doin', settin' up here like a lady, doin' nothin', and you
and mother workin' away like you was my servants? Did you think it was a
duchess or the daughter of the Lord Lieutenant ye was marryin', that
ye're talkin' that way?"
"And it'll be worse a long time before it's betther," John
went on. "Wid the three of us workin' all the time, we just barely get
along. And it's the end of the summer now. What we'll do at all when
the winter comes, I dunno."
The older woman listened to the others and said nothing.
Perhaps she had heard such talk as this so many times that she did not
care to join in it again, or perhaps she was waiting to be asked to
speak. For it was to her that these younger people always turned when
they were in trouble. It was her advice and her opinion that they
always asked when they felt that they needed a better opinion than
their own. The three sat silent now for a time, and then John broke
out, as if the talk had been going on in his mind all the while:
"What's the good of us tryin' to live at all?" he said. "Is livin' any
use to us? We do nothin' but work all day, and eat a little to give us
the strength to work the next day, and then we sleep all night, if we
can sleep. And it's that and nothing else all the year through. Are we
any better when the year ends than we were when it began? If we've paid
the rent, we've done well. We never do more."
"John," the old woman answered, "it's not for us to say why
we're here or what for we're living. It's God that put us here, and
He'll keep us here till it's our time to go. He has made it the way of
all His creatures to provide for themselves and for their own, and to
keep themselves alive while they can. When He's ready for us to die, we
die. That's all we know. The rest is with Him."
"I know all that's true, mother," said John; "but what is
there for us to hope for, that we'ld wish to live? It's nothing but
work to keep the roof over us. We don't even eat for any pleasure
that's in it—only so that we can work. If we rested for a day, we'ld be
driven out of our house. If we rested for another day, we'ld starve.
Is there any good to be hoped for such as us? Will there ever be any
good times for Ireland? I mean for all the people in it."
"There will," the old woman said. "Everything has an end,
and so these troubles of ours will end, and all the troubles of Ireland
will end, too."
"And why should we believe that?" John asked again. "Wasn't
Ireland always the poor, unhappy country, and all the people in it,
only the landlords and the agents, and why should we think it will ever
be better?"
"Everything has an end," the old woman repeated. "Ireland
was not always the unhappy country. It was happy once and it will be
happy again. It's not you, John O'Brien, that ought to be forgetting
the good days of Ireland, long ago though they were. For you yourself
are the descendant of King Brian Boru, and you know well, for it's many
times I've told you, how in his days the country was happy and
peaceful and blessed. He drove out the heathen and saved the country
for his people. He had strict laws, and the people obeyed them. In his
days a lovely girl, dressed all in fine silk and gold and jewels,
walked alone the length of Ireland, and there was no one to rob her or
to harm her, because of the good King and the love the people had for
him and for his laws. And you, that are descended from King Brian, ask
if Ireland wasn't always the poor, unhappy country."
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| Ireland-standing stones |
"But all that was so long ago," said John; "near a thousand
years, was it not? Since then it's been nothing but sorrow for the
country and for the people. What good is it to us that the country was
happy in King Brian's time? Will that help us pay the rent? And how
we'll pay the rent when the winter comes, I dunno, and if we don't pay
it we'll be evicted."
"Shaun," said his mother, calling him by the Irish name
that she used sometimes—"Shaun, we'll not be evicted; never fear that.
Things are bad, and they may be worse, but take my word, whatever
comes, we'll not be evicted."
"Mother," said the young man, "you never spoke the word, so
far as I know, that wasn't true, but I dunno how it'll be this time.
We've been workin' all we can and we only just manage to pay the rent
and live, and here's the summer over and the winter coming, and how
will we pay the rent then?"
The mother did not answer this question directly. She began
talking in a way that did not seem to have anything to do with the
rent, though it really had something to do with it, in her own mind,
and perhaps in her son's mind too.
"It's over-tired that you are with your hard day's work,
Shaun," she said, "and that and seeing Kitty so tired, too, has maybe
made you look at things a little worse than they are. We've never been
so bad off as many of our neighbors; you know that. And yet I know it's
been worse of late and harder for you than it might have been, and you
can't remember the better times that our family had, and that's why
you forget that the times were ever better. No, you wasn't born then,
but the time was when good luck seemed to follow your father and me
everywhere and always. Yes, and the good luck has not all left us yet,
though we had the bad luck to lose your father so long ago. We could
not hope to be rich or happy while the whole country was in such
distress as it's been sometimes, yet there were always many that were
worse off than we, and when I think of those days of '47 and '48 it
makes the sorrows seem light that we're suffering now. And I always
know that whatever comes, there'll be some good for me and mine while I
live. I've told you how I know that, but you always forget, and I must
tell you again."
They had not forgotten. They knew the story that was coming
by heart, but they knew that the old woman liked to tell it, so they
let her go on and said not a word.
For a little while, too, the old woman said not a word. She
sat with her eyes closed, and smiling, as if she were in a dream. Then
she began to speak softly, as if she were still only just waking out
of a dream. "Blessed days there were," she said—"blessed days for
Ireland once—long ago—many hundreds of years. O'Donoghue—it was he was
the good King, and happy were his people. A fierce warrior he was to
guard them from their enemies, and a just ruler to those who minded his
laws. It was in the West that he ruled, by the beautiful Lakes of
Killarney. The rich and the poor among his people were alike in one
thing—they all had justice. He punished even his own son when he did
wrong, as if he had been a poor man and a stranger.
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| Lakes of Killarny |
"He gave grand feasts to his friends, and the greatest and
the best men of all Erin came to sit at his table and to hear the wise
words that he spoke. And the greatest bards of all Erin came to sing
before him and his guests of the brave deeds of the heroes of old days
and of the greatness and the goodness of O'Donoghue himself. At one of
these feasts, after a bard had been singing of the noble days of Erin
long ago, O'Donoghue began to speak of the years that were to come for
Ireland. He told of much good and of much evil. He told how true and
brave and noble men would live and work and fight and die for their
country, and how cowards would betray her. He told of glory and he told
of shame. He spoke of riches and honor, and poetry and beauty; he
spoke of want and disgrace, and degradation and sorrow.
"Those who sat at his table listened to him in wonder.
Sometimes their hearts swelled with pride at the noble lives and deeds
of those who were to come after them, sometimes they wept at the
sufferings that their children were to feel, and sometimes they hid
their faces from each other in shame at the tales of cowardice and of
treachery.
"As he finished speaking he rose from the table, crossed
the hall, and walked out at the door and down to the shore of the lake.
The others followed him and watched him, full of wonder. They saw him
go to the edge of the lake and then walk out upon it, as if the water
had been firm ground under his feet. He walked far and far out on the
bright lake as they stood and gazed at him. Then he turned toward them,
he waved his hand in farewell, and he was gone. They saw him no more."
The old woman paused for a moment and the dreaming look
came back to her face. Then she went on. "They saw him no more—but
others saw him—and I have seen him. Every year, on the 1st of May, just
as the sun is rising, he rides across the lake on his beautiful white
horse. He is not always seen, but sometimes a few can see him. And it
always brings good luck to see O'Donoghue riding across the lake on May
morning. And I saw him."
Again there was a pause, but she had no look of dreaming
now. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be looking at something
wonderful and beautiful that was far off. Slowly and softly she began
speaking again. "I was a girl then. My father lived by the Lakes of
Killarney. On that May morning I was standing at the door as the sun
was rising. I was looking out upon the lake, far away to the east. The
first that I saw was that the water, far off toward the sun, was
ruffled, and then all at once a great, white-crested wave rose, as if a
strong wind had struck the water, only all the air was still, and no
wind ever raises such a wave as that on the lake. The wave came swiftly
toward me, and I drew back, in a kind of dread, though I knew that it
could not reach me where I stood. But still I looked—and then I saw
him.
"Through the flying water and foam and mist I saw the old
King, on his white horse, following the great wave across the lake. The
sun made all his armor gleam like the silver of the lake itself, and
the plume of his helmet streamed away behind him like the spray that a
strong wind blows back from the crest of a breaker. After him came a
train of glowing, beautiful forms—spirits of the lake or of the air, or
some of the Good People—I do not know. They wore soft, flowing
garments, that were like the morning mists; they carried chains of
pearls and they scattered other pearls about them, that glistened like
the drops of a shower when the sun is shining through it. They had
garlands of flowers, and they plucked the flowers out and threw them
high in the air, so that they fell before the King. They looked like
flecks of foam from the waves, turned rosy and violet by the rising
sun, but they were flowers. And there was a sound of sweet, soft music,
like harps and mellow horns.
"The King and his train came nearer and I saw them plainer,
and the music sounded louder. Then they passed me and moved far away
again on the lake. The sight of them grew dim and the music grew faint,
and I strained my eyes and my ears for the last of them, and they were
gone. Then I could move and speak and breathe again, for it had seemed
to me that I could not do any one of these things while the King was
passing, and I knew that I had seen O'Donoghue."
The old woman stopped, as if the story were ended, but the
younger people did not speak, for they knew that she had something else
to tell. "O'Donoghue had passed and was gone," she said, "but he
always leaves good luck behind him, and he left the good luck with me.
That summer some rich young ladies came from Dublin to see the Lakes of
Killarney. They heard the story of O'Donoghue, and the people told
them that I was the last who had seen him. They came to my father's
house and asked me to tell them what I had seen. They seemed pleased
with what I told them, or with something that they saw in me, and they
asked my father to let them take me back to the city with them, for a
lady's maid. He did not like to let me go, but they said that they
would pay me well and would have me taught better than I could be at
home. He was poor, there were others at home who needed all that he
could earn, I wished to go, and at last he said I might.
"So I went to Dublin and lived in a grand house, among
grand people. I tried to do my duties well, and they were kind to me.
They kept the promise that they had made to my father. They gave me
books and allowed me time to study them, and they helped me in things
that I could not well have learned by myself, even with the books. I
was quick at study, and in the little time that I had, I learned all
that I could. Three times they took me to London with them, and I saw
still grander people and grander life.
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| Castle on the shores of the Lakes of Killarny |
"Those were happy days, but happier came. Your father came,
Shaun. He was a servant of the family, like myself—a coachman. But he
was wiser than I, and he talked with me and showed me that there was
something better for us than to be servants always. We saved all the
money that we could, and when we had enough we came here, where your
father had lived before, and took a little farm. The luck of O'Donoghue
was always with us. We had a good landlord, who asked a fair rent. We
both worked hard, we saved more money and took more land, and all our
neighbors thought that we were prosperous, and so we were.
"Then came '47. Nobody could be prosperous then. Nobody
that had a heart in him at all could even keep what he had saved then.
What we had and what our neighbors had belonged to all, and little
enough there was of it. It is well for you young people to talk of
these times being hard. Harder than some they may be, but good and easy
compared with those days of '47 and '48. You talk of injustice and
wrong to Ireland! What think you of those times, when every day great
ships sailed away from Ireland loaded down with food—corn and bacon,
and beef and butter—and Ireland's own people left without the bit of
food to keep the life in them? All summer long was the horrible wet
weather, and the potatoes rotting in the ground before they'ld be ripe,
and never fit to eat. To add to all that was the fever, that killed
its thousands, and then the cold. And when the days came again that the
crops would grow, many and many of the people were so weak with the
hunger and the sickness that they could not work in the fields. Ah! and
you call these hard times!
"Those were the bad days for Ireland, those days of '47.
Not even the luck of O'Donoghue could make us prosper or give us
comforts then. But we lived through the time, as many others did. The
poor helped those who were poorer than themselves; the sick tended
those who were sicker; the cold gave clothes and fire to those who were
colder. The little money that we had saved helped us and some of our
neighbors. And we lived through it all.
"Better times came, though never again so good as the old.
We worked again and we saved a trifle. Then you were born to us, John.
We had a worse landlord now. He was of the kind that cared nothing for
his tenants and nothing for his land, but to get the last penny off it.
The rent was raised, and we never could have paid it but for the care
and the skill and the hard work of your father. And then, John, you
know that when you were hardly old enough to take his place with the
work, let alone knowing how to work as well as he, he died and left
us—Heaven rest his soul!"
For a long time the old woman said no more, and neither of
the others spoke. Then she said: "John, the country is in trouble
enough and the times are hard enough for you and for Kitty, here, and
for all of us, I know. But don't be cast down. There have been worse
days than these; there have been better days, too, and there will be
better again."
(Story from Fairies and Folk of Ireland by William Henry Frost; 1900) 
Why Do Birds Sing? by Robert W. Service
