"By the tooth of Patric," said he, "I'm as rich as the son of a lord."
"Come with me," says the Púca, "and I'll bring you home."
They went out then, and just as he was going to ride on the Púca, the
gander came up to him, and gave him a new set of pipes. The Púca was
not long until he brought him to Dunmore, and he threw the piper off
at the little bridge, and then he told him to go home, and says to
him, "You have two things now that you never had before--you have
sense and music (ciall agus ceól)."
The piper went home, and he knocked at his mother's door, saying, "Let
me in, I'm as rich as a lord, and I'm the best piper in Ireland."
"You're drunk," said the mother.
"No, indeed," says the piper, "I haven't drunk a drop."
The mother let him in, and he gave her the gold pieces, and, "Wait
now," says he, "till you hear the music I'll play."
He buckled on the pipes, but instead of music, there came a sound as
if all the geese and ganders in Ireland were screeching together. He
wakened the neighbours, and they were all mocking him, until he put on
the old pipes, and then he played melodious music for them; and after
that he told them all he had gone through that night.
The next morning, when his mother went to look at the gold pieces,
there was nothing there but the leaves of a plant.
The piper went to the priest, and told him his story, but the priest
would not believe a word from him, until he put the pipes on him, and
then the screeching of the ganders and geese began.
"Leave my sight, you thief," says the priest.
But nothing would do the piper till he would put the old pipes on him
to show the priest that his story was true.
He buckled on the old pipes, and he played melodious music, and from
that day till the day of his death, there was never a piper in the
county Galway was as good as he was.
DANIEL O'ROURKE.
T. CROFTON CROKER.
People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O'Rourke,
but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above
and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the
walls of the Pooka's tower. I knew the man well. He lived at the
bottom of Hungry Hill, just at the right-hand side of the road as you
go towards Bantry. An old man was he, at the time he told me the
story, with grey hair and a red nose; and it was on the 25th of June
1813 that I heard it from his own lips, as he sat smoking his pipe
under the old poplar tree, on as fine an evening as ever shone from
the sky. I was going to visit the caves in Dursey Island, having spent
the morning at Glengariff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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