The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 1: Fairy and wonder tales
Children's literature
I’ll tell you a story, says the old man who was bringing fish from the
sea; and after that I’ll be going on to Ballinrobe, to one that has a
shop there and that was reared by my grandmother. It is likely he’ll
give me a tasty suit of clothes.
Working all my life I am, working with the flail in the barn, working
with the spade at the potato tilling and the potato digging, breaking
stones on the road. And four years ago the wife died, and it’s lonesome
to be housekeeping alone.
There was a King long ago in Ireland, and he had three sons, and one of
them was something silly. There came a sickness on the King, and he
called his three sons, and he said to them that he had knowledge the
only thing would cure him was the apples from Burnett’s orchard, and he
bade them to go look for them, for that orchard was in some far-away
place, and no one could tell where it was.
The three sons went then, and they caught their horses, and put on
their bridles, and they set out, and went on till they came to three
crossroads. There they stopped, and they settled among themselves that
each one of them would take one of the roads and go searching for the
apples, and they would meet at the same place at the end of a year and
a day.
The youngest son, that was a bit silly, took the crossest of the roads,
and he went on till he came to a cottage by the roadside. He went in,
and there was a withered old man in the house, and he said: “There is a
great welcome before the King of Ireland’s son!” The son was astonished
at that because he thought no one could know him. He was well received
there, and in the course of the evening he asked the old man did he
know where was Burnett’s garden. “I am a hundred years old,” said the
man, “and I never heard of such a place. But I have a brother,” he
said, “that is a hundred years older than I am, and it may be he would
know,” he said.
So in the morning he gave a canoe to the King’s son, and it went on of
itself without him turning or guiding it, till it brought him to the
old man’s brother, and he got a welcome there and good treatment, and
in the course of the night he asked that old man did he know where was
Burnett’s orchard.
“I do not,” said he: “though I am two hundred years old I never heard
of it. But go on,” he said, “to a brother I have that has a hundred
years more than myself.”
So in the morning, he went into the canoe, and it went on of itself
till it came to where the third old man was, that was older again than
the other two, and the King’s son asked did he know where was Burnett’s
garden. “I do not,” he said, “although I am three hundred years old;
but I will tell you how you will know it,” he said. “Go on till you
come to shore, where you will see a Swan-Gander standing by the water,
and he is the one that can tell you and can bring you to it,” he said.
“And ask him to bring you to that garden in the name of the Almighty
God.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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