The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red HanrahanYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
With that up come Miss Letty, that was your grandmother, dear, but Miss
Letty she was then, and no word of her being anything else, and she
wondered to see us gaping up that way, till me and my mother told her
of it. She went on gay-dressed then, and was lovely looking. She was up
the lane where none of us could see her coming forward when the Wee
Woman rose up in that queer way, saying, “Here comes Miss Letty in all
her finery.” Who knows to what far country she went, or to see whom
dying?
‘It was never after dark she came, but daylight always, as far as I
mind, but wanst, and that was on a Hallow Eve night. My mother was by
the fire, making ready the supper; she had a duck down and some apples.
In slips the Wee Woman, “I’m come to pass my Hallow Eve with you,” says
she. “That’s right,” says my mother, and thinks to herself, “I can
give her her supper nicely.” Down she sits by the fire a while. “Now
I’ll tell you where you’ll bring my supper,” says she. “In the room
beyond there beside the loom—set a chair in and a plate.” “When ye’re
spending the night, mayn’t ye as well sit by the table and eat with the
rest of us?” “Do what you’re bid, and set whatever you give me in the
room beyant. I’ll eat there and nowhere else.” So my mother sets her a
plate of duck and some apples, whatever was going, in where she bid,
and we got to our supper and she to hers; and when we rose I went in,
and there, lo and behold ye, was her supper-plate a bit ate of each
portion, and she clean gone!’
1897.
DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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