"Am I sure? Well, that's a queer question," was Robin's reply; "seeing
the boy has the blue eye of the mother, with the foxy hair of the
father; to say nothing of the _purty_ wart on the right side of his
little nose."
However Robin Kelly may have been questioned, the worthy couple of
Ronayne's Court doubted not that he was the deliverer of their child
from the power of the giant MacMahon; and the reward they bestowed on
him equalled their gratitude.
Philip Ronayne lived to be an old man; and he was remarkable to the
day of his death for his skill in working brass and iron, which it was
believed he had learned during his seven years' apprenticeship to the
giant Mahon MacMahon.
[Footnote 62: _Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland._]
A LEGEND OF KNOCKMANY.
WILLIAM CARLETON.
What Irish man, woman, or child has not heard of our renowned
Hibernian Hercules, the great and glorious Fin M'Coul? Not one, from
Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, nor from that back again to Cape
Clear. And, by-the-way, speaking of the Giant's Causeway brings me at
once to the beginning of my story. Well, it so happened that Fin and
his gigantic relatives were all working at the Causeway, in order to
make a bridge, or what was still better, a good stout pad-road, across
to Scotland; when Fin, who was very fond of his wife Oonagh, took it
into his head that he would go home and see how the poor woman got on
in his absence. To be sure, Fin was a true Irishman, and so the sorrow
thing in life brought him back, only to see that she was snug and
comfortable, and, above all things, that she got her rest well at
night; for he knew that the poor woman, when he was with her, used to
be subject to nightly qualms and configurations, that kept him very
anxious, decent man, striving to keep her up to the good spirits and
health that she had when they were first married. So, accordingly, he
pulled up a fir-tree, and, after lopping off the roots and branches,
made a walking-stick of it, and set out on his way to Oonagh.
Oonagh, or rather Fin, lived at this time on the very tip-top of
Knockmany Hill, which faces a cousin of its own called Cullamore, that
rises up, half-hill, half-mountain, on the opposite side--east-east by
south, as the sailors say, when they wish to puzzle a landsman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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