The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert BarrVarious
General
The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
Various
London (England) -- Periodicals
When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
him with soft eyes.
When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
heart-broken cry:
"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"
* * * * *
For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so silent, and he
hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times when Cornelius
Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard way, never
troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the daisies grew over
him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made short work of
paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral hovel. Andy did not
seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of the eviction, as usual,
at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to a ruin. His neighbour,
Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see that he took the change
as a matter of course, and that after groping in the four corners of the
cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if unaware that nothing was left of
his home but the walls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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