"'Good morrow to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' said he. 'How do you do?' 'Very
well, thank your honour,' said I. 'I hope your honour's well.' 'What
brought you here, Dan?' said he. So I told him how I was a little
overtaken in liquor at the master's, and how I was cast on a dissolute
island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the thief of an eagle
promised to fly me out of it, and how, instead of that, he had fled me
up to the moon.
"'Dan,' said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff when I was
done, 'you must not stay here.' 'Indeed, sir,' says I, ''tis much
against my will I'm here at all; but how am I to go back?' 'That's your
business,' said he, 'Dan; mine is to tell you that here you must not
stay, so be off in less than no time.' 'I'm doing no harm,' says I,
'only holding on hard by the reaping-hook lest I fall off.' 'That's what
you must not do, Dan,' says he. 'Pray, sir,' says I, 'may I ask how many
you are in family, that you would not give a poor traveller lodgings?
I'm sure 'tis not so often you're troubled with strangers coming to see
you, for 'tis a long way.' 'I'm by myself, Dan,' says he; 'but you'd
better let go the reaping-hook.' 'Faith, and with your leave,' says I,
'I'll not let go the grip; and the more you bids me, the more I won't
let go, so I will.' 'You had better, Dan,' says he again. 'Why, then, my
little fellow,' says I, taking the whole weight of him with my eye from
head to foot, 'there are two words to that bargain; and I'll not budge,
but you may if you like.' 'We'll see how that is to be,' says he; and
back he went, giving the door such a great bang after him (for it was
plain he was huffed) that I thought the moon and all would fall down
with it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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