{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_73665/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_73665","id":"gutenberg_73665","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73665","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Children & Young Adult Reading","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Novels","Children -- Ireland -- Juvenile literature"],"text":"Transcriber's Note\n\nIn the Vocabulary section on the last 4 pages of the project there are\nmany diacritical characters that won't render properly on many ereaders.\u2014\nSee the end of the book.\n\nHence the following explanation:\n\n  [a+] = the letter 'a' with an uptack above.\n\n  Double vowels ee, aa, oo, show extended macron above.\n\n  Joining two letters such as oi, ow, ou shows the extended breve\n  below.\n\nThe use of =L= around a word indicates bold lettering.\n\nHyphenations have been standardised.\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: KATHLEEN AT HOME]\n\n\n\n\n  LITTLE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE\n\n  KATHLEEN\n  IN IRELAND\n\n  BY ETTA BLAISDELL McDONALD\n  AND JULIA DALRYMPLE\n\n  Authors of \"Manuel in Mexico,\" \"Um\u00e9 San in\n  Japan,\" \"Rafael in Italy,\" etc.\n\n  [Illustration]\n\n  Illustrated\n\n  BOSTON\n  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY\n  1912\n\n\n\n\n  _Copyright, 1909_,\n  BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY\n\n  _All rights reserved_\n\n  Printers\n  S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThere is surely no country in the world where hearts so thinly covered\nbeat so warmly as in the Emerald Isle. Wherever one travels,\u2014over the\nbare mountains of Donegal and the rocks and cliffs of the northern\ncoast, or among the blue lakes and green fields of the South,\u2014he will\nalways find a merry greeting and a hearty Irish welcome. The boys and\ngirls have a smile and a cheerful word for every wind that blows;\nand that day is a rare one, indeed, which is not sunny with laughter\nand singing, even while clouds hide the blue sky and Irish rains are\nfalling.\n\nThe wonder is that Irish boys and girls can find it in their hearts to\nleave their beautiful, loving land of the shamrock. So many fairy lakes\nwere never found in any other country. Green meadows never offered\nsweeter resting places than those of the Emerald Isle; yet its young\npeople turn their backs to it, and their blue eyes toward the more\nbarren worlds beyond the seas.\n\nThis story of Irish Kathleen gives glimpses of ancient Ireland, as\nwell as pictures of the life of to-day with its tales of wee folk and\ngiants, its picnics and turf-cutting, its dancing and sheep-shearing,\nits hunting and farming.\n\nKathleen lives first with her father up among the mountains of lonely\nDonegal; she goes with her little sister to spend a summer in County\nSligo, and she lives a year with her ten cousins, the Malones of old\nKilkenny, and a jolly, rollicking brood she finds them. She learns\nsomething of the history of Ireland from her father, and hears the\nstory of the life of the good Saint Patrick; but she enjoys also the\nGaelic tales which her grandmother tells her about the fairies, and the\nstory of Finn MacCool, which she hears when she goes with her uncle to\nsee the Giant's Causeway.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n  CHAPTER PAGE\n\n  I. THE SHOEMAKER OF DONEGAL 1\n\n  II. IN THE FAIRY RATH 9\n\n  III. THE OLD WOMAN IN RED 13\n\n  IV. ERIN'S HARP 19\n\n  V. THE LITTLE GREEN SHAMROCK 26\n\n  VI. GOOD SAINT PATRICK 31\n\n  VII. A RIDE WITH THE POSTMAN 39\n\n  VIII. COUSIN BEE'S FARM IN TONROE 46\n\n  IX. MAY-DAY ON LOUGH GARA 56\n\n  X. A BANK OF TURF 64\n\n  XI. KATHLEEN EARNS A POUND 71\n\n  XII. THE YOUNG MALONES 78\n\n  XIII. KATHLEEN'S COMPOSITION 85\n\n  XIV. THE WISHING SPRING 91\n\n  XV. GOOD NEWS FROM COUSIN BEE 99\n\n  XVI. THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 104\n\n\n\n\nILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\n                                                    PAGE\n\n  Kathleen at Home _Frontispiece in Color_\n\n  \"The old grandmother was spinning at the door\" 2\n\n  The Hills of Donegal 21\n\n  \"They are playing 'Green grow the rushes-O'\" 42\n\n  Cousin Bee's Farmhouse in Tonroe 47\n\n  \"A neighbor was driving his family down to the lake\n  in a jaunting-car\" 58\n\n  Cutting bricks of peat and stacking them up to dry 67\n\n  O'Connell Street, Dublin 102\n\n  The Giant's Causeway 111\n\n\n\n\nKATHLEEN IN IRELAND\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SHOEMAKER OF DONEGAL\n\n\n\"Tell me the story again, Kathleen.\"\n\n\"I can't tell it to you here, Mary Ellen,\" whispered her sister. \"Sure,\nhe might be under the hedge this minute and hear me talking about him.\nCome to the top of the hill and I'll tell you.\"\n\nMary Ellen slipped her hand into Kathleen's, and the two children stole\nsoftly away from the door-stone where they had been playing. Their\nbare feet made no sound on the green grass, and the old grandmother,\nwho was spinning at the door of the cottage, did not even look up as\nthey passed.\n\nA thick fuchsia hedge bordered the plot of green grass that surrounded\nthe cottage, shutting out the barren field behind the house. Slipping\nthrough the hedge, the little girls followed the narrow foot-path that\nled across the field to the top of the hill.\n\n\"I'm thinkin' of a riddle Danny gave me the morn,\" said Kathleen, as\nthey ran along the path.\n\n\"Give it to me,\" said Mary Ellen eagerly, and Kathleen laughed merrily\nas she repeated:\n\n  \"From house to house it goes,\n    A wanderer small and slight;\n  And whether it rains or snows,\n    It sleeps outside in the night.\"\n\n\"I'll never guess it; tell it to me now, alanna,\" begged her sister.\n\n\"If your blue eyes could see the little _path_ under your feet you\nwould _see_ the answer,\" replied Kathleen, as she led the blind child\ncarefully over the steep pathway to the long stone slab where they\nloved to play. \"We'll sit here a bit,\" she added, and drew Mary Ellen\ndown beside her on the stone.\n\n\"Now tell me why you put the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn bush\nlast night, and what became of it,\" asked the child, who could wait no\nlonger for the story.\n\n\"It was for the leprecaun,\" Kathleen told her. \"He is the fairy\nshoemaker, and he sits under the hedge all day tapping away on an old\nshoe. He wears a scarlet cap and a green coat, and there are two rows\nof buttons on his coat, with seven buttons in each row. He has a fairy\npurse which is filled with gold, and he puts it down beside him on the\ngrass while he works; but he is always watching it. If I could just see\nhim once and hold his eye for a minute, I could snatch the purse of\ngold and run away with it.\"\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\n\"THE OLD GRANDMOTHER WAS SPINNING AT THE DOOR\"\n\nThe cottage is of stone, plastered and whitewashed _Page 1_]\n\n\"Did you ever see him?\" whispered Mary Ellen.\n\n\"No,\" replied her sister; \"but I have heard him tapping on his shoe\nmany a time. Once I saw his scarlet cap under the hedge, but when I\nknelt down to look closer he threw sand in my eyes, as he always does,\nand was gone in a winkin'.\"\n\n\"Belike it was a humming-bird,\" said Mary Ellen. \"Danny says the hedge\nis full of their nests. But what would you do with the purse, Kathleen\ndear?\"\n\nKathleen's eyes filled with tears and she looked at her sister with\na sad face. \"Oh, darlin', it's for you,\" she said, \"to give you the\nsight in your pretty blue eyes. I'm thinkin' of it all the time, and\nfaith, some day I'll find a way. That's why I took the dish of oaten\nstirabout and put it under the hawthorn bush last night, and why I put\nthe bowl of milk on the window ledge. It's for the 'good people,' so\nthat they'll know we take thought of them.\"\n\n\"Did the 'good people' drink the milk?\" asked the blind child eagerly.\n\n\"No, Mary Ellen,\" said her sister, \"but, listen! The stirabout was gone\nthis morning, dish and all. The leprecaun must have taken it. I shall\nwatch for him the night, and if I do catch the old shoemaker's eye,\nI'll hold it till he gives me his purse.\"\n\n\"I'm thinkin' that no one has ever held it yet,\" said Mary Ellen,\nsnuggling against Kathleen's shoulder, as if there might be some danger\nin holding a fairy dwarf spellbound with the look of one's eye.\n\nKathleen lowered her voice and asked mysteriously, \"Whist, Mary Ellen,\ndo you mind old Granny Connor?\"\n\n\"She that lives beyond the bog?\" questioned Mary Ellen.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Kathleen.\n\n\"I mind that she lives all alone, and that the father tells us not\nto go near her,\" answered her sister. \"She's too friendly with the\nfairies.\"\n\n\"Last night,\" said Kathleen, taking her sister's hand, and looking into\nher blue eyes while her own grew big and dark, \"when I was driving the\nlittle cow home across the bog, who should I meet under the old oak\ntree but Granny Connor herself.\n\n\"I picked a bit of shamrock and held it tight in my hand, but she\nstopped me and made me talk to her, and she told me that it is our own\nfather, himself, that has a purse from the leprecaun.\"\n\n\"I'll not believe it,\" said her sister quickly. \"If he had, he'd not be\nmaking shoes all day by himself.\"\n\nBut Kathleen shook her head. \"Granny Connor told me,\" she confided,\n\"that he has made a bargain with the fairy dwarf, and must make shoes\nall day long, or go wandering over the mountains a-tinkerin'.\"\n\n\"What's that you're saying, Kathleen?\" a voice behind them asked\nsuddenly, and the children jumped up in surprise.\n\nA man with a leather apron tied round his waist was standing beside the\nstone slab. It was hard to tell where he had come from so quickly, for\nthere had been no sign of any one near when Kathleen climbed to the top\nof the hill.\n\n\"It is the father himself,\" said Mary Ellen.\n\nThe shoemaker seated himself on the big stone and drew his little\ndaughters down beside him; but it was such an unusual thing for him to\nspare any time from his work that they sat awkwardly within the shelter\nof his arms, waiting for him to speak.\n\nKathleen wondered how much of their talk he had heard, and whether he\nwould scold her for listening to old Granny Connor, and repeating the\ntales to her little sister. She hung her head in silence, and Mary\nEllen felt as if the sunshine had been darkened by a cloud; but the\nfather's arms were around both little girls to hold them, although he\ndid not speak for some time.\n\n\"So you have been listening to old Granny Connor,\" he said at last.\n\nKathleen stole a look into his face, which always had a kindly smile\nfor everyone. \"I did not mean any wrong,\" she said timidly. \"I was\nonly wanting to find some way to help Mary Ellen.\"\n\n\"What would you be doing for Mary Ellen?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'd like to find some way to get money so that she might go to Dublin\nand have a doctor cure her eyes,\" said the child simply.\n\n\"And so you put a dish of stirabout where the little old shoemaker\nmight see it?\" asked her father.\n\nBoth the children nodded their heads.\n\n\"How did you find out about the fairy dwarf?\"\n\n\"Great-grandmother Connell and Grandmother Barry talk about him in\nGaelic. Sometimes Grandmother Barry tells us what they are saying,\"\nanswered Kathleen. \"And last night I asked old Granny Connor to tell me\nmore.\"\n\n\"What did she say?\" asked her father.\n\n\"She said that people call you the leprecaun of Donegal, because of the\ntwo rows of buttons in sevens on your green frieze coat.\"\n\nThe shoemaker laughed. \"And where do they think I keep my money?\" he\nasked.\n\n\"They say you have it hidden in a purse that can never grow empty, and\nthat you keep it in the place where you mend your shoes,\" the child\nreplied, looking away from her father and off across the bog to the\npurple mountains. \"And no one knows where it is that you have your\nwork-bench,\" she added with a sigh.\n\n\"Look at me, Kathleen,\" said her father.\n\nThe child turned her gray eyes up to his, gray and honest like her own.\n\n\"Did you think when you put the dish of stirabout under the hawthorn\nbush last night, that you would see me take it up?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no!\" cried Kathleen. \"Sure, I thought it would be the tiny\nman, himself, who would find it.\"\n\n\"But it was myself who found it and took it away, when you were sound\nasleep in your bed,\" said her father.\n\nKathleen jumped up in surprise, but Mary Ellen nodded her curly head,\nas if she knew all the time that it was not the fairy.\n\n\"I saw Granny Connor's red cloak bobbing across the bog last night, as\nI stood at my bench mending an old shoe,\" her father continued, \"and\nI watched you stop under the oak tree to talk with her. When I found\nthe dish of stirabout under the hawthorn bush I knew it was time for\nme to put an end to these foolish notions about the good people, and\ntell you the true words about Ireland's brave men and women. You should\nbe learning about Brian Boru, who drove the Danes out of Ireland, and\nDaniel O'Connell, the greatest orator ever born on Irish soil. Those\nare the men for you to be thinking of, instead of the leprecaun.\"\n\nKathleen looked at him earnestly. \"It's not one word I'm believin' of\nall they say about you, Father,\" she said.\n\n\"It is what they say about the fairy people that's not for you to\nbelieve,\" he answered, and rising from the stone slab, he took a hand\nof each of the children and led them across the top of the hill to a\ngrassy mound which was encircled by a ring of jagged rocks.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIN THE FAIRY RATH\n\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen, it's the fairy rath,\" said Kathleen under her breath,\nand she clasped her father's hand more tightly.\n\nGrandmother Barry, who talked often in Gaelic about the fairies with\nGreat-grandmother Connell, had told the children many times not to play\ntoo near the fairy rath.\n\n\"There be many such mounds scattered over the hills and glens of ould\nIreland,\" she said. \"The good people live in them and may do harm to\nchilder that make too bold with their haunts.\"\n\n\"They must be bad people if they would do harm to little Mary Ellen,\"\nKathleen replied.\n\n\"Hush, child!\" her grandmother reproved her. \"They are like all men and\nwomen, liker to _do_ good if they be called good.\"\n\nNow, as they drew near the fairy rath, Kathleen tiptoed over the rocky\npath, thinking every moment to see a fairy slip behind a pebble or a\nblade of grass. She felt sure that when they stepped within the rocky\nring, a door would open in the grassy mound and show to her eager eyes\nlong rooms glittering with jewelled walls, leading one after another\ninto the depths of the earth.\n\nWhat was her surprise then, when they entered the enclosure, to find,\nnot a magic door leading to fairyland but a single tiny room dug out of\nthe mound, sheltered from wind and rain by sods and stones, with just\nroom enough for a man to work at his bench, and no more.\n\nHer father pointed out to the child's disappointed eyes a leather pouch\nlying among the tools on the work-bench.\n\n\"That is the only purse I've got, Kathleen,\" he said, \"and my fingers\nhave never seen the magic day when they could fill it with silver.\"\n\nPoor Mary Ellen's blind eyes could see nothing of the shoemaker's\nbench and the empty purse, but her heart felt all the loving thought\nthat moved her sister to ask, \"Then why did you not leave the dish of\nstirabout under the hawthorn bush? The little elf shoemaker sits there\nevery night mending his shoe, with his purse of gold beside him. Belike\nyou might snatch it yourself.\"\n\n\"Oh, Kathleen, it's myself will be the only shoemaker in these parts,\"\nher father answered. \"Put the foolish fancies out of your head now. No\ngood ever came of such thoughts.\"\n\nIt was not the first time he had told Kathleen to forget the fairy\nlore, and he had often checked Grandmother Barry when her unruly tongue\ntouched upon the forbidden subject. \"The childer's heads should not be\nfilled with such nonsense,\" he said.\n\nBut it was not easy to check Great-grandmother Connell. She had lived\nninety long years among a fairy-loving people, and liked to tell the\nGaelic stories of old Ireland over and over again.\n\nShe it was who believed that Ireland was first inhabited by a race of\ngiants. \"They lived here with the birds and beasts before ever a man\nrode through the green forests,\" she told Grandmother Barry.\n\n\"What became of them, then?\" inquired her daughter.\n\n\"Sure, they turned themselves into the wee folk when men came here from\nover the seas, and they live under the rocks and trees and in the fairy\nmounds.\"\n\n\"True it is,\" agreed Grandmother Barry, and she told Kathleen what\nthe great-grandmother had been saying in Gaelic about the giants and\nfairies.\n\nThat was how Kathleen came to know so many of the tales of old Ireland,\nand why she was always thinking of the wee folk.\n\n\"How can I put the thoughts out of my head?\" she asked her father.\n\"Sure, the fairies are putting them in again all the time, with their\ndoings.\"\n\n\"What are they doing, the day, to make you think of them?\" asked the\nshoemaker.\n\n\"There's the ring of green grass beyond the hawthorn bush,\" she said\ntimidly. \"Danny borrowed the plow from Farmer Flynn and plowed through\nit over and over, but it came up again as round and green as ever. What\nelse could make it but the fairies with their dancing feet?\"\n\nThe shoemaker shook his head hopelessly at the child's simple faith in\nher old grandmother's stories. \"It's not like you, with your sense and\nhandy ways about the house, to believe the fairy nonsense,\" he said.\n\"It must be because you have never learned the reading. After this you\nmust come up here when your work in the house is done, and I'll teach\nyou the words. If you don't believe it from my telling, you will from\nthe books, that there are no fairies in Ireland.\"\n\nSo it came about that on sunny afternoons through the winter two little\ngirls played on the top of the hill near a fairy rath in far Donegal,\nin the north of Ireland. And often the shoemaker put his work down on\nthe bench and called the children to his side, where he told them true\nstories of Irish history, and taught Kathleen to read from the pages of\nan old Irish book.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE OLD WOMAN IN RED\n\n  \"How many miles to Dublin town?\n    Threescore and ten.\n  Can I get there by candle-light?\n    Yes, and back again!\"\n\n\nWith the last words the two little girls clasped hands and ran round\nand round the great stone slab, not hearing their father's voice\ncalling to them from his bench.\n\nAs the children dropped upon the stone he called more sharply,\n\"Kathleen! Do you hear me?\"\n\n\"I hear you, but I do not fear you,\" answered Kathleen, leading Mary\nEllen to her father's side. She put her arm around his neck and kissed\nhis patient face, then seated herself on his knee.\n\n\"I used to fear you,\" she said with a laugh, \"after Granny Connor told\nme you had made a bargain with the leprecaun, and that you had a secret\nhiding-place.\"\n\n\"And now it's no secret at all, at all,\" her father said. \"The\ngrandmother has learned it, too, and will be calling you down to run\nerrands the minute she lays eyes on you here.\"\n\n\"We were both helping her, the morn,\" said Mary Ellen.\n\n\"What were you doing, jewel?\" asked the father of the little blind\nchild.\n\n\"Oh, reddin' up the house,\" replied Mary Ellen. \"Kathleen swept the\nfloor, and I wiped the dishes, and then I held the yarn for Grandma\nConnell. She is knitting you some stockings.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" added Kathleen, \"and I drove the little dun cow to the pasture\nbeyond the bog; and on my way home I pulled some rushes to make a new\nbrush for the hearth.\"\n\n\"I helped Grandma Barry with the churning, too,\" said Mary Ellen. \"We\nchurned and churned, but not a bit of butter did we get till Kathleen\ncame home and put a sod of burning peat under the churn. Then the\nbutter came soon enough, and Kathleen said the good people had put a\nspell upon the cream.\"\n\n\"Faith, you're always thinking of the fairies,\" exclaimed her father.\n\"Do you like old Granny Connor's witch tales better than the stories I\ntell you of brave Irish men, like Brian Boru and Conn of the Hundred\nBattles?\"\n\nKathleen looked at him quickly. \"You tell us that Conn lived many\nhundred years ago, and Brian Boru has been dead these eight hundred\nyears; but Granny Connor says that the fairies are living now. They\nhave a council hall in a cave between here and Letterkenny. The cave is\nunder the great Rock of Doon, and\u2014\"\n\n\"I like not to hear you speak so much of old Granny Connor and her\ntales,\" her father interrupted her. \"It's her and her red cloak have\nput sorrow and shame on me these many years.\n\n\"Do you mind how green the grass is already, down there in front of the\ndoor, Kathleen, child?\" he added.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"I'm fond of the feeling of it to my bare feet.\"\n\n\"You might travel over the whole of Donegal without seeing another yard\nso green,\" he said sadly, \"and it's a shame to me to have it so.\"\n\n\"Why?\" asked Mary Ellen, who thought the soft grass the best playground\nin the whole world.\n\n\"Because no stranger ever stops before our door to beg a bite or a\nnight's shelter from us,\" he replied.\n\n\"True it is,\" said the child, \"but Grandma Barry says it is lonely here\nand no one cares to come.\"\n\n\"I mind it is because Granny Connor put the curse upon me years ago,\nwhen first I came here,\" her father repeated. \"She said, 'May the grass\nbe always green before your door,' and green it has been ever since.\"\n\n\"But why should that be a curse?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"Because Ireland is the kindest country under the sun,\" he answered.\n\"Open house and open heart is our motto, and if a yard is green, 'tis\nbecause no friendly foot has worn it bare.\"\n\nKathleen's cheeks flushed. \"Danny and I will dig up every blade of\ngrass before we sleep the night,\" she declared.\n\n\"Whist,\" said her father. \"It is as it is. But it might have been\ndifferent if I had said the kind word to the old woman in red when I\nbrought your mother to these parts years gone.\"\n\n\"What did she do?\" asked Mary Ellen, taking her father's big hand in\nher two little ones and holding it fast.\n\n\"We were just after lighting the first sod of peat on the hearth, when\nGranny Connor stood at the door, dressed all in her red cloak, and so\nstill that no one had heard her step. ''Tis a haunted country that\nyou've come to,' she said, and it frightened your mother to hear her.\n\n\"There were the three of you children, and Mary Ellen but a wee baby.\nYour mother was ailing, and I was angered at the old woman's tongue.\n'Be off with your crazy talk!' I said, seeing that your mother was\nscared, and Granny went away across the bog, but first she said the\ncurse.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have bided here after that,\" said Kathleen, but her father\nshook his head.\n\n\"I had worked a long time to build the little cottage and get it\ndry-thatched,\" he said, \"and I had a fine flock of sheep to pasture\non the hillside. But the mother was lonely and fearsome after Granny\nConnor's visit, and she pined away and died.\"\n\nThe children nestled closer to his side to comfort him, and he put a\nhand on each little head,\u2014Kathleen's dark and straight-haired, Mary\nEllen's yellow and curly.\n\n\"Then I sent into County Sligo for your two grandmothers to come and\nbide,\" he went on, \"and soon I had to do something else to earn a\nliving, because the sheep fell sick and died in the pasture.\"\n\n\"What did you do?\" questioned Mary Ellen.\n\n\"I went over the mountains a-tinkering,\" replied her father. \"But your\nmother used to say that bad luck follows those that have no steady\nbiding-place, and so it was for me. Wherever I went there was a whisper\nthat I was like to have trouble for company, and faith, in those days\nhe seemed my best friend.\"\n\n\"Grandma Barry says to look trouble in the eye and he'll turn away,\"\nsaid Kathleen.\n\n\"Sure I've seen no more of him since Danny got big enough to lend a\nhand,\" said her father. \"Danny's the good lad and will do a hand's\nturn of work with the best of them.\"\n\n\"'Tis Danny that keeps the house dry-thatched,\" said Kathleen, looking\ndown at the brown-thatched, white-walled cottage at the foot of the\nhill.\n\n\"'Tis Kathleen that reds up the house and helps the two grandmothers,\"\nsuggested Mary Ellen.\n\n\"She's a fine slip of a girl,\" replied her father heartily, \"and you\ntoo, Molly jewel; there's a pair of ye.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nERIN'S HARP\n\n\nMarch winds blew across the valley and ruffled Mary Ellen's yellow\ncurls as she sat in the ring of green grass made by the fairies'\ndancing feet, and played with some sea-shells and pebbles Danny had\nfound in the seaweed he gathered for Farmer Flynn.\n\nShe had been playing contentedly for a long time when she suddenly\njumped up, scattering a handful of pebbles from her lap. \"Kathleen,\"\nshe called, \"I hear the peddler's cart. Sure, he's comin' across the\nbridge this minute.\"\n\nKathleen rushed out of the house, clasped her sister's hand tightly in\nher own, and ran up the little path to the top of the hill as fast as\nshe could go.\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen!\" she panted; \"I made sure I'd finish the stockings\nbefore the peddler came this way again; but here he is now and only\none done. The blue dress will be worn out before the other stocking's\nfinished.\"\n\nThe peddler drew up his cart before the door of the little cottage, and\nGrandmother Barry went out to bargain with him for a piece of linen in\nexchange for her butter and eggs. Great-grandmother Connell hobbled out\nto see that the bargain was well made, and the three laughed heartily\nover Kathleen's hurried flight.\n\nIn the winter the peddler had given the child a piece of blue homespun\nfor a dress, and she had promised to knit a pair of stockings for him\nin payment; but there were so many more interesting things to do every\nday that the knitting proved slow work, and Kathleen had often wished\nthe blue dress back in the peddler's cart.\n\n\"Faith, Kathleen makes it harder work to keep out of my sight than to\ndo the knitting,\" the peddler said, as he opened his cart and took out\nthe linen.\n\nGrandmother Barry laughed as she answered, \"I'm thinkin' it will teach\nthe child a good lesson. It's best to keep well out of debt, and a\ndress is better paid for before it is worn. But she shall finish the\nstockings this day week, or I'll knit them myself.\"\n\nShe went into the house to fetch her butter and eggs, and after much\nweighing and measuring and talking, they were exchanged for a piece of\ncoarse linen and a pound of good honey.\n\nIn the meantime the two little girls hid behind the fairy rath and\nwhispered together about the stockings.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\nTHE HILLS OF DONEGAL\n\nThe road over which Danny brought the seaweed for Farmer Flynn. _Page\n21_]\n\n\"The minute the peddler drives down the road I'll go and get the\nknitting, and I'll keep the needles clickin' while I'm out of my bed\ntill it's done,\" Kathleen declared.\n\nMary Ellen held up her hand. \"Whist, alanna,\" she said softly, \"'tis\nfairy music I hear.\"\n\nKathleen listened eagerly for a moment. \"True for you,\" she said. \"I\nhear it myself. Belike it's the sea-gods over at Horn Head. There was a\nbig storm last night, and Grandmother Barry says that after a big storm\nthousands of the sea-gods ride over the waves on their white-maned\nsteeds winding their battle horns.\"\n\nIt is ten miles across the country to Horn Head, which is one of the\nrocky headlands on the north coast of Ireland, where the waves of\nthe Atlantic Ocean beat against the dark cliffs. Highland lakes and\nmountain rivers lie between, and the road over which Danny brought the\nseaweed for Farmer Flynn leads across purple hills that would surely\ndeaden the sound of surf miles away.\n\n\"It's nearer than Horn Head,\" said Mary Ellen. \"There may be fairies in\nthe rath after all.\"\n\n\"Let's go and see,\" Kathleen suggested, and the two children tiptoed\ncarefully around the circle of rocks, forgetting all about the peddler,\nand the stockings, and Kathleen's good resolution.\n\nAs they crept softly up to the open door of the grassy mound the sweet\nnotes became a little tune, and a voice began singing the familiar\nwords of an old Irish song.\n\nKathleen stood still, hardly daring to breathe, but Mary Ellen stepped\nboldly into the tiny room. \"It's the father himself,\" she said, and\nKathleen followed her sister, astonished indeed to find her father\nsitting on his work-bench and gently touching the strings of a small\nharp.\n\n\"I'm glad it wasn't the fairy music we heard,\" she said, after the\nsurprise was over. \"Grandma Barry says a spell is cast over him that\nhears it, and after the spell is taken off he pines away and dies in a\nyear and a day.\"\n\n\"Is it your own harp, Father?\" asked Mary Ellen, thinking he might\nperhaps have borrowed it from the fairies.\n\n\"It was your mother's,\" he answered. \"It was in her family from the\ndays of the old Irish chiefs, and she showed me how to pick the\nstrings.\"\n\nMary Ellen touched it softly with her fingers. \"It almost seems alive,\"\nshe said, as the strings gave out their sweet sounds.\n\n\"There was once a god in Ireland who owned a harp that was alive,\" her\nfather said with a smile. \"He used to be called the 'Mighty Father of\nIreland,' and his harp could do strange things when it had a mind.\nSometimes he would go to the top of the mountain and play the whole\nprocession of the seasons\u2014spring, summer, autumn, winter\u2014out of the\nstrings of the harp.\n\n\"Once the god was captured by the giants, and was taken away to their\ncastle, but he called to his harp for help, and it heard and answered.\nIt flew through the air straight to its master, and killed nine of the\ngiants as it flew.\"\n\n\"Listen to him, telling us tales of the giants,\" whispered Kathleen,\nbut Mary Ellen was thinking of the harp and paid no attention to her\nsister.\n\n\"Danny says there is a harp on the green flag of Ireland,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes,\" said her father, \"it was an Irish god who made the harp and\nplayed upon its strings.\"\n\n\"Tell us about it,\" begged Kathleen, who loved the gods and giants as\nwell as she did the fairies.\n\n\"The god's name was Dagda,\" her father told her, \"and once when he was\nwalking beside a blue lake he saw a beautiful maiden and wished to have\nher for his wife. But the maiden feared him and ran away through the\nforest.\n\n\"Dagda followed her and she went on running away; and so at last they\ncame to a beautiful curving beach, with the waves washing the yellow\nsands.\n\n\"As the maiden fled swiftly across the wet sands she heard a strange,\nmournful sound, and stopped to listen to the music.\n\n\"The bones of a fish lay on the sand at her feet, and the dry skin,\nstretched from rib to rib, made a harp for the wind to play upon.\n\n\"When Dagda saw that the sweet sounds pleased the maiden, he took a\npiece of wood and made a harp after the same pattern, playing upon the\nstrings with his fingers as the wind had taught him to do. After that\nthe maiden followed him gladly for love of the music.\n\n\"It was the first music ever heard in all Ireland, but since that day\nwe have had harpers from one end of the land to the other. 'Tis a\nwonderful country for music, and we put the harp on our green flag to\nshow that we're proud of the sweet songs of Erin.\"\n\nKathleen sighed when the story was finished. \"I wish it were the days\nof gods and giants and beautiful maidens now,\" she said.\n\n\"I'd wish for the days of the harpers and story-tellers,\" said Mary\nEllen wistfully.\n\n\"Right you are, Molly jewel,\" said her father, putting the harp\ncarefully away in its case. \"The giants were just plain men like\nmyself, but with no learning at all, at all. Faith, they could neither\nread nor write, and but for the harpers we'd know nothing about them.\"\n\n\"How do we know from the harpers?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"Sure, the harpers and story-tellers made up grand songs and stories\nabout the gods and the giants of old Ireland, and travelled up and down\nthe length and breadth of the land singing their songs and telling\ntheir stories wherever they went. It was the only way of learning that\npeople had in the days when there were no books.\"\n\n\"The people must have been glad to see the harpers coming,\" said Mary\nEllen, thinking how much she would like to hear their songs.\n\n\"That they were,\" replied her father. \"Even the kings made them\nwelcome, and gave great feasts in their honor. The feasts were held\nin a long banquet hall with rows of tables up and down the sides,\nand there were sometimes more than a hundred men at the tables. The\nking sat at the head of the hall, with a harper on one side and a\nstory-teller on the other, and there was merry-making through half the\nnight.\"\n\n\"Those old kings of Ireland must have been great men,\" said Kathleen.\n\n\"That they were,\" replied her father, \"and Brian Boru was the best of\nthem all.\"\n\n\"The grandmother is callin',\" interrupted Mary Ellen. \"I hear the sound\nof her bell.\"\n\n\"She's always callin',\" Kathleen complained, but she took her sister's\nhand and hurried obediently down the hill.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE LITTLE GREEN SHAMROCK\n\n\n\"Look, Kathleen,\" said Grandmother Barry, as the two children reached\nthe cottage door, \"there's not another sod of peat in the house. Run\ndown to Farmer Flynn's to meet Danny, and tell him to bring some home\nwith him.\"\n\n\"I'll get the small creel Danny made for me, and bring some home\nmyself,\" said Kathleen, running into the cottage.\n\nShe was out again in a moment with two light wicker baskets. \"Here's\nyour creel, too, Mary Ellen,\" she said, and hung it carefully over her\nsister's shoulders.\n\nFarmer Flynn lived a mile away on a big sheep farm, and Kathleen was\nglad to be sent there for peat. She liked the work and bustle of the\nfarm life and always saw something new and interesting. Sometimes there\nwere baby lambs in the sheepfold, sometimes she saw a calf or a pair of\nyoung donkeys, and then, best of all, there was the big flock of white\ngeese that belonged to the farmer's wife.\n\nKathleen loved to watch the geese, and she often told Mary Ellen funny\nstories about them and their strange ways. \"I'm going to ask Mrs. Flynn\nto let me tend them for her next summer,\" she had confided to her\nsister. \"That will be one way to earn pennies for your eyes, darlin'.\"\n\nDanny had worked for the farmer ever since the winter his father had\nbrought them all to live in Donegal. He had been a pale, shy little lad\nat first, but now he was grown strong and sturdy, \"able to do a day's\nwork with the best of them,\" he said proudly.\n\nFarmer Flynn was proud of him, too, and often said, \"I made of Dan\nBarry the man that he is. He can thatch a roof or shear a sheep to-day\nas well as I can myself.\"\n\nAnd whenever little Kathleen caught the farmer's eye she would stand\nstraighter to hear him say, \"There's a fine slip of a lass. She'll be a\ngood woman and a pride to you, Danny my boy.\"\n\nThe two children, with their creels on their backs, ran down the little\nlane behind the house, followed the brook which chattered over the\nrocks at the foot of the heather glen, crossed the bog and climbed the\nhill, and then, at a quick turn of the path, there they were at the\npeat-shed, and there was Danny standing at the door.\n\nHe was talking with a strange man who carried a bundle of blackthorn\nsticks on his back; but just as the little girls came around the\ncorner Danny shook his head and turned to go into the shed.\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen,\" said Kathleen, \"there's a peddler and he's trying to\nsell Danny a shillalah.\"\n\n\"He'll not do it,\" said Mary Ellen. \"Sure, Danny's saving every odd\nshilling he earns. He has them in an old stocking, and he shook them\nout and let me count them. He has near a pound.\"\n\n\"The peddler has a bundle of fine big sticks,\" said Kathleen, \"but not\none of them is as thick and strong as the blackthorn Father has from\nGreat-grandfather Connell. I'm thinkin' Danny will have that some day.\"\n\nThe peddler smiled pleasantly at the two little girls as they drew\nnearer, and put his hand so gently on Mary Ellen's curly head that\nKathleen took a liking to him at once.\n\n\"Where's your bit of green ribbon?\" he asked with a laugh, looking at\nthe blue homespun dresses as if he thought they ought to be trimmed\nwith green.\n\nKathleen looked up into her brother's face to see if he knew what the\nstranger meant by the question.\n\nBefore Danny could tell her the peddler added, \"Mayhap you never heard\nof our good St. Patrick in these parts,\" and he laughed again as if he\nthought this question a better joke than the other.\n\n\"We know St. Patrick well,\" said Kathleen. \"It's not more than a day's\njourney from here to his mountain in County Mayo, where he drove all\nthe snakes out of Ireland into the sea.\"\n\n\"Then you should be wearing the green for him this day,\" said the\npeddler, and he showed proudly a big knot of green ribbon on one of the\nblack-thorn sticks he carried, and a smaller knot on his worn coat.\n\"Tell the truth now, that you clean forgot this is the seventeenth of\nMarch and St. Patrick's Day in the morning.\"\n\n\"Go away with you!\" exclaimed Danny. \"Where are your eyes, man? Don't\nyou see the green in my cap?\"\n\nIreland is often called the Emerald Isle because of its setting of\ngreen fields and hills, and the national color, which is green, is seen\neverywhere. The English flag floats over the public buildings, but on\nholidays and feast-days the green flag of Erin decorates the houses,\nand on St. Patrick's Day every one wears a bit of green in memory of\nthe patron saint, and in honor of Ireland.\n\nDanny, who had no green ribbon to wear to show his love for his\ncountry, had tucked a sprig of green shamrock into his cap, but now the\ntender leaves were wilted and hung drooping from their slender stems.\n\n\"It's St. Patrick's own little plant, and it was fresh and green\nenough when I found it beside the brook this morning,\" he said, taking\noff his cap and touching the withered leaves tenderly as if he loved\nthem.\n\n\"Come home with us now,\" he added, turning to the peddler, \"and we'll\ngive you a good Irish welcome and a bite and a sup.\"\n\n\"I'll gladly go with you and the childer here,\" said the peddler\nheartily. So he helped the little girls fill their creels with the sods\nof dry peat and fastened a bit of shamrock on their dresses \"for St.\nPatrick and old Ireland.\" Danny finished up his work in a hurry, and\nsoon they were all on their way back along the lonely path. But it was\nlonely no longer, for they sang as they marched along:\n\n  \"There's a dear little plant that grows in our Isle,\n      'Twas Saint Patrick himself, sure, that set it;\n  And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile,\n      And with dew from his eye often wet it.\n  It shines thro' the bog, thro' the brake, and the mireland,\n  And he called it the dear little shamrock of Ireland.\n                  The dear little shamrock,\n                  The sweet little shamrock,\n      The dear little, sweet little, shamrock of Ireland.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nGOOD ST. PATRICK\n\n\nGrandmother Barry heard the song, and went to the door to see who was\nsinging it so heartily. When she saw the peddler with the children she\nhurried to put an extra bowl and plate on the table, and bustled about\nthe room setting out the simple meal.\n\nThe potatoes were baking in the embers, the kettle was boiling\ncheerfully over the burning peat, and a big dish of oaten stirabout was\nalready steaming on the table.\n\n\"I'll make a good cup of tay, and well have a supper fit for the king,\"\nGrandmother Barry said aloud to herself, as she measured out the tea\ncarefully and poured the boiling water over it. Then she went again to\nthe door to give the stranger a hearty welcome.\n\nKathleen rang the bell to call her father down from his work-bench,\nDanny milked the little cow, and \"in just no time at all\" they were\nready for supper.\n\n\"'Tis a sin and a shame that Kathleen is not wearing her green dress\nfor St. Patrick,\" said Grandmother Barry, as she saw the knot of green\nribbon in the peddler's coat. \"I put it on her to wear to Mass, but\n'tis her best and not to be worn common when she's here at home. 'Twas\na grand morning, and Father Burke gave the children a good talk about\nSt. Patrick.\"\n\n\"A fine morning it was, woman dear,\" said the peddler, \"and a grand day\nfor the best saint that ever lived in ould Ireland.\n\n\"Tell us what Father Burke said about him,\" he added, turning to\nKathleen.\n\nPoor Kathleen flushed and hung her head. \"Sure, I know he stood on\nCroagh Patrick, over in County Mayo, and drove all the snakes out of\nthe whole country into the sea,\" she said, wishing she could remember\nsome of the stories the good priest had told them.\n\n\"I'm not so sure about that,\" said the peddler; \"but it is true that\nthere is not one to be found in the whole island. Some say there was\nnever a snake here, and some say the good saint drove them all out with\none stroke of his big stick. However it is, he is the best saint that\never lived, and a glory to Ireland, praise be to him!\"\n\n\"Father Burke says he was only a lad when he was stolen away from his\nfather and mother in Scotland, and brought to Ireland to tend swine\nfor one of the chiefs,\" said Mary Ellen shyly.\n\n\"He was sixteen years old, and as straight and handsome a lad as ever\nlived,\" said the peddler.\n\n\"Was he a saint then?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"Whist, child,\" exclaimed Grandmother Barry, \"would a saint tend wild\npigs on the mountains for any man, chief or no chief?\"\n\n\"He was a brave lad,\" repeated the peddler. \"It should be told oftener\nhow he served one of the chiefs for six long years, and served him\nwell. He set a good example to the flighty gossoons nowadays that can't\nstick to one thing for as long as a month at a time.\"\n\n\"Danny has worked for Farmer Flynn ten years,\" said Mary Ellen, fearing\nthe peddler might think her brother a \"flighty gossoon.\"\n\n\"Father Burke said that St. Patrick went all over Ireland, ringing his\nbell and preaching to the people,\" said Kathleen, beginning to remember\nsome of the story.\n\n\"So he did; he was a wonderful preacher,\" said Grandmother Barry, \"and\nhe was Bishop of all Ireland for many years.\"\n\n\"Was that when Great-grandmother Connell was a little girl?\" asked Mary\nEllen, who thought her great-grandmother very old.\n\n\"Whist, jewel; it was nearly fifteen hundred years ago that St.\nPatrick died,\" her father told her, \"and your great-grandmother's only\nninety.\"\n\n\"Tell us the story of St. Patrick,\" begged Kathleen. \"I'll remember it\nthis time, for sure.\"\n\n\"Well, now,\" the peddler began, \"when Patrick was a lad of sixteen he\nwas brought to Ireland and sold as a slave to one of the rich chiefs,\nwho sent him to tend swine on the mountains. At first he was no doubt\nsad and lonely, but he bore his troubles bravely and thought often of\nthe good Father in Heaven.\"\n\nKathleen's father rose quickly, and going to a box in the corner of the\nroom, he took out a book and brought it back to the fire.\n\n\"This is what the good saint himself wrote about those lonely days in\nthe mountains,\" he said, and turning the page he began to read slowly:\n\"I was daily employed tending flocks; and I prayed frequently during\nthe day, and the love of God was more and more enkindled in my heart,\nmy fear and faith were increased, and my spirit was stirred; so much so\nthat in a single day I poured out my prayers a hundred times and nearly\nas often in the night. Nay, even in the woods and mountains I remained,\nand rose before the dawn to my prayer, in frost and snow and rain;\nneither did I suffer any injury from it; for the spirit of the Lord was\nfervent within me.\"\n\n\"He was a good lad,\" said Grandmother Barry, wiping a tear from her\nwrinkled cheek, and taking up her knitting again.\n\n\"That he was, praise be to him,\" the peddler agreed. \"He tended the\nswine for six years, and then he escaped and made his way back to his\nhome in Scotland; but he could not forget the Irish people and he\nlonged to go back and teach them to be Christians. He studied for many\nyears in France and other countries, but all the time his thoughts\nturned back to Ireland and he had dreams and visions about it.\n\n\"At last the Pope gave his permission, and Patrick set out for Ireland,\nlanding on the north coast, in what is now County Down. Dicho, the\nchief of the district, thought that Patrick and his companions were\npirates, and went to meet them and drive them out of the country; but\nwhen he saw their calm and peaceful ways he saluted them and invited\nthem to his castle.\n\n\"Here Patrick told the chief his story and explained his belief in God,\nand Dicho and his whole family became Christians and were baptized.\"\n\n\"He was a wonderful preacher,\" repeated Grandmother Barry, with a nod\nof her head.\n\n\"Father Burke says that no missionary, since the time of the apostles,\never preached the gospel with more success than St. Patrick,\" said\nDanny.\n\n\"That was because he cared nothing for riches and honor,\" said the\npeddler. \"He loved the people of Ireland and longed to make them all\ngood Christians.\n\n\"After living with Dicho for some time and converting all the people\nroundabout, he bade good-bye to his friends and sailed down to the\nmouth of the river Boyne. From there he walked to the Hill of Tara,\nwhere the high-king of all Ireland lived in a great palace.\n\n\"He arrived at the palace on Easter morning, and presented himself\nbefore the king and his court. Patrick was robed in white, as were also\nhis companions, and he wore his mitre and carried his crosier in his\nhand. He converted many of the king's followers, and preached to the\npeople throughout all the king's dominions.\n\n\"'Twas so all over Ireland,\u2014wherever Patrick went he turned pagans to\nChristians and built churches.\n\n\"He died in the very place where he first preached to Dicho, on the\nseventeenth day of March, about the year 465.\"\n\n\"Is that why we call the seventeenth of March St. Patrick's Day?\" asked\nMary Ellen.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied her father, \"it is the day that he died. We don't\nrightly know just what day he was born.\"\n\n\"How do you know so many things about St. Patrick, then, if he lived so\nmany hundred years ago?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"The old books tell us,\" her father said. \"Patrick, himself, wrote\nabout his wanderings, and the monks copied these books and many others,\npainting pictures on the pages to illustrate them. It is from these\nancient Gaelic books that we learn much about the life and customs of\nthe people.\"\n\n\"There were books of laws for the kings and the people, too,\" said the\npeddler.\n\n\"Did the kings have to obey laws?\" asked Kathleen, who supposed kings\ndid just as they chose.\n\n\"That they did,\" replied the peddler. \"There was a law that no man\ncould rule at Tara who was not perfect in his looks; so when Cormac mac\nArt lost an eye he had to give up being king.\"\n\n\"'Twas a shame, too, for he was a good king,\" said the father.\n\n\"It was also against the law for the sun to rise while the king was\nlying in bed at Tara,\" said the peddler.\n\nThe children laughed merrily, and Danny asked, \"How could they keep the\nsun from rising till the king was out of his bed?\"\n\n\"Faith, they made the king get up before the sun did,\" the peddler\nanswered.\n\nWhile the children were laughing over his joke, Grandmother Barry put\ndown her knitting and went to the cupboard for a plate of oat-cakes and\nher precious pound of honey.\n\nEveryone was quiet for a few minutes over the feast, and little Mary\nEllen was the first to break the silence. \"Father told us a story\nabout St. Columbkille one day,\" she said. \"He was born here in our own\nDonegal and he had little cakes baked for him with the letters of the\nalphabet on them. I'm thinkin' if I had cakes like that I could learn\nthe letters with my fingers.\"\n\n\"Faith, he must have had a fine time picnicking on his letters,\" said\nthe peddler.\n\n\"There was St. Bridget, too,\" said Grandmother Barry; \"she was a fine\nwoman and took great pride in learning and teaching. And I doubt not\nher fingers had magic in them to turn wool into yarn and yarn into\nstockings, like any colleen of Donegal,\" she added, with a look at\nKathleen.\n\nBut Kathleen was sound asleep in her chair and had forgotten all about\nthe stocking she was going to finish knitting that very day.\n\n\"The child is tired out with our stories,\" said her father.\n\n\"I mind we should all be in our beds,\" said Grandmother Barry, and soon\nthey were tucked away comfortably for the night.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nA RIDE WITH THE POSTMAN\n\n  \"My blessing go high, my blessing go low,\n  My blessing go with you wherever you go.\"\n\n\nIt was Mary Ellen's sweet Irish way of saying good-bye to the peddler\nwhen he went away the next day; and he replied heartily, \"If I should\ntravel over the whole of Ireland between sun-up and sun-down, I'd hear\nno better word.\"\n\nAt the cross-roads he met the postman in his red jaunting-car, riding\ntoward the thatched cottage at the foot of the hill, and he stopped to\npass the time of day with him.\n\n\"Give the two little girls a ride,\" said the peddler. \"If 'tis to the\nNational School you are going, with a letter for the teacher, this\nway is as short as the other, and 'tis a lonely life the two children\nlead,\u2014a mile from any other house, and never another child to play\nwith.\"\n\n\"'Tis a letter for Jerry, himself, that I have, and 'twill take me\nby the cottage, anyway,\" answered the postman; and looked the letter\nover, thinking that it was probably from Grandmother Barry's daughter,\nHannah Malone, as the postmark was \"Kilkenny.\"\n\nHe found the great-grandmother crooning an old Gaelic milking tune\nover her wheel, instead of the spinning song which she usually sang;\nand Grandmother Barry greeted him with, \"Ah, Larry O'Day, this is just\nsuch a morning as the one when you and I went with the rest on the\npilgrimage to 'Tobar N'alt,' the holy well in County Sligo, to cure us\nof our rheumatism.\"\n\nThe postman laughed. \"That was forty years ago, and I'd forgot all\nabout it,\" he said, throwing out a letter from the pack. \"It's a dozen\npilgrimages to holy wells that I've made since then,\" he went on, \"and\nthere's not a heartier man for his age, than myself, in all Ireland.\"\n\nThen he called to the children and asked if they cared to ride with him\nas far as the National School, four miles back of the hill, to carry a\nletter to the teacher.\n\n\"Oh, Molly darlin', a ride!\" gasped Kathleen, hardly believing her\nears; while Mary Ellen was so excited that she climbed over the seat\nand would have tumbled into the well of the jaunting-car if Kathleen\nhad not held her back.\n\n\"Steady, there, steady!\" said Larry O'Day. \"There be all sorts of\nwells in holy Ireland, from the blessed ones filled with the water\nthat cures all ailments, to the empty one between the seats of a\njaunting-car; but not a one is there built to hold little girls in red\ndresses.\"\n\nBoth children laughed merrily, and held tight to each other as the old\nhorse jogged up hill and down dale toward the far-away schoolhouse.\n\nThe blue waters of a lake glistened afar off among the heather, and the\npostman said, \"I mind me that somewhere in these parts there is a long\nflat stone that marks the place where the good Saint Columba was born.\nI've heard that if a body sleeps on it for one night before leaving\ndear old Ireland, he'll never be homesick.\"\n\n\"Perhaps 'tis the same flat stone by Father's bench, where we play\nbetimes,\" said Kathleen. \"I'll tell Danny about it. He's thinking of\ngoing to find his fortune in America.\"\n\nThen the children asked about the schoolhouse and the children who went\nto school in it. \"How old are they?\" asked Kathleen. \"Are there any as\nlittle as Mary Ellen?\"\n\n\"There are some smaller than Mary Ellen and some bigger than you,\"\nanswered the postman. \"There are both boys and girls.\"\n\n\"What do they learn?\" she asked again, while Mary Ellen asked, \"What do\nthey play?\"\n\n\"I've seen them playing some kind of a game where they hold hands in\na circle,\" he told Mary Ellen, and both little girls cried at once,\n\"That's 'Green grow the rushes-O.'\"\n\n\"Belike it is,\" he said cheerfully, and went on, \"they learn reading,\nand writing, and the church catechism.\"\n\n\"Don't they learn about the grand places there are in the other parts\nof the world?\" asked Kathleen wistfully. One of her few great pleasures\nwas to get out an old geography-book belonging to her father, and study\nthe pictures in it.\n\n\"Perhaps there's something of the sort for the older ones,\" said the\npostman, \"but if a body can't travel the world over, to see such\nplaces, I'm doubtful if there's any good in learning about them.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no!\" cried Kathleen, aghast at such a thought; while Mary\nEllen said softly, \"If I could see just one little green shamrock, I'd\nwalk to the end of the world.\"\n\nThen they turned into another road and saw the children playing in the\nschool-yard, and a sudden shyness fell upon Kathleen at the sight of so\nmany children.\n\nAfter the teacher had taken her letter and the red cart was jogging\nback over the road, there was no end to the questions Larry O'Day had\nto answer.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\n\"THEY ARE PLAYING 'GREEN GROW THE RUSHES-O'\"\n\n_Page 42_]\n\n\"Would those little girls feed the chickens and pigs, and drive the cow\nto pasture, as Kathleen did? Would the boys plant potatoes and work in\nthe bog just the same as Danny? Was that the very school where Danny\nhimself walked eight miles a day, one winter, to learn to figure?\"\n\nBefore they reached the thatched cottage again, the postman had talked\nmore than he had for many a day before, and Kathleen helped her little\nsister down from the car in a great hurry to run to Grandmother Barry\nand ask still other questions.\n\nBut Grandmother Barry had questions of her own to ask. \"Sure, Kathleen\nalanna,\" she began, \"and how would you like to go down to Kilkenny and\nlive with your Aunt Hannah?\"\n\n\"When?\" asked Kathleen breathlessly.\n\n\"As soon as the plans can be made,\" answered her grandmother. \"Your\nAunt Hannah has sent the word in the letter the postman left; and your\nfather has gone to fetch Danny and talk it over with him.\"\n\n\"There they are now,\" said Mary Ellen, her quick ear catching the sound\nof their footsteps, and the next moment Danny and his father were\nturning into the yard.\n\nThen Mary Ellen held the wonderful letter while Kathleen looked it over\nand Father Jerry told what it said.\n\n\"Himself has been doing well in his business, praise be!\" Aunt Hannah\nwrote, \"and I'd like to do something for a child of my youngest\nbrother, though he did take up with the tinker's trade against my\nwishes; and him with the schooling.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" said the shoemaker, looking up at the circle of faces.\n\"Hannah begged me to take up teaching for a living. I had the learning\nfor it, and it is an honorable calling in Ireland, and always has been.\nBut I longed to see the whole of the green island, so I took on a trade\nthat gave me a chance to travel over it.\"\n\n\"'Tis of the chair in the chimney-corner at Barney's house in Sligo,\nI've been thinking all the morn,\" said Great-grandmother Connell. \"Do\nyou believe Barney has kept it waiting for me these ten years as he\nsaid he would?\"\n\n\"I doubt not there's a chair each side of the chimney, one for you and\none for Mother Barry,\" said Father Jerry gently.\n\n\"'Tis Ireland that never forgets the old mother,\" said the older woman,\n\"and my heart is crying out for the dear old home where I lived for\neighty years.\"\n\n\"Why shouldn't we all go?\" asked Danny boldly. \"I've money enough for\nmy passage to America, and I'd like to try my fortune in the world.\"\n\n\"But what will become of me?\" asked little Mary Ellen.\n\n\"'Tis you and I will buy a great dog to keep us company, and we'll go\ntravelling together up north to listen to the waves beating around the\nGiant's Causeway, Molly darling,\" her father told her.\n\nBut Danny had to give a month's warning to Farmer Flynn, and before the\ntime was up, a letter had reached them from Tonroe. It said that Cousin\nBee, Uncle Barney's daughter who had married a Donovan, would be glad\nto have Mary Ellen bide with her for a while, at her home in Roscommon\nCounty.\n\n\"So you and the doggie must travel alone to the North,\" whispered Mary\nEllen to her father.\n\nAnd that was the way of it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nCOUSIN BEE'S FARM IN TONROE\n\n\nIt was an April morning at Cousin Bee's little farm-house in Tonroe.\nThe kettle was bubbling cheerfully over the burning peat in the\nfireplace; the cement floor of the kitchen was spotlessly clean; and\nPatrick, Bee's husband, was making the children feel quite at home\nas he talked with them about Donegal and laughed heartily over their\nlittle stories.\n\nDanny, Kathleen and Mary Ellen had arrived at the station with the two\ngrandmothers the night before, and nothing would do but they must all\nleave the train together.\n\n\"Sure, we've room and to spare for a strong lad like you,\" Patrick had\ntold Danny; and Bee had said, \"'Twould be a shame for Mary Ellen and\nKathleen to be separated so sudden-like.\"\n\nSo Uncle Barney took the two grandmothers home with him to Killaraght,\nwhile Danny and Kathleen went with Mary Ellen to visit Cousin Bee\nbefore going on with their journey,\u2014Kathleen to Kilkenny, and Danny to\nQueenstown, where he was to take the steamer for America.\n\n[Illustration:\n\nCopyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\nCOUSIN BEE'S FARMHOUSE IN TONROE\n\nNotice the thatched roof and the broad chimneys.\n_Page 47_]\n\nTheir first morning in Tonroe opened bright and cheery, outside as well\nas in, and Kathleen was so excited over all the new sights that she\ncould hardly wait to eat her breakfast. Of course everything had to be\ndescribed to Mary Ellen, and Patrick's hearty laugh filled the kitchen\nwhen Kathleen told her sister that the village looked as if a giant had\ntaken a great creel filled with houses, and dropped them from a high\nladder to the plain below.\n\n\"Kathleen never saw so many houses together before, till she went to\nLetterkenny yesterday to take the train away from Donegal,\" Danny\nexplained.\n\n\"Then she'll like to ride over to Boyle with Bee on market days,\" said\nPatrick kindly; \"there's houses a-plenty there. But the plains of Boyle\nwill look flat enough to her after the mountains of her own county.\"\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen, come here!\" cried Kathleen, who had gone to the back\ndoor for another look at the village. \"There's a church steeple far\naway beyond a hilleen, and there's the fine National School building\nthat Grandma Barry used to tell us about. It's on the little hill, and\nI can see it every time I look out at the door. But the mountains are\nfar away. There's not one to be seen near by.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they have put on a cloak of darkness,\" suggested Mary Ellen.\n\"Is there nothing at all where the mountains rightly belong?\"\n\n\"It's better than mountains,\" said Kathleen decidedly, to Patrick's\ndelight. \"There's another hilleen of trees just beyond the hedge, and\nit looks like a picnic garden, for the trees are all covered with\ncreels and creels of pink and white blossoms.\"\n\n\"She means the rath, and the hawthorn trees,\" exclaimed Patrick.\n\n\"It is an old fort, darlin',\" Bee explained, \"and it was built by a\ngreat chief hundreds of years ago; but it looks like a little hill now.\nThere's another just forninst the church steeple; and one off to the\nside of the house that you'd best not go too near.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" asked Kathleen curiously.\n\n\"An old chief was buried there hundreds of years ago,\" answered Bee,\n\"and now the fairies live in it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen,\" whispered Kathleen, \"there are fairies here after\nall, and we were thinkin' we had left them behind us in Donegal.\"\n\nThen she said aloud to Cousin Bee, \"It would be a fine place for the\nfairies to dance under the pink and white trees in the rath beyond the\ngarden. Did the old chiefs have their picnics there?\"\n\n\"Whist, jewel, the Irish chiefs had other things to do,\" said her\ncousin. \"They had to be fighting with other chiefs, and killing the\nwild beasts; and sometimes they went off hunting foxes and deer\nthrough the green forests, but I'm thinking they had no time for\npicnics.\"\n\nMary Ellen was standing by Kathleen's side, her sightless eyes looking\nbeyond the green hedge toward the beautiful mound of trees that scented\nthe air with thousands of blossoms.\n\n\"What did the chiefs do with the forts?\" she asked.\n\n\"They lived in them,\" answered Bee. \"First they built a great circular\nwall of earth or stone to keep out wild beasts and robbers; and then\ninside the wall they built their house. Sometimes there were two or\nthree walls, one outside the other. The forts were called raths, and if\na king lived in them his house was called a dun.\"\n\n\"That rath looks like a grove of trees now,\" said Kathleen.\n\n\"The trees have grown up on the walls, and the houses are all gone\nhundreds of years ago,\" Bee replied.\n\n\"What did the houses look like?\" asked Mary Ellen.\n\n\"The darlin'! she wants to know how it all looked just as if she had\nthe sight,\" said Bee, putting her arm around the child.\n\n\"Well,\" she went on, \"the houses were shaped like bee-hives. They were\nbuilt of poles all woven in and out with twigs, like wicker baskets, so\nthe books say. Many a town in Ireland to-day is built where a chief's\nrath or a king's dun once stood, and it gets its name by that token.\nThere's Dundalk and Dunglow and Dunmore, Rathmelton, Rathdrum and\nRathcormack. There are duns and raths all over the country.\"\n\n\"There are 'Kils,' too,\" said Mary Ellen. \"Kathleen found them in our\nold geography, and Father made a little verse about them. He says that\n'Kil' means church, and that St. Patrick built some of the churches. I\ndon't remember the verse, though. Do you, Kathleen?\"\n\n\"That I do,\" said her sister, and she sang to an odd little tune:\n\n  \"Of 'Killys' and 'Kils' there are many.\n  There's Kildare and Kilmaine and Kilkenny,\n      Killybegs, Kullashee,\n      Killimore, Killyleagh,\n  Kilworth and Kilcock and Kilkelly.\"\n\n\"Good enough,\" said Patrick, clapping his hands and laughing so\nheartily that everyone else laughed.\n\n\"There are dozens of 'ballys,' too,\" said Mary Ellen, when the laughter\nwas over. \"Kathleen made a list of them, and Father said they would\nmake a whole string of verses, but he didn't get time for it yet.\n'Bally means town,' he said.\"\n\n\"Did the chiefs ever have any sports besides hunting?\" asked Danny,\nwho was fond of sports and had tried many a running race with the boys\nat Farmer Flynn's.\n\n\"To be sure,\" Patrick replied. \"Over in Leinster they held a great fair\nonce in every three years, and they had games and chariot races and\nhorse races. People went to the fair from miles around, and the harpers\nand story-tellers always planned their wanderings so as to be there for\nthe three days.\"\n\n\"It must have been something like market day,\" said Kathleen, who could\nnot forget the crowd she saw at the Letterkenny market.\n\n\"There was marketing, too,\" said Patrick. \"It wouldn't be Ireland\nwithout marketing. There was selling and buying of horses, sheep, and\npigs, and all sorts of hand-made gold and bronze ornaments. The country\nwas famous for her hand-crafts then; and she will be so again some day,\npraise be!\"\n\n\"There couldn't have been such pig markets as the one we saw\nyesterday,\" said Danny, laughing at the thought of the hundreds of\nsquealing pigs in the Letterkenny streets.\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" said Bee. \"It took them two years to get\nready for the Leinster fairs, and we go to market in Boyle twice a\nweek.\"\n\n\"I should be on my way there now, instead of sitting here talking as\nif I'd nothing to do,\" said Patrick. \"I want to see Tim Keefe about\nbuying the heifer come Saturday. Have you any eggs to send, Bridget\nmavourneen? And will you go with me, Danny, my boy?\"\n\nDanny went out to help Patrick harness the mule, Mary Ellen held the\ncreel while Kathleen counted out five score of eggs, and Bee packed ten\npounds of beautiful, golden butter into the market basket.\n\n\"There, Patrick avic,\" she said, as she followed him to the barn and\nput the basket into the trap, \"bring me back a good bit of silver for\nmy work, and a ribbon apiece for the children. I'll have them watching\nfor you when you come home.\"\n\n\"This is the best day to sell the butter,\" she said to Kathleen, as the\ntrap disappeared down the boreen toward the road. \"There'll be people\nbuying everything you can name, from butter and eggs to needles and\npins and imitation gold chains, at the Wednesday market.\"\n\n\"What will they buy in the Saturday market?\" asked the child.\n\n\"Pigs, calves, sheep and wool, hay, potatoes, and every kind of\nvegetable that grows,\" was the answer. \"I'm raising a little pig that\nI'm going to take to the Saturday market myself some day; and Patrick's\nheifer is the best in Boyle for its age. Tim Keefe ought to give him a\ngood price for it.\"\n\nThen she took Kathleen into the barn and showed her the heifer and the\nlittle pig, the two baby donkeys, the hens and the geese.\n\n\"If we get everything well started in the garden we will go on a picnic\nto Lough Gara come May-day, and you shall stay and go with us,\" she\nsaid, leading Kathleen into the garden.\n\nSuch a pretty garden it was, too! Paths bordered with box led through\nbeds of lilies and roses; and there were beds of cowslips and\nhollyhocks and many another sweet, old-fashioned flower.\n\nAfter they had walked up and down the little paths and looked at\nall the buds and blossoms, they went back into the kitchen, where\nKathleen washed the dishes while Bee put the bread to bake in the Irish\nbaking-oven. This oven looks like a kettle and it stands on four feet\namong the burning peat with more peat heaped on the cover.\n\n\"If Mary Ellen could see, and I was going to live here always, and\nFather could come back and live here, too, and Danny need never go to\nAmerica, this would be the prettiest farm and the best place in the\nwhole world,\" Kathleen said to herself with a long sigh.\n\nBee heard the sigh and asked what it meant.\n\n\"I'm wishing I could find some way to bring Mary Ellen's eyesight\nback,\" Kathleen told her.\n\n\"Was she born blind?\" questioned Bee.\n\n\"No,\" said Kathleen, \"but her eyes were weak when she born, and when\nGrandma Barry came to live with us she said it was the smoke of the\npeat that had taken the sight away altogether. That was how it came\nabout that Father made a chimney for the cottage, so that the smoke\ncould go out instead of spreading through the room.\"\n\n\"There has been a good deal of blindness in Ireland from the smoke of\nburning peat in the houses,\" said Bee, looking thankfully at her own\nbroad chimney and deep fireplace.\n\n\"Hark!\" said Kathleen suddenly, \"there's the child calling this\nminute,\" and she ran out into the garden to see what was the matter.\n\nMary Ellen had been exploring the little farm for herself. She had\nfound her way through the garden to the old fort and was catching the\npink and white petals as they drifted down to her from the trees. An\nold magpie had built his nest in the tree over her head and he was\nscolding so angrily that the child was afraid of him.\n\n\"Was it only a bird, Kathleen dear?\" she asked, when her sister tried\nto quiet her by telling her just how funny he looked, sitting up there\nin the tree and opening and shutting his big bill. \"Faith, I thought it\nwas an ogre!\"\n\n\"That's the very magpie that steals my young turkeys,\" said Bee, who\nhad run out after Kathleen. \"If you children will find a way to drive\nhim off I will give you a shilling.\"\n\nThen she left the little girls to play by themselves, and Mary Ellen\nlay on the grass among the spring blossoms while Kathleen sat down\nbeside her to tell her a long story.\n\n\"This is a truly fairy rath,\" she began, \"and Cousin Bee's farm is the\nfortune fairy's palace.\"\n\nAnd Cousin Bee, putting her cream into the churn, said to herself,\n\"Sure, the farm is big enough to keep both the children for awhile.\nI'll let Kathleen stay on with Mary Ellen till her Aunt Hannah sends\nfor her again.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nMAY-DAY ON LOUGH GARA\n\n\n\"It's the cute way nature has with her!\" exclaimed Kathleen, holding\nup her face for the white-thorn petals to blow down upon it. She and\nMary Ellen had been to the old rath after flowers for the May-baskets,\nand were returning to the cottage, where Cousin Bee was waiting to take\nthem to Lough Gara for the May-day picnic. A breeze was scattering the\npetals from the trees, which were \"as white with bloom as the snow of\none night,\" and Mary Ellen turned her face to the sky so that she, too,\nmight feel the soft shower.\n\n\"Sure, nature has a cute way,\" Kathleen repeated. \"When a cloud hides\nthe bright sun and you'd think an Irish rain was going to fall the\nnext minute, the wind gives a laugh and sends a snowstorm instead; and\nhere it is the first day of May, and the blackbirds are singing in the\nmeadow.\"\n\n\"Can you see the snow on the mountains far away?\" asked Mary Ellen.\n\n\"No, but the white chalk cliffs shine like snow,\" replied Kathleen.\n\"It seems as if we must forget, here in Tonroe, about the mountains\nand the cold, snowy winter. When I wake up in the morning and hear the\nlark singing his way up into the sky, and smell the May-bloom through\nthe window, I almost forget the gray stones and low clouds of purple\nDonegal.\"\n\n\"Do you mind the old black crows that used to call over the hills all\nday long?\" asked Mary Ellen.\n\n\"Of caws! Of caws!\" croaked Kathleen, so much like an old crow that her\nsister made her do it again and again, \"to remind her of home,\" she\nsaid.\n\nThe children had been at Cousin Bee's little farm in Tonroe for over\ntwo weeks, and Danny had made himself so useful that Patrick offered\nhim good wages to stay and help him through the planting season.\n\n\"Sure, I care more for work than for anything else just now,\" Danny\nmade answer, and he rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will.\n\n\"There's no need for Kathleen to go to Kilkenny either, now that the\nschool is near to closing for the summer,\" Bee suggested.\n\nSo Kathleen washed the dishes and watched the young turkeys. She fed\nthe hens and found their eggs when they stole nests in the little\nvillage of grain-stacks in the hay-haggard. And, best of all, she found\nan old cow-bell in the barn and set Mary Ellen to ringing it every\ntime the thieving magpie came back to his nest, until he was glad to\ntake his family away to live in a quieter neighborhood and leave the\nyoung turkeys to wander through the old rath in safety.\n\nIn fact, she made herself so useful that Uncle Barney, over in\nKillaraght, nodded his head when he heard of it, and Grandmother\nConnell said in the old Gaelic, which looks in print as if it might be\nfairy speech, \"Kathleen always had good sense and handy ways.\"\n\nAnd now it was May-day at last, and the little family had been busy all\nthe morning getting ready for the picnic.\n\n\"Come, children,\" called Bee from the house door, \"here are Norah\nHiggins and Hannah Kelley waiting for us, and Patrick and Danny have\ngone on ahead for the boat.\"\n\nThen off they all went down the lane, between the hedges of pink\nhawthorn, purple lilac and gleaming golden gorse, across the fields,\nand along the green bank of the river.\n\nA neighbor who was driving his family down to the lake in a\njaunting-car stopped to ask them why they weren't riding themselves,\nbut Bee said she thought it was far more pleasant to walk, and they\ntrudged along, talking and laughing merrily.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\n\"A NEIGHBOR WAS DRIVING HIS FAMILY DOWN TO THE LAKE IN A JAUNTING-CAR.\"\n\nThe jaunting-car has side seats, with a \"well\" between them for parcels.\n\n_Page 58_]\n\nPink and white mayflowers, blue wall-flowers and yellow\ndaffies grew under their feet, and the fields were full of blue-bells.\nRobins and thrushes sang over their heads, and in the distance they\nheard the sound of a hunting horn and the baying of the hounds.\n\nDanny was waiting for them at the boat landing, and Patrick made haste\nto gather his party into a boat and row them out upon the blue water,\nso that they could watch the happy crowds coming and going along the\nshore. Kathleen looked back across the fields and saw hundreds of men,\nwomen, and children, all dressed in their very best, trooping toward\nthe lake, carrying lunch-baskets for their May-day picnic on Lough Gara.\n\n\"Oh, Molly darling,\" she whispered, \"it's better than anything we ever\nthought of in Donegal. It's a wish come true.\"\n\nMary Ellen clung to her sister's hand, listening to the happy voices\ncalling from boat to boat, and from water to shore. \"It must be the\nplace Grandma Barry used to tell us about,\" she said,\u2014\"the place where\nhappiness is so common you can buy it for a ha'penny.\"\n\nKathleen's eyes were fixed on the green island toward which Danny was\nrowing them. \"It looks more like the home of the fairies than does the\nRock of Doon,\" she told Bee.\n\n\"They do say that the fairies haunt Lough Gara,\" her cousin answered.\n\"At night, when there's no one to see them, they gallop round and round\nthe lake, winding their hunting horns and following the fairy hounds\njust as the ladies and gentlemen do at the meets on the big estate at\nFrench Park.\"\n\nJust then the boat touched the shore of the little island and there was\nno more time to talk of fairies. Pretty Mary Hever and her brother John\nwere waiting for them under the trees, and every one was ready to help\nin the merry fun of setting out the lunch.\n\nThe girls plaited wreaths of flowers and oak leaves, and crowned Bee\nand Mary Ellen; John Hever found a spring of clear water and filled\nthe cups; and Bee set out the sandwiches and cheese and some of her\ndelicious cookies which were the best in all Tonroe.\n\n\"There'll be just time enough for the lunch before we go to Kingsland\nfor the sports,\" Patrick said, as he sat down on the grass between\nKathleen and Mary Ellen and began to help them to cookies the very\nfirst thing.\n\n\"Be off with your joking,\" said Bee. \"We can't hurry the picnic like\nthat. Half the fun of the lunch is the blarney that goes with it.\"\n\n\"Faith, John Hever will do the eating while we take care of the\nblarney,\" replied her husband, laughing at the boy's first mouthful.\n\n\"Tell us about Donegal,\" Hannah Kelley said to Kathleen.\n\n\"There's nothing to tell,\" replied Kathleen. \"There are just purple\nmountains and rocky hills and bogs, and Mary Ellen and I had no one to\nplay with at all.\"\n\n\"You should see the great cliffs over at Horn Head,\" said Danny\nproudly. \"That's something to tell about! When there has been a storm,\nthe waves pound against them and the spray dashes up so that it is a\ngrand sight.\"\n\n\"I'm thinking it was up there that the giant used to step from cliff to\ncliff when he was walking round the island to be sure everything was\nall right for the night,\" said Bee, who seemed to know stories of all\nthe giants and fairies.\n\nJohn Hever looked down at his own short legs with a sigh. \"Sure, he\nmust have been a big giant,\" he said, \"to walk around all Ireland every\nnight of his life.\"\n\n\"That he was,\" replied Patrick with a laugh. \"Were you thinking you'd\ncatch up with him on his next round?\"\n\n\"I was not,\" answered John, \"but I'll soon be beating you in a race to\nDublin town.\"\n\n\"It's ten years and more since I played that game with fifty other boys\nand girls; and that, too, around the policeman's legs in the streets\nof Cork!\" exclaimed Patrick. \"But come on then, and we'll see how it\nseems to go doubling among these tree-trunks.\"\n\nHe seized Bee's hand and they began singing \"How many miles to Dublin\nTown?\" just as Kathleen and Mary Ellen had sung it so often in far\nDonegal. But now there were many to join in the game, and one after\nanother the children caught hold of hands and ran in and out among the\ntrees, singing and shouting.\n\nWhen Patrick thought they had had enough of the game he led them all\ndown to the boat and pushed off for the sports at the Kingsland shore.\n\nNever before, Kathleen thought, had so many things happened in one day.\nThere were bicycle-races, hurdle-races, foot-races, sack-races and a\ntug-of-war. There was leaping, and jumping, and running, and it seemed\nas if Danny was in everything.\n\nSuch shouting and cheering she had never even dreamed of! And when\nDanny won the long-distance run, she found herself jumping up and down\nand shouting as loudly as any one.\n\n\"I could have won that first dash, too, if Tim Keefe hadn't stolen the\nstart,\" said Danny wrathfully, as he brought up his prize to show to\nhis cousins.\n\n\"The prize for that race was a mirror, anyway,\" said Patrick\nconsolingly, \"and you've little use for one now. But as for Tim Keefe,\nwith his old pipe in his mouth, he needs it to see himself for a\nspalpeen.\"\n\nAfter the fun was all over they went home together across the fields,\nfilling their arms with great branches of the pink and white hawthorn\nblossoms; but at the boreen they had to start running, for a sudden\nshower fell to drive them into the house the quicker.\n\nJust as the children were going off to bed that night, Kathleen went\nsoftly up to Bee and put her arm shyly around her cousin's plump\nwaist. \"It's thankful I am to you and Patrick for the happy day,\" she\nwhispered.\n\nBee gave her a good hug and a hearty kiss as she answered, \"'Tis you\nand little Mary Ellen that make all the days happy for me.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nA BANK OF TURF\n\n\n\"Mary Ellen, dear, did you ever think it would be so fine to live out\nof Donegal?\"\n\n\"No,\" answered the little sister, \"I've been thinking of the market\never since Saturday; and yesterday was the walk to Lough Gara again,\nand to-day is the sheep-shearing. Belike by Friday they will begin to\ncut the turf. It is better than Donegal, even if Father is not with us.\"\n\n\"Oh, Mary Ellen, I doubt they'll begin cutting out peat on a Friday. It\nwill bring them bad luck.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they will begin on Thursday, then,\" suggested her sister. \"Is\nthere any ill luck in that day?\"\n\nIt was a beautiful morning toward the end of May, and the two little\ngirls were watching the shearing of the sheep at Uncle Barney's farm.\nMore than a hundred bleating sheep and lambs were collected near the\nhouse, where they were guarded by a trained shepherd dog and watched\nover by Kathleen.\n\n\"Kathleen is the colleen that's good at everything,\" Patrick said one\nday after the picnic at Lough Gara. \"She'll milk a cow as well as ever\nher great-grandmother Connell did. She's got the firm hand for it, and\nthe sweet voice.\"\n\n\"She can bake as fine a loaf of bread as I can, and that is saying a\ngood deal, too,\" said Bee proudly.\n\n\"I'll see what kind of a shepherd lass she will make, come\nshearing-time,\" said Uncle Barney, who had come over from Killaraght\nto get Danny to help him. \"We'll need some one to keep the sheep from\nstraying away after they have been washed.\"\n\nSo Kathleen was watching the sheep for her uncle, and talking over the\nSaturday market with her sister.\n\n\"Sure, I thought Bee's little pig would squeal himself black in the\nface before she got him sold,\" said Mary Ellen.\n\n\"I mind Bee did better with her little pig than Patrick did with his\nbig heifer,\" Kathleen replied with a laugh.\n\n\"Why?\" asked Mary Ellen.\n\n\"Hasn't Patrick been trying to sell his heifer to Tim Keefe ever since\nwe came to Tonroe?\" Kathleen answered. \"Faith, he only finished the\nbargain last Saturday; and it was Uncle Barney that brought it about\nthen, else they'd still be a-higgling.\"\n\n\"What's this you are saying?\" asked Patrick, who was selecting another\nsheep to shear.\n\n\"We're saying that Bee makes a better bargain than you,\" Kathleen told\nhim.\n\n\"How's that?\" he asked.\n\n\"She got half as much for her pig as you did for the heifer, and the\nheifer was costing her feed all the four weeks you were making the\nbargain.\"\n\nPatrick threw back his head with a great laugh. \"Here's the child for\nyou,\" he called to Uncle Barney. \"She says I was feeding the heifer for\nTim Keefe for four weeks and getting nothing for it.\"\n\n\"Tim Keefe is a young spalpeen,\" said Uncle Barney. \"I'd give a pound\nmyself to see somebody get the better of him. It is what nobody ever\ndid yet,\" and he smiled down into Kathleen's gray eyes.\n\nHe forgot his words the next minute, but Kathleen remembered them, even\nafter the sheep-shearing was over and the turf-cutting had begun in the\nbog.\n\nBog-land is found in almost every part of Ireland; but much of it is\ndangerous for travel, and all of it has to be drained before the peat\ncan be cut. Causeways lead to the parts that are drained, but there\nare many deep pools of swampy water in the bogs, which are filled with\ntufts of spongy moss and slimy tree trunks.\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\nCUTTING BRICKS OF PEAT AND STACKING THEM UP TO DRY\n\n_Page 67_]\n\nThe turf is cut out in blocks by a man who uses a\nlong-handled spade. He tosses the blocks to his helper who stands\nwaiting for them, and who carries them to a barrow or creel. When the\nbarrow is filled it is wheeled away to higher ground where the blocks\nof turf are stacked up and dried in the sun and wind.\n\nKathleen begged to be Danny's helper, and on the morning when he began\ncutting in the bog she stood beside him. As fast as he filled her arms\nwith the peat she trudged sturdily away and stacked it up to dry, just\nas Patrick had taught her.\n\nAs she stood waiting for her twentieth load she asked, \"How long will\nit take for this turf to be dry enough to carry home and stack under\nthe shed?\"\n\n\"It takes all summer to get the peat dry enough to burn,\" Danny told\nher. \"In August and September there will be hundreds of little donkeys,\nall over the country, going to market loaded with big creels of dry\npeat. Twenty bricks of the peat are sold for a sixpence.\"\n\nDanny was cutting turf for Patrick and Uncle Barney in a bog which lay\non the border of Lough Gara, and Kathleen stopped occasionally to rest\nher arms and watch a boat-load of peasants who had hired the next bank\nto Patrick's, and who came across the lake to cut it. It was hard work\nto carry the wet turf, and she was quite ready to go home when Patrick\ndrove the mule down to the lake for them at five o'clock.\n\n\"Two of Mike Drury's cows were swallowed up in a moving bog over in\nCounty Galway last week,\" she heard him tell Danny.\n\nIt was the first time she had ever heard of a moving bog, and she\nlooked at him with frightened eyes. \"Will this bog swallow Danny up?\"\nshe asked.\n\n\"Hop into the trap and forget it, alanna,\" replied Patrick cheerfully.\n\"Nothing of the sort will ever happen here. This bog is too well\ndrained for that. But they do say that in times past whole houses have\nbeen swallowed up in the bogs.\"\n\n\"What made the bog-land?\" Kathleen asked, as they rode along toward\nhome.\n\n\"The bushes and trees gradually fell into the swamp and decayed, and\nthose that grew above them fell and decayed in the same way,\" Patrick\ntold her. \"It was going on before ever the giants or fairies lived in\nthe country.\"\n\n\"Here's something I found in the bog more than a foot below the\nsurface,\" said Danny. \"It must have been buried there for hundreds of\nyears, for the turf was solid all around it.\"\n\nHe took from his pocket a small iron cross of curious design and\nbeautiful workmanship, and Patrick examined it with great interest.\n\n\"It is an ancient ornament,\" he said, \"such as they used to make here\nin Ireland in olden times. Mayhap it belonged to Queen Maive herself,\nshe that was Queen of the West nearly two thousand years ago. All kinds\nof things are found in the bogs. Sometimes men find firkins of butter\nand moulds of cheese which have been buried for years and years. Bee\nwill tell you all about it; 'tis she that has the learning,\" he added\nproudly, and hurried home to show the cross to his wife.\n\nThere was a happy ending to Kathleen's hard day's work in the bog,\nwhen, sitting among the flowers of the old rath, with the soft wind\nblowing through the trees over their heads, Bee told them about the\ntime when the men of Ireland were famous workers in metal.\n\n\"In the National Museum at Dublin there are many of the most precious\nbits of handiwork to be found in all Europe,\" she said. \"No doubt they\nwould be glad to have this cross in one of their glass cases.\"\n\nBut Danny leaned over and put it into Kathleen's hand. \"Those that are\nslow at knitting stockings are oftentimes quickest at catching turfs,\"\nhe said. \"You may have the cross to wear, mavourneen, if you like.\"\n\nKathleen hung her head. \"I finished the stockings before I left\nDonegal,\" she replied, \"and the peddler said they were well-knit.\"\n\n\"Is there bog-land all over Ireland?\" asked little Mary Ellen, who knew\nthat her sister did not like to talk about the stockings.\n\n\"Grandmother Barry used to say that Kilkenny was the most favored\ncounty in the country,\" replied Bee; \"and in one of my old\nreading-books there was a rhyme about Kilkenny, that it had:\n\n  Fire without smoke, air without fog,\n  Water without mud, and land without bog.\"\n\n\"Kilkenny,\" repeated Kathleen. \"That is where I am going to visit Aunt\nHannah, I suppose; but I know I shall never like it so well as living\nhere with you, Cousin Bee.\"\n\nBee went into the house and came back again in a few minutes, carrying\na small flat box from which she took a photograph of a pleasant-faced\nwoman, the very image of dear Uncle Barney.\n\n\"There's your Aunt Hannah Malone,\" she said, showing the picture to\nKathleen; \"she is the best woman in the world, and the mother of ten\nfine children.\" And Kathleen, looking at the twinkling eyes and smiling\nmouth, knew at once that she should be happy in Kilkenny.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nKATHLEEN EARNS A POUND\n\n\n\"There's to be a big meet to-day,\" Patrick said, as Danny and Kathleen\nwere getting ready to start for the bog the next morning.\n\nThere had been a shower or two in the night, and raindrops sparkled on\nevery blade of grass and twinkled among the green leaves of the trees;\nbut the sun was breaking through the clouds and promised a fair day for\nthe turf-cutting.\n\nIt was, indeed, a fair day and a fair green country, and Patrick, who\nhad started for the barn with his milk pails, began singing in his\nhearty voice:\n\n  \"Oh, Ireland, isn't it grand you look,\n    Like a bride in her rich adornin'!\n  And with all the pent-up love of my heart,\n    I bid you the top of the mornin'.\"\n\n\"What is a meet?\" Kathleen asked, as she and her brother trudged down\nthe road to the bog.\n\n\"It's a hunting-party, and the ladies and gentlemen from the country\nround about meet together for it,\" Danny answered, stopping a moment\nto look at the tiny green sloes on the blackthorn hedge.\n\n\"What do they hunt?\" she asked.\n\n\"Sometimes they hunt a deer; and sometimes it's foxes or rabbits they\nare after,\" he replied.\n\n\"If they are hunting a deer I hope they won't catch it,\" Kathleen said\nearnestly.\n\nBut when the sound of the hunting-horn rang merrily across the bog,\nfrom the direction of Uncle Barney's house in Killaraght, she was full\nof excitement over the chase.\n\n\"Listen!\" she cried, standing with outstretched arms to catch the brick\nof turf Danny was ready to throw to her; \"listen, there's the horn now!\nIt sounds so sweet I'd almost think it was the fairies.\"\n\nDanny waited until they heard the baying of the hounds and the halloo\nof the riders, and then he went on with his work.\n\n\"They may kill harmless animals if they like; but I'd rather be able to\nhit your hands with a brick of turf,\" he said, suiting the action to\nthe word, \"than to hit a handsome deer with a bullet.\"\n\nKathleen's thoughts were busy with the hunters for a long time and she\nasked her brother endless questions about them,\u2014Where did they live?\nWhat did they do with the deer? How did the horses go over the stone\nwalls and fences? Why did the riders wear scarlet coats?\n\n\"How many hunters are there?\" she asked at last.\n\n\"Oh, fifteen or more,\" Danny answered carelessly. \"But if they needed\nthirty men to catch one poor deer, they could find them easily. There's\nthe surgeon from the hospital in Boyle, for one. Bee says he is over\nhere to-day for the hunting.\"\n\n\"The surgeon from the Boyle hospital,\" Kathleen repeated, under her\nbreath.\n\n\"Oh, if I could just see him, and tell him about Mary Ellen's eyes!\"\nshe thought. \"Perhaps he could make her well before I have to go to\nKilkenny, if I only had the money.\"\n\nShe forgot the hunters for a while, and gave all her thought to her\nwork, and to planning how she could earn more shillings after the\nturf-cutting was finished. Over and over again, as she trudged from the\nbog to the stack of wet turf, she heard the music of the horn,\u2014now\nnear, now far. When it grew faint her hope died away, but when it rang\nloud and clear her heart grew light, as if she had received a promise\nof help for her sister.\n\nOnce she saw a flash of scarlet-coated riders far beyond the bog, the\nhorses at a gallop; and again a stray hound bounded past her, within a\nfew yards of the mound where she was stacking the turf.\n\nA little before noon Danny sent her home for her dinner. \"You are too\nlittle to work as steadily as you did yesterday,\" he said kindly.\n\"Uncle Barney and Patrick are coming down this afternoon, and they are\ngoing to bring two more to help, so the work will go faster.\"\n\nSo Kathleen left her work and hurried down the road, little dreaming\nthat she herself was soon to take part in the hunt.\n\nJust as she reached the little lane that led up to Cousin Bee's house\nshe heard a noise, and looking off across the fields she saw a horseman\ncoming towards her, shouting and waving his arms.\n\nAt first she took him for one of the hunters; but he wore a dark suit\nand an old straw hat, and his horse looked as if it could do better at\ndrawing a plow than at jumping a fence.\n\nKathleen ran to the barn and stood beside the open door to see which\nway the rider was going, when suddenly she saw something else that made\nher heart stand still with excitement.\n\nA beautiful deer was bounding across the fields! He leaped the wall\ninto the road, and came down the little lane toward the house at a\ngallop.\n\nThe horseman pounded down the road behind him, the hounds were baying\nin the distance, and almost before Kathleen knew what was happening,\nthe deer had run into the wide-open barn door and she had closed it\nbehind him and was listening in terror to the sound of his plunging\nhoofs.\n\nThen the excitement really began, for the strange hunter, who was no\none but Tim Keefe himself, rode into the yard on his old farm-horse,\nand Patrick, Bee and Mary Ellen ran out of the house to see what was\nthe matter.\n\nPatrick heard the noise in the barn and ran to see if his cows had gone\ncrazy; Kathleen ran to hold the door and tell him about the deer, and\nTim Keefe began to shout at the top of his voice that it was his deer\nbecause he had seen it first.\n\nHe had been riding to the Kingsland bog to hire a bank of turf, he\nsaid, and the deer had crossed his path. He remembered that a pound\nreward is always given to the one who holds the deer for the hunters,\nand he had ridden after it, hoping by some means to gain the reward.\n\nPatrick smiled his broad smile. \"It will be Kathleen who will get the\npound, after all,\" he said.\n\n\"But it was myself that whipped him down the road,\" said Tim hotly.\n\nPatrick's smile broke into a laugh. \"'Twas Kathleen that shut him into\nthe barn,\" he said, \"and 'tis a fine whipper-in you make, Tim Keefe.\"\n\nTim's coat was ragged and his trousers had seen the rains of many\nan Irish summer, an old pipe smoked in his mouth, and he was such a\nsorry-looking figure altogether that even Bee laughed at the sight of\nhim.\n\nAnd while they all laughed, there came the \"tally-ho!\" of the hunters\njust beyond the old fort; the dogs swept into sight, and the real\nwhipper-in rode up to the very door of the barn.\n\nIn a moment the yard turned red to Kathleen's eyes, for a dozen\nmounted horsemen in scarlet coats and buff riding-breeches galloped\nclose behind him, with ladies in gray and ladies in black, all riding\nsplendid horses.\n\nPatrick sent the children out of the way of the horses' feet, while he\nexplained how it happened that his barn was stabling a deer.\n\nThen the whipper-in quieted his hounds, and the ladies and gentlemen\nlooked at bashful Kathleen, who had quite lost her voice in the midst\nof so much excitement. But when she was offered the pound that Tim\nKeefe had expected to receive, she shook her head.\n\n\"Tell them I want the deer to go free,\" she whispered to Patrick.\n\nHow everyone laughed at the idea! But in the end they agreed to it,\ntelling her that she might open the barn door whenever she pleased.\nThen they all went away down the boreen, \"as goodly a cavalcade as ever\nrode on Irish soil,\" Bee said.\n\nAs for Patrick, in one breath he laughed at Kathleen's wit and courage,\nand in the next he praised her tender heart. \"You're a good lass,\" he\nsaid, \"and you've earned a good dinner anyway. Come into the house and\nwe'll see what Bee has been baking the morn. Then, after the hounds are\nwell out of the way, we'll open the barn door and see the deer take\nhimself off to the woods.\"\n\nThat afternoon, when they were all working in the bog, Kathleen heard\nPatrick telling Danny and Uncle Barney the story of her deer hunt.\n\"There was Tim Keefe, on his old nag, with his pipe in his mouth,\" he\nsaid, \"thinking he was the grand whipper-in, and would get the pound\nfor himself.\"\n\n\"It's a fine day that sees Tim Keefe outwitted for once,\" exclaimed\nUncle Barney, slapping his knee with his hand.\n\nKathleen heard his words and turned to him quickly. \"You said that you\nwould give a pound to hear that Tim Keefe had been outwitted,\" she said.\n\nUncle Barney laughed till his sides shook. \"Good for you! Good for\nyou!\" he said, and actually took out the money and gave it to her.\n\nShe looked at it doubtfully, and he laughed again. \"You earned it fair,\nand 'twas worth it,\" he told her.\n\nSo Kathleen folded the money and put it carefully away in her pocket,\nthinking as she did so that, after all, the hunting-horn had brought a\npromise of help for little Mary Ellen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE YOUNG MALONES\n\n\n    The oldest one is Tara,\n    Next Captain Connemara,\n  And Moira and Norah, each a twin;\n    Then \"Save-a-Shilling Deena\"\n    And little Princess Feena,\n  But hold the door,\u2014there's others to come in;\n    There's Hannah and there's Anna,\n    We call them both \"alanna,\"\n  Then young Columba, he's the gentle dove;\n    And last of all Victoria,\n    She's not the one to frighten ye,\n  For she's the youngest one, the one ye'll love.\n\n_Chorus_\n\n  Oh, would ye learn to count the young Malones?\n    Ye've only just to trip it two by two;\n      Of couples there's a many,\n      At Malone's in old Kilkenny,\n  And we'd like to count you two, too, at Malone's!\n\nNever did two travellers receive a noisier or heartier greeting than\nthe ten young Malones gave to Danny and Kathleen on the night of their\narrival from Tonroe. From twenty-four-year-old Tara to three-year-old\nVictoria there was nothing but bright faces, merry voices, and\noutstretched hands.\n\nNo one could be shy or homesick in the midst of so much jollity, and in\nno time at all Kathleen was laughing and talking as gaily as if she had\nlived with \"the Malones in old Kilkenny\" all her life.\n\nWhen, at last, she fell asleep for the night, two of the happy family\nstood out most clearly in her memory. One was Connemara, who had\nslipped her motherly arm around the little girl's tired shoulders\nto draw her away from the hubbub and put her to bed. The other was\nColumba, who followed her to the foot of the stairs to say, \"I'll tell\nyou to-morrow why they call me 'the gentle dove.' It's because I have\nsuch an awful temper. And up at St. Kieran's College they call Deena\n'Save-a-Shilling Malone,' because he advertises in the _Weekly Budget_\nthat the students can save a shilling on their books if they buy them\nof him,\" he added, shouting the last words as Connemara led Kathleen\ndown the long hall to her own little bedroom.\n\nAs she lay in her bed, thinking over all the happy events of the day,\nshe heard the thirteen-year-old twins, Hannah and Anna, shouting with\nlaughter over a joke of Deena's. Then the two older twins began a duet\non the piano, and just as she was trying to think of the tune they were\nplaying she shut her eyes and was lost in the land of Nod.\n\nIn the meantime good Uncle Tom Malone had taken Danny into his library\nto talk with the lad about his plans. It was a simple story that Danny\nhad to tell. He was going at once to Queenstown to take the steamer\nthere for America.\n\n\"Do you know any one over there?\" asked his uncle, looking at him with\nshrewd eyes.\n\n\"No,\" replied Danny, \"but I know how to work, and that's something.\"\n\n\"What did Patrick say to it?\" asked Uncle Tom.\n\n\"He said he had no fear but that I would do well,\" said Danny modestly,\n\"but he wanted me to stay in Ireland. He said I could do well here,\ntoo.\"\n\n\"Did he want you to stay with him on the farm?\"\n\n\"Yes, but I'm thinking I can do better in some other line than\nfarming,\" said Danny. \"I'd like to get into a shop and work my way up.\"\n\n\"If you are in no hurry to go to America you might stay and have a try\nat working for me,\" suggested his uncle. \"I have a linen shop here in\nKilkenny. Next year, if you do well, I'll send you and Tara to one of\nthe great linen mills in Belfast to learn the business.\"\n\n\"I'd like nothing better,\" replied Danny heartily, \"and I'll do my best\nto make the most of the chance.\"\n\n\"There's as good a place for you here as you will find in America,\"\nsaid his uncle, \"and we can't afford to let all our lads leave their\nown country.\"\n\nSo the next day found Danny in the linen shop with Tara, while\nKathleen, at home with her cousins, was learning to know and love them\nall.\n\nBut it was to pretty Fiona, \"Princess Feena\" the children called her,\nwith the curly hair, brown eyes, and fluttering ribbons, that Kathleen\ntook the greatest fancy, and she followed her about everywhere, just\nto watch the gleams of sunshine shake out from the rippling waves that\ncrowned her cousin's head.\n\nAs for Fiona, having been named for an Irish princess, she talked\nby the hour about kings, queens, and castles, and the royal times\nshe hoped to enjoy some day; while Kathleen listened as if she were\nenchanted.\n\nIt was useless for the twins, Hannah and Anna, to try to entice her\naway for a game. She preferred to listen while Feena told stories, or\nread aloud from some old book of the time when Ireland was ruled by \"a\nking with flowing golden hair, his crimson cloak held at the breast by\na magnificent jewelled brooch, his shirt interwoven with gold threads,\nand his girdle sparkling with precious gems.\"\n\nColumba, too, was sadly disappointed at not finding a playmate in\nKathleen. He had even given way to his temper one day when, instead of\ngoing for a ride in the trap with him, she had chosen to walk along\nthe bank of the River Nore with Feena to see the beautiful ivy-covered\nKilkenny Castle.\n\nHe went to Connemara, or \"Captain Conn\" as she was always called, with\nhis grievance. \"She's gone off with Feena again,\" he said wrathfully,\n\"and here I've been planning to show her St. Canice's Church and the\nRound Tower ever since she came. I can tell her plenty of stories about\nthe old Round Tower, if it's stories she wants.\"\n\n\"Perhaps she would not like your stories,\" suggested Connemara. \"Feena\nwould never tell her that great stones were dropped from the top of the\nRound Tower, down one hundred feet on the heads of men, murdering Danes\nthough they were.\"\n\n\"Well, the Danes deserved all the trouble they found; they made enough\nfor us, the spalpeens!\" said Columba, the gentle dove. \"We were a\npeaceable nation, content to fight among ourselves, when the Danes came\ncrowding into the land. I'm glad Brian Boru was man enough to drive\nthem out again.\n\n\"But then,\" he added, \"if she doesn't like to hear about the priests\ncarrying stones to the top of the tower to drop them on the heads of\nthe Danes, I can tell her that they carried their precious books into\nthe tower for safety; and that they used to stand at the four little\nwindows at the top looking out over the country to watch for the\napproach of an enemy.\n\n\"Or I can take her down to Kilkenny Castle and tell her how Strongbow,\nthe Governor of Ireland, built his fortress there nearly a thousand\nyears ago, and brought his bride, the daughter of the King of Leinster,\nto live in the Castle. Then I can show her St. Canice's Cathedral,\nwhere the soldiers of Cromwell's army, when they were besieging the\ncity in 1650, used to amuse themselves by smashing the beautiful\nwindows and throwing the bells down out of the tower.\"\n\nConnemara could not help laughing as she looked at her brother's\nearnest face. \"'Tis plain that you know the history of the city,\" she\nsaid, \"but your stories are all about wars. To-morrow is market-day.\nAsk Kathleen to go with you down through the city streets to see the\nold peddler women in their bright shawls, selling their wares in the\nlittle booths and tents. That will be a strange sight to the child,\nafter lonely Donegal; and she'll like it better than battles.\"\n\nAfter supper that night she took Kathleen within the cosy shelter of\nher arms and talked with her about little Mary Ellen and her life in\nTonroe.\n\n\"She's like Victoria,\" said Kathleen, \"gentle and loving. I wish she\ncould be here instead of me. She used to wish that whole troops of boys\nand girls would come over the bare Donegal hills to play with us.\"\n\nBut when, on the next afternoon, Columba took her in the donkey-trap\nand drove in and out among the streets of Kilkenny, she almost forgot\nTonroe and the little sister.\n\nThey went first to the market, and Kathleen spent one of the precious\nshillings she had earned stacking peat to buy a string of pink beads to\nsend to Mary Ellen. Then they drove past the Cathedral and down to the\nCastle, and came home along the bank of the River Nore, which is one of\nthe prettiest rivers in all Ireland.\n\n\"Sure, you are the fine driver,\" Kathleen said admiringly to Columba,\nas he sent the little donkey along at a rattling pace behind a\njaunting-car filled with tourists.\n\nAnd of the two it would have been hard to tell which was the happier\nthat day,\u2014Kathleen, whirling along the beautiful tree-shaded river\nseeing the city, or Columba, showing to her admiring eyes how much at\nhome he was among such grand sights.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nKATHLEEN'S COMPOSITION\n\n\n  \"Oh, Deena Malone, ye've a wonderful way with ye,\n  All the young childer are wild for to play with ye!\"\n\nCaptain Conn sang, as she led little Victoria, all freshly dressed for\nsupper, to the group near the piano.\n\nDeena made a deep bow to her, as he kept up his part of the jig in the\nthree-hand reel, while Hannah and Anna, who were dancing with him,\ncalled \"Faster, faster!\" to Moira, who was playing on the piano.\n\nThe street door banged, and Columba dashed into the house, shouting,\n\"Danny won the hundred-yard dash,\u2014Danny won! Hooray!\"\n\nImmediately the reel became a breakdown, and when Danny entered the\nroom, followed by Tara and Uncle Tom, everyone fell upon him, eager to\ngive him a rousing whack of good-will.\n\nThe supper bell sounded above the din, and out into the dining-room\ntumbled the twelve, singing at the top of their lungs, \"For lightness\nof foot there was not his peer;\"\u2014and clasping hands in a great\ncircle, they danced round and round the table before taking their\nplaces.\n\nThe only one to keep her hair unruffled through the performance was\nPrincess Feena. No matter how often the young Malones ended a reel in\n\"all hands around,\" she looked as royally calm at the end as at the\nbeginning.\n\nAfter living with the Malones for a whole winter, Kathleen found the\ndainty little lady as adorable as ever. Now, on St. Patrick's Day,\njust a year from the time Aunt Hannah's letter had reached her in far\nDonegal, Kathleen had grown so fond of the whole jolly, noisy family,\nthat she wondered how she had ever lived anywhere else.\n\nDanny, also, had made a place for himself and was earning good wages in\nthe linen shop. Not a holiday had he taken in the whole winter until\nthis seventeenth of March, when he entered the sports.\n\n\"Ireland was always famous for her athletes,\" said his uncle, as he\nbegan serving supper to the hungry brood.\n\n\"Haven't you been doing anything to make your name famous, Kathleen\nmavourneen?\" he asked kindly.\n\nKathleen blushed to find everyone looking at her and waiting for her\nanswer.\n\n\"Speak up, for the honor of old Donegal,\" said Deena.\n\n\"I saw her standing before the whole class with a paper in her hand the\nother day,\" said Anna. \"It looked as if she were reading it.\"\n\n\"Confess, confess!\" cried Deena. \"Don't hide anything from us. Let us\nknow the worst at once.\"\n\nKathleen had seen so much good-natured fun among the children that\nwinter that she knew it would be impossible to avoid telling what it\nwas she had been reading to her classmates. Sooner or later it would\nhave to come out under the children's quizzing, so she spoke frankly,\nsaying, \"It was only a paper we had to write about the learning in\nIreland.\"\n\nUp went the hands in admiration. \"Our little Kathleen a writer!\" said\nHannah in mock astonishment, while Deena said reproachfully, \"And she\nwould have concealed it from her loving family!\"\n\n\"It _is_ a blow,\" murmured Anna; and Norah said, \"Go fetch it, and read\nit at once.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" shouted everybody. \"Go fetch it and read it.\"\n\nKathleen looked at Captain Conn, who usually decided everything for the\nwhole family.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Conn with a merry smile; \"there's no harm in reading it to\nus.\"\n\nSo Kathleen fetched the little composition and read it with flaming\ncheeks and beating heart. It was called:\n\n\nLEARNING IN IRELAND\n\n There must be a great deal of learning still left in Ireland, but the\n books do not say so much about it as about the learning of long ago.\n\n When St. Patrick lived, he built a great many monasteries here in the\n green country, and set the fashion to study and learn in them.\n\n Other saints followed him and built more monasteries, and wherever\n there was a monastery there was sure to be a school where the sons of\n Irish chiefs might study. There were a great many chiefs and they must\n have had a great many sons; but the sons of the common people could\n also learn from the monks, and very often there were rich and poor\n studying together in the same house.\n\n The fame of these Irish schools spread outside of this country, and\n in the different countries of Europe it became the fashion to go to\n school in Ireland, until, five hundred years after St. Patrick's time,\n this was the most learned country in the world.\n\n The scholars built little huts in which they lived, but whenever the\n weather was pleasant they recited out of doors.\n\n I wish it was the fashion to recite out of doors nowadays.\n\n  KATHLEEN BARRY.\n\n _B. A._ You can see by the ruins scattered all over Ireland how many\n monasteries and schools there were. There are ruins in every county,\n but those in Kilkenny are the most interesting of all.\n\n  K. B.\n\nThere was a great clapping of hands when Kathleen finished reading, and\ncries of \"Bravo! Bravo!\"\n\nIn the midst of the uproar Deena pounded with his knife-handle on the\ntable and shouted \"Tally-ho! Tally-ho! Tally-ho-o-o-o!\"\n\nAs soon as the hunting call quieted them he said, \"Pray tell us the\nmeaning of your Ogham characters 'B. A.' toward the close of your\nessay.\"\n\nThe Ogham writing is older than the oldest writing in Ireland, and a\nlaugh went up again to hear Kathleen's letters likened to it.\n\nKathleen laughed, too, and looked at the \"B. A.\" innocently enough, as\nshe replied, \"It means 'begin again.' Isn't that what you write when\nyou forget something and say it afterwards?\"\n\n\"It will do,\" said Tara, patting her on the head, while Connie asked,\n\"And what did the teacher say to your paper?\"\n\n\"She said it would do, better than some papers that wouldn't do so\nwell,\" answered the little girl, and wondered why the laughing began\nagain.\n\nAunt Hannah smiled at her across the table. \"Sure, 'tis 'B. A.' with\nthe fun and laughter at Malone's most of the time. Don't mind them,\nmavourneen,\" she said to the little girl, and then she told the\nchildren how she had learned the names of Ireland's thirty-two counties\nwhen she was a child.\n\n\"The children marched round and round the school-room,\" she said,\n\"saying it like a poem, and all in concert. It began, 'Cork and Kerry,\nLondonderry,' and went on through the whole thirty-two names. And when\nany one forgot a name he had to drop out and take his seat.\"\n\nAfter the supper was over and she went into the den for a cosy chat\nwith Uncle Tom, she said, \"Sure, 'tis a great pity that Jerry couldn't\nbe here to see how well both Danny and Kathleen are doing.\"\n\n\"They're fine children,\" agreed Uncle Tom. \"Kathleen will be great\nat the learning some day, if she keeps on. Perhaps she'll turn out a\nteacher, as her father Jerry was meant to be.\"\n\n\"They're all fine children,\" murmured Aunt Hannah, listening to the\nhappy voices around the piano as they began singing one of their\nfavorite songs; and she rose and followed Uncle Tom to the other room,\nwhere they all sang together, \"The Day When the Green Flag Flies.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nTHE WISHING SPRING\n\n\n\"What was that you picked up, Kathleen?\" Columba asked, as the two were\nwalking home from school together one sunny afternoon in June.\n\n\"Oh, just an old nail,\" replied Kathleen, dropping it quickly into her\npocket.\n\n\"What will you do with an old nail?\" questioned Columba. \"Are you\nthinking of building a house?\"\n\nKathleen hesitated so long before replying that her cousin repeated,\n\"What's an old nail good for?\"\n\n\"I don't know exactly,\" Kathleen replied. \"Granny Connor told me over\na year ago that Mary Ellen should carry nine old nails in her pocket,\nand I found them and sewed them up in a little bag for her; but they've\ndone no good that I can see. Now I'm finding nine more to send to her.\nPerhaps they will do better than the others. Oh, how I wish Mary Ellen\ncould see! She has such pretty blue eyes, but no sight in them.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you what you ought to do,\" said Columba. \"There's a spring\nin the woods down beyond the ruins of Jerpoint Abbey at Thomastown,\nand they say if you drink a cup of the water, and wish three times,\nyour wish will come true. We might all go down there on a picnic and\nyou could wish about Mary Ellen's eyes. I wished for a pony once, and I\ngot it,\" he added, by way of encouragement.\n\n\"Oh, Columba, did you really?\" Kathleen asked eagerly. \"How I'd like\nto try it! Do you suppose your mother would let us have the picnic\nto-morrow?\"\n\n\"We'll ask her,\" Columba said decidedly, and the two walked along\nin silence for a little while, Kathleen thinking of her sister, and\nColumba planning what he would like to have in the lunch baskets.\n\n\"There's a wishing arch near the Giant's Causeway,\" Kathleen said\nfinally. \"I wrote to Father about it weeks ago and asked him to go\nthere and wish for Mary Ellen's sight, but I've not heard a word\nfrom him yet. Perhaps he is waiting till the last Sunday in June.\nGrandmother Barry says that is the day the pilgrims go to the well in\nCounty Sligo to be cured of their rheumatism.\"\n\n\"Day after to-morrow will be the last Sunday in June, but we had better\ntry the wishing spring, too, if Mother will let us,\" said Columba.\n\n\"I'll ask her now,\" he added, and rushed into the house, shouting first\nfor his mother and then for Captain Conn, sure that one or the other\nwould be ready to plan for the next day's frolic.\n\n\"I've been thinking this two months that I ought to go down to see your\nAunt Ellen Butler at Thomastown,\" said his mother, when he asked her\nabout the picnic. \"We'll take the early morning train and have a good\nvisit with her, and perhaps she will take her children over to the\nAbbey and we'll all picnic together.\"\n\nIt was a merry party that gathered under the old oak tree beside the\nruins of Jerpoint Abbey the next day, and the four big lunch baskets\nlooked as if they could hardly hold enough for so many hungry children.\n\n\"We'll help you set out the lunch,\" suggested Deena, taking off one of\nthe covers and helping himself to a sandwich.\n\n\"You'll not touch it till it's ready,\" replied Captain Conn. \"Run away,\nevery one of you, and stay until I call you.\"\n\n\"Come to the tower,\" called Columba, and all the children followed him\nas he clambered through one of the windows and climbed the ancient\nstone steps that led to the top of the square tower.\n\nAs they looked out over the beautiful, smiling country, with its green\nfields and peaceful river, Kathleen drew a long breath. \"It makes me\nthink of Donegal, it's so different,\" she said. \"Up there it is cold\nand bleak and bare, and down here it is all so quiet and happy.\"\n\n\"It wasn't always quiet and happy here,\" said Deena. \"This old Abbey\nhas seen days of fighting and bloodshed.\"\n\n\"Tell us about it,\" said Hannah, who liked stories of battles.\n\n\"Yes, do,\" added Anna, who tried to like them.\n\n\"Well, you see,\" began Deena, \"this old ruin was once a magnificent\nchurch. It was built over seven hundred years ago, at the time when\nthe English lords came over to live in Ireland and set the fashion of\nbuilding grand churches and monasteries all over the country. This was\none of the finest of them all, and would be to this day, perhaps, but\nfor Cromwell's army.\"\n\n\"Yes, go on,\" said Hannah, as Deena stopped to look off toward the\ndistant hills. \"Was it a big battle?\"\n\n\"It was no battle at all,\" replied her brother. \"When Cromwell's army\ncame marching through the country the monks shut themselves up in this\ntower; but the soldiers went by without even stopping to look for them.\"\n\n\"What made the ruins, then?\" asked Columba. \"I thought you said it was\nCromwell's army.\"\n\n\"So it was,\" replied Deena; \"for when they had gone only two miles away\nthe monks climbed up here to the top of the tower and rang the bells\nfor joy. The soldiers heard the bells, and were so angry that they came\nback and destroyed the monastery and the Abbey.\"\n\n\"Did they kill the monks?\" asked Hannah.\n\n\"I don't know, but I suppose they did,\" replied her brother. \"They\ndestroyed many fine buildings and did many cruel deeds here in Ireland.\"\n\n\"They didn't destroy the Round Tower in Kilkenny,\" said Columba. \"Those\nround towers must have been good hiding-places for the monks.\"\n\n\"That they were,\" replied Deena. \"The old stones would tell many\nwonderful tales if they could speak.\"\n\n\"Are there many round towers in Ireland?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"There are eighty still standing,\" Deena told her, \"and twenty of them\nare perfect; but the others are more or less in ruins.\"\n\n\"What were they like?\" asked little Tommy Butler. \"I never saw one of\nthem.\"\n\n\"They were round, stone towers, from sixty to one hundred and fifty\nfeet tall,\" Deena replied. \"Some of the tallest had six or seven\nstories, each story lighted by one window, and at the top there were\nfour windows, facing north, south, east and west. There was only one\nsmall door, ten feet or more from the ground, which was reached by a\nladder, and there were ladders inside to climb from one floor to the\nnext.\"\n\n\"What were the towers for?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"They were built hundreds of years ago, in connection with the ancient\nchurches, and were probably used as belfries, and also as a place of\nrefuge for the monks,\" answered Deena.\n\n\"Are there many ruins in Ireland?\" asked Mary Butler.\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Deena, \"there are hundreds and hundreds of them. There\nis the 'Seven Churches of Kells,' over beyond Stonyford, for one, and\nthe 'Seven Churches of Glendalough,' too. You should see the Round\nTower at Glendalough.\"\n\n\"Connie is calling,\" interrupted Feena.\n\n\"Hurrah, lunch is ready!\" shouted Columba, and they all clattered down\nthe stone steps in a hurry.\n\nThe four baskets did hold a good deal after all, and the lunch looked\nso inviting, spread out on a white cloth in the shade of the big oak\ntree, that the ten hungry children made short work of it.\n\n\"Now let's go to the wishing spring,\" suggested Columba, taking a\ncookie in one hand and a pickle in the other, and starting off across\nthe field.\n\n\"I wish you all good luck in your wishing, and I'll stay here in the\nshade to wish it the heartier,\" said his mother, taking out her\nknitting and making herself comfortable under the tree.\n\n\"And I wish you may not be hungry again for an hour,\" added Captain\nConn, gathering up the empty plates and cups and putting them in the\nbaskets.\n\n\"There's the spring,\" shouted Deena, as they turned into a little lane.\n\"It's under that big tree in the edge of the woods.\"\n\n\"Come on, Feena,\" called Columba, \"here's the cup. Take a good drink\nand wish for the moon.\"\n\n\"I shall do no such thing,\" replied his sister. \"I shall wish for a\nbook of fairy stories, and I shall get it, too, for Father promised it\nto me last night.\"\n\n\"I wish for a new knife,\" said Deena, as he took the cup.\n\n\"And Hannah and I want a pair of white gloves to wear with our new\nwhite dresses,\" said Anna, as she and her twin sister took their drink\ntogether.\n\n\"What is your wish, Kathleen?\" asked Princess Feena.\n\n\"It is a very big wish,\" replied Kathleen, so soberly that everyone\nstopped laughing and became quiet in a moment. \"It is bigger than a\nknife, or a book, or a pair of gloves. It is almost bigger than the\nmoon. I'm wishing that little Mary Ellen could see.\"\n\n\"I wish it, too,\" said Hannah earnestly.\n\n\"And I!\" \"And I!\" cried the others, gathering close around Kathleen as\nshe knelt before the bubbling spring and filled the cup with the clear,\ncold water.\n\n\"Perhaps it will come true, then,\" said Kathleen, \"if we are all\nwishing so hard,\" and she smiled bravely up at them through her tears,\nas she drank the very last drop of water in the cup.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nGOOD NEWS FROM COUSIN BEE\n\n\n\"Here are two letters for you, Kathleen mavourneen,\" said her Uncle\nTom, one morning about a week later, as the family were seated at the\nbreakfast table.\n\n\"Two letters for me!\" exclaimed Kathleen in surprise. \"Perhaps one of\nthem is from Father,\" and she jumped out of her chair and ran around\nthe table to get them.\n\n\"It is, it is!\" she cried, looking at one of the letters. \"The postmark\nis Portrush in County Antrim, and that's near the Giant's Causeway.\"\n\n\"Open it, and see what it says, alanna,\" suggested her Aunt Hannah, as\nKathleen continued to study the envelope; and all the ten young Malones\nstopped eating their breakfast, and turned eager eyes upon their cousin.\n\nKathleen opened the letter and read the first lines. \"Oh, Feena,\" she\nsaid, looking up with shining eyes, \"he did go to the wishing arch, and\nhe wished for Mary Ellen's sight, just as I asked him to.\"\n\nThen she read the rest of the letter while everyone waited. \"Oh, Aunt\nHannah!\" she cried with delight, \"Father says he is going on to the\nGiant's Causeway, and I'm to come up there to meet him, and then we'll\ngo over to Tonroe to see Mary Ellen.\"\n\nNever did so short a letter cause so much excitement. All the Malones\nbegan talking at once and no one stopped to listen to what any one was\nsaying. Feena jumped up to put her arms around her cousin, crying,\n\"Kathleen, darling, you'll never go away and leave me, will you?\"\nColumba begged his father to let him go along with Kathleen to see that\nno harm came to her, and Danny repeated over and over that the child\nshould go nowhere without himself to look after her.\n\nWhen the chatter ceased for a moment, Aunt Hannah found a chance to\nsay, \"There were two letters, Kathleen. What's become of the other?\"\n\nSure enough, the second letter had been forgotten, and all was still\nfor a moment while Kathleen found it and looked at the postmark.\n\n\"It is from Cousin Bee,\" she said, and opened it quietly enough; but in\na second she dropped it and ran to throw herself into her Aunt Hannah's\narms. \"Mary Ellen can see!\" she cried; \"Mary Ellen can see!\"\n\nThen, indeed, there was an uproar. Columba pounded on the table with\nhis knife and fork, shouting, \"Hurrah, I told you so! It was the\nwishing spring that did it!\" Feena danced around the room, clapping\nher hands and stopping at every turn to kiss Kathleen; Hannah and Anna\nhugged each other with delight; and little Victoria was so frightened\nthat she clambered out of her high-chair and ran to Captain Conn to be\ncomforted.\n\n\"Hush, children, hush!\" commanded Captain Conn. \"See what you've done\nnow. You've made Victoria cry with all your noise. Be quiet while Danny\nreads the letter.\"\n\n\"Sure, it's not a long letter,\" said Danny; \"but there's good news in\nevery line of it,\" and he read it aloud while the Malones listened\nbreathlessly.\n\n \"KATHLEEN DEAR:\u2014\" wrote Cousin Bee, \"I've wonderful news for you,\u2014so\n good that I don't know how to begin it. Mary Ellen can see. It's the\n truth that I'm writing. She can see as well as you can this minute.\n\n \"Patrick had the surgeon from the Boyle Hospital come over to see the\n child's eyes in the winter, and he said it was a shame that nothing\n had been done for them before. Since then Mary Ellen has been going\n to Boyle every market-day, and at the last she was two weeks in the\n hospital there.\n\n \"The doctor said it wasn't the smoke of the peat after all, but\n something else which I don't understand; but he's cured it, praise be!\n\n \"Mary Ellen wouldn't let me tell you before, because she didn't want\n you to be disappointed if nothing came of it; but now she's sitting\n here beside me, looking at the words that will tell you the good news.\n\n \"We are all well and Patrick has a fine new heifer, but he says he'll\n not sell it to Tim Keefe if he has to give it away.\"\n\n\"It is wonderful news, indeed,\" said Uncle Tom. \"Our eyesight is a\nblessing we don't appreciate till we miss it.\"\n\n\"I wonder if Father knows about it,\" said Kathleen. \"I'd like to be the\nfirst one to tell him.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you will be,\" said Columba. \"When are you going to meet him?\"\n\nAnd then the talking began all over again, because everyone wanted to\nsee Uncle Jerry when he heard the good news; everyone wanted to go to\nthe Giant's Causeway; in fact, everyone wanted to start out and see the\nwhole of Ireland that very morning.\n\n\"We'd go through Dublin,\" suggested Columba, \"and I could see Trinity\nCollege, where I'm going to study some day.\"\n\n\"I would like to see the College Library,\" said Feena. \"It is one of\nthe five great libraries of the kingdom, and has a copy of every book\nthat's published in Great Britain and Ireland.\"\n\n\"Dublin is a beautiful city,\" said Aunt Hannah. \"There's plenty of fine\nsights I'd like to show you all. There's the River Liffey, and the\ncanals, and Dublin Bay. Then there is St. Patrick's Cathedral that is\nnamed in honor of the good saint, and the Bank of Ireland, and Ph\u0153nix\nPark.\"\n\n\"There is O'Connell Street, too,\" added Captain Conn. \"It's one of the\nwidest streets in all Europe. I'd like to do some shopping there.\"\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\nO'CONNELL STREET (FORMERLY CALLED SACKVILLE STREET), DUBLIN\n\nNotice the O'Connell Monument and the Nelson Pillar. _Page 102_]\n\n\"We could see the O'Connell Monument and the Nelson Pillar in O'Connell\nStreet,\" suggested Deena, \"and we'd get a splendid view of the city\nfrom the top of the Pillar.\"\n\n\"Danny and I could stop at Belfast to see the linen mills,\" Tara said\nto his father. \"You said only yesterday it was time we were going up\nthere to learn the business.\"\n\n\"It is always easy to think of reasons for doing just what we want to\nbe doing,\" replied his father, \"but it is time now to be thinking of\ngoing to work. We will talk about the journey later when we have more\ntime for it.\"\n\nHe must have found time to think of it during the day, and to talk it\nover with Aunt Hannah, too, for, wonder of wonders, before they went to\nbed that night it had been decided that Uncle Tom should take the whole\nfamily up to the North of Ireland the next week, to meet Uncle Jerry\nBarry, and to have a look at the Giant's Causeway.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY\n\n\n\"Stand still now, while I count you once more,\" directed Aunt Hannah,\nas they stood at the street corner in Portrush waiting for the electric\ntram-car to take them down to the Giant's Causeway.\n\n\"No matter how many times I count you, there's always one missing.\nDeena, look out for Columba. Kathleen, stand there by your brother;\"\nand Mrs. Malone took Victoria firmly by the hand and gathered the\nchildren closer together lest one should stray away before they could\nall be safely settled in the car.\n\n\"Everyone looks at us as if they thought we were crazy,\" said Hannah.\n\"Do you remember the man in Dublin who said, 'There's a big man with a\nbig family'?\"\n\n\"He was wishing himself in my place, I'm thinking,\" said her father\nwith fond pride, as he looked over his rollicking brood; \"and it takes\na big family to see a big city, for everyone sees something different.\"\n\n\"We saw a good deal of Dublin for one day, even if Kathleen and Feena\ndid get lost,\" said Connie, taking Feena's hand to keep her from\ngetting lost again.\n\n\"It was easy to get lost in O'Connell Street,\" replied Feena. \"There\nwere so many lovely things in the shop windows that I just thought I'd\ngo inside to see more.\"\n\n\"Here comes the car,\" shouted Columba, and in a moment all the younger\nMalones were scrambling in, to get seats by the window, while the older\nones followed more slowly.\n\n\"I wonder where Father is,\" Kathleen said, as the car ran along through\nthe center of the little town. \"I've looked for him everywhere this\nmorning.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he will meet us at the Giant's Causeway,\" suggested Danny.\n\"Uncle Tom wrote to him that we would be there to-day.\"\n\n\"Then we will be going over to see Mary Ellen to-morrow,\" said Kathleen\nwith a little sigh of happiness, and she folded her hands in her lap\nand sat for a long time looking quietly out of the window.\n\n\"The sea! the sea!\" cried Columba, as the car rounded a curve in the\nroad, and there lay before them the blue waters of the Atlantic.\n\nImmediately there was the greatest excitement among the children.\n\"Think of our never having seen the ocean before!\" exclaimed Feena,\n\"and our little green island is all surrounded by it.\"\n\n\"Don't be calling your own country little,\" Deena reproved her. \"Faith,\nwe could whip the whole world before breakfast if we'd put our minds to\nit.\"\n\n\"There's the sea again,\" called Columba. \"See how white the chalk\ncliffs look, where the sun is shining on them.\"\n\n\"There were chalk cliffs in Tonroe,\" Kathleen told him, \"but they were\nnot so high as those, and they didn't have such wonderful shapes.\"\n\n\"Look, Kathleen, do you see those men down there among the rocks\ngathering seaweed?\" Danny asked. \"That is the way I used to gather it\nfor Farmer Flynn. See the big pile of it they have; and there is one\nman loading it into a cart.\"\n\n\"And look, Kathleen, there's a castle up there on the rocks,\" said\nFeena, turning to point out to her cousin the gray towers of an ancient\ncastle perched high on a rugged cliff.\n\n\"That's Dunluce Castle,\" Uncle Tom told them. \"It has stood there a\nlong time, and could tell many a tale of old Irish wars.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you a tale about it now; it's easy to make up stories about\ncastles like that,\" Feena whispered to Kathleen.\n\n\"There was once an Irish princess, as beautiful as the dawn,\" she began\nin a low voice, \"and her father, the king, locked her up in one of\nthose old towers and set a dragon to guard her. A prince came riding\nby on a horse as black as night. He saw the princess standing at the\ntower window, looking out over the sea, and he fell in love with her\nsad, sweet face. So he rode down to the cave where the Witch of the Sea\nlived all alone,\u2014\"\n\n\"Here we are, at the end of our car ride,\" her father interrupted. \"Now\nfor a walk along the shore and a climb over the rocks of the Causeway.\"\n\nThe Giant's Causeway is a low rocky pier which stretches out into the\nocean about six hundred feet, gradually sinking below the waves. It is\ncomposed of about forty thousand upright stone columns which are fitted\nclosely together, the cracks between them being very narrow but showing\nplainly the sides of each column.\n\nMost of the columns have five, six, or seven sides; some have four or\neight; a very few have nine; and there is one among the forty thousand\nwhich has only three sides.\n\n\"It looks like the beginning of the world,\" said Mrs. Malone, looking\nup at the enormous cliffs and out over the tremendous, swelling\nsea,\u2014the big waves roaring and crashing among the black rocks. \"Those\ntall crags stand there as if they had been guarding the ocean for\ncenturies.\"\n\n\"So they have,\" replied her husband, \"and they guarded this part of\nour island from the golden-haired tribes of the De Danaans, when they\ncame sailing across the sea from the north some four thousand years\nago. These great cliffs offered no shelter and they had to sail west or\nsouth to find a landing-place.\"\n\n\"Four thousand years ago,\" repeated Kathleen. \"Were there men living in\nIreland as long ago as that?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied her uncle, \"and Ireland was as pleasant a place to live\nin then as it is now. It was a land of forests, echoing in spring and\nsummer to the songs of the birds. Wild cattle, deer and wolves roamed\nthrough the dense woods. Everywhere in the deep forests were blue\nlakes and silver rivers teeming with trout and salmon; and the seas\nbeat restlessly against the coast, while flocks of white gulls sailed\npeacefully between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea.\"\n\n\"It is easy to believe that this Causeway was built by a giant,\" said\nColumba, who had been climbing over the rocks, and came back now to sit\ndown beside his father.\n\n\"Was it really?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"Of course it was,\" replied her cousin. \"Tell her about it, Father. She\nlikes stories of giants.\"\n\n\"I'll tell her the truth first,\" said his father, \"and that is that the\nCauseway and all these black cliffs were made by a volcano which poured\nout hot lava over this part of the coast thousands of years ago. The\nlava cooled and cracked into these wonderful shapes,\u2014the Giant's\nCauseway, the Giant's Spectacles, the Giant's Organ\u2014and now it is one\nof the great sights of Ireland, which hundreds of tourists come every\nyear to see.\n\n\"But the people of old Ireland liked to tell strange tales of the rocks\nand mountains and so they made up the story of Finn MacCool.\n\n\"Finn MacCool was a giant who lived up here in the north of Ireland,\nand as strong and powerful a giant as you'd wish to see. He'd take a\nthunder-bolt and flatten it out like a pancake, or pull up a pine tree\nand lop off the roots and branches to make himself a walking-stick; and\nhe was so strong that he had whipped every other giant in the country\nwho was willing to fight with him.\n\n\"Over there where you see the blue hills of Scotland lived a Scotch\ngiant, and one day he shouted out to Finn that he'd come over and whip\nhim with one hand if he could only cross the ocean without wetting his\nfeet.\n\n\"That very night Finn MacCool set to work to build this causeway of\nrock straight across the sea to the coast of Scotland; and when it was\nfinished the Scotch giant came over the sea dry-shod, while Finn played\na tune on his organ for him to cross to the sound of music.\n\n\"Then there was the greatest wrestling match the world ever saw: but\nFinn had the best of it from the start, and sent the Scotchman home to\na different tune.\n\n\"Some say that Finn pushed part of the Causeway under the waves so that\nthe giant had to swim home; and you can see for yourself that it seems\nto sink under the water out there.\n\n\"There is a bit of it left on the coast of Scotland, too,\" he added\nwith a laugh.\n\n\"It is a good story, even if it isn't true,\" said Columba.\n\n\"It sounds true,\" said Kathleen. \"Do you know any more stories about\nFinn MacCool, Uncle Tom?\"\n\n\"One or two,\" replied her uncle, \"but I can't tell them to you now. Run\nand find your Aunt Hannah and the children, and we'll all go and take a\nlook at the Giant's Organ.\"\n\nKathleen started off at once to find her Aunt Hannah, and as she\nclimbed over the rocks she saw so many bright-eyed pinks that she\nstopped to gather a handful.\n\n\"What's that you are doing, Kathleen?\" asked a familiar voice, and she\nlooked up quickly to find her father standing beside her.\n\n\"Oh, Father!\" she cried, throwing her arms around him, \"I was hoping\nthat I would find you down here. I have such good news to tell you!\"\n\n[Illustration:\n\n  Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York\n\nTHE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY\n\n\"See that little girl out there on the rocks with the big dog beside\nher.\"\n\n_Page 111_]\n\n\"It's good news that you're here, Kathleen mavourneen,\" replied her\nfather, giving her a hearty kiss.\n\n\"But it is much better than that,\" said Kathleen. \"Mary Ellen can see.\nCousin Bee wrote to me about it.\"\n\n\"So she can,\" said her father, \"and a great blessing it is to the dear\nchild.\"\n\n\"You knew it all the time!\" exclaimed Kathleen, \"and I thought it was a\nsecret. Who told you? Did Cousin Bee write to you, too?\"\n\n\"Perhaps she did,\" her father answered; and then, looking out across\nthe Causeway, he added, \"See that little girl out there on the rocks\nwith the big dog beside her. Do you think it is safe for her to be\nthere all alone? Go and tell her that she'd better come up here with\nyou.\"\n\n\"Uncle Tom sent me to find Aunt Hannah and the children,\" said\nKathleen. \"I think they are over there on the sand looking for\nsea-shells.\"\n\n\"I'll go down and speak to them,\" her father said, \"and we will all\ncome back and meet you.\"\n\nSo Kathleen clambered out over the rocky pier, stopping every few\nminutes to see if the little girl were still safe.\n\n\"She looks like Mary Ellen, only bigger,\" she said to herself, as she\ncame nearer and saw the child's yellow curls.\n\nJust then the little girl began singing in a sweet soft voice, \"How\nmany miles to Dublin Town?\" and Kathleen knew at once that it was Mary\nEllen herself, singing for happiness the little song they used to sing\ntogether in Donegal.\n\n\"Mary Ellen!\" she called; \"Mary Ellen!\"\n\nAnd the little sister turned and held out her arms, crying, \"I hear\nyou, Kathleen; I'd know your voice anywhere. But, best of all, I can\nsee you now.\"\n\nSuch a hugging and laughing and chattering as there was then. Kathleen\nhad to tell Mary Ellen all about Kilkenny and the Malones, and Mary\nEllen had to tell Kathleen about the doctor and the hospital and Cousin\nBee.\n\n\"And she brought me up here to meet you and Father,\" she said.\n\n\"Who did?\" asked Kathleen.\n\n\"Cousin Bee, of course,\" replied her sister; \"and she and Father are\nplanning that we will all live in Tonroe next year, and you and I are\nboth going to school there. Father is to have the little farm next to\nCousin Patrick's, and we are going to have two little donkeys for our\nvery own.\"\n\n\"Kathleen,\" shouted Columba, \"we are going over to the wishing chair.\nFather says he wants to wish that we'll all get home without getting\nlost again.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Kathleen, and she took her sister's hand to lead her\nback over the rocks.\n\n\"You won't have to lead me any more,\" said Mary Ellen.\n\n\"That's so, darling; but I'll be forgetting it all the time at first,\"\nreplied Kathleen.\n\n\"Tallyho-o-o for the wishing chair!\" called Columba again.\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Kathleen, \"we're coming.\" Then she looked lovingly at\nher little sister and added, \"But I've nothing to wish for now that\nMary Ellen can see.\"\n\n\n\n\nVOCABULARY\n\n\n =\u0227 l\u0227n\u2032n[a+]=, my dear.\n\n =\u0102n\u2032tr\u012dm=, a county in northeastern Ireland.\n\n =\u0227 v\u012dc\u2032=, my son.\n\n =B\u0115l f\u0227st\u2032=, a city in northeastern Ireland.\n\n =b\u0113 l\u012bke\u2032=, probably; perhaps.\n\n =b\u012bde=, dwell; stay.\n\n =bl\u0103ck\u2032th\u00f4rn=, a kind of hawthorn, bearing little black plums called\n sloes. Strong sticks are made from the branches.\n\n =bl\u00e4r\u2032ne\u045e=, flattery; smooth, wheedling talk.\n\n =b\u014d re\u035een\u2032=, a little lane.\n\n =Br\u012b\u2032[a+]n B[o+] ru\u2032= (ro\u035eo), king of Ireland, 1002-1014.\n\n =ch\u012dl\u2032d\u0113r=, children.\n\n =c\u014fl le\u035een\u2032=, lass; girl.\n\n =C[o+] l\u016dm\u2032b\u0227=, a saint's name.\n\n =C\u014fn n[e+] m\u00e4\u2032r\u0227=, a name.\n\n =cre\u035eel=, a wicker basket.\n\n =Croagh= (cr\u014dg), a hill.\n\n =Cr\u014fm\u2032w\u0115ll, Oliver.= Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth,\n 1653-1658.\n\n =D\u0227g\u2032d\u0227=, an Irish god.\n\n =Di cho= (d\u0113\u2032 k\u014d), an Irish chief.\n\n =D\u014fn [e+] ga\u0324l\u2032=, a county in northwestern Ireland.\n\n =D\u016db\u2032l\u012dn=, the capital of Ireland.\n\n =d\u016dn=, a king's dwelling in ancient Ireland.\n\n =E\u2032r\u012dn=, Ireland.\n\n =f\u0113ar\u2032s\u022fme=, causing fear; timid; easily frightened.\n\n =F\u012d\u2032\u014d n\u0227=, an Irish princess.\n\n =f\u00f4r n\u012dnst\u2032=, opposite.\n\n =frieze= (fr\u0113z), coarse woolen cloth.\n\n =G\u0101el\u2032\u012dc=, the language of the Gael, used in Scotland and Ireland.\n\n =Ga\u0324l\u2032w\u0101y=, a county in west Ireland.\n\n =Gl\u0115n d\u0227\u2032lough= (l\u014fch), a group of famous ruins of churches and\n monasteries.\n\n =g\u014fs so\u035eon\u2032=, boy; lad.\n\n =h\u0101'\u2032 p\u0115n n\u045e=, a half-penny.\n\n =h\u0101y-h\u0103g\u2032gard= (g\u0113rd), a stackyard for hay.\n\n =h\u012dl le\u035een\u2032=, little hill.\n\n =h\u012dg\u2032gle=, to bargain; to haggle.\n\n =H\u00f4rn H\u0115ad=, a rocky promontory on the northwestern coast of Ireland.\n\n =j\u00e4unt\u2032\u012bng-c\u00e4r=, a two-wheeled vehicle used in Ireland.\n\n =J\u1ebdr\u2032po\u035cint \u0102b\u2032be\u045e=, a ruined church and monastery in County\n Kilkenny.\n\n =K\u012dl k\u0115n\u2032n\u045e=, the name of a city and county in the south of\n Ireland.\n\n =K\u012dl l\u0227\u2032raght= (r[a+]t), a village near Boyle.\n\n =Lein\u2032st\u1ebdr= (l\u0115n), the southeastern province of Ireland.\n\n =l\u0115p\u2032r[e+] caun= (ka\u0324n), a fairy shoemaker.\n\n =L\u0115t\u2032t\u1ebdr k\u0115n\u2032n\u045e=, a town in County Donegal.\n\n =L\u0129f\u2032fe\u045e=, the river on which Dublin is situated.\n\n =Lough G\u00e4\u2032 r\u00e4= (l\u014fch), a lake in County Sligo.\n\n =M\u0103c Co\u035eol\u2032, F\u012dnn=, an Irish giant.\n\n =M\u0101ive=, queen of West Ireland about 2000 years ago.\n\n =m\u0227 vo\u0324ur\u2032ne\u035een=, darling.\n\n =N\u0115l\u2032s\u022fn, Horatio=, an English admiral, 1758-1805.\n\n =\u014c C\u014fn\u2032n\u0115ll, Daniel=, Ireland's silver-tongued orator and \"liberator.\"\n\n =Og\u2032ham= (\u014fg\u2032 [a+]m), a kind of writing used in ancient Ireland.\n\n =p\u0113at=, a vegetable substance of roots, fibres, moss, etc., dried and\n used for fuel.\n\n =P\u014drt r\u016dsh\u2032=, a town in County Antrim.\n\n =po\u035cund=, British money equal in value to about $4.86.\n\n =Que\u035eens\u2032to\u035cwn=, a seaport in southern Ireland.\n\n =r\u0103th=, a mound or hill.\n\n =r\u0115d=, make tidy; put in order.\n\n =R\u014fs c\u014fm\u2032m[o+]n=, a county in west Ireland.\n\n =St. Brid'get= (br\u012dj'\u0115t), a patron saint of Ireland, died 523.\n\n =St. C\u0103n\u2032ice= (\u012ds), a saint for whom an ancient church in Kilkenny is\n named.\n\n =St. C[o+]l\u016dm\u2032b\u0227=, an Irish saint, died 597.\n\n =St. C\u014fl\u2032\u016dmb k\u012dlle=, same as St. Columba.\n\n =St. K\u012d\u2032\u1ebdr[a+]n=, a saint for whom the college in Kilkenny is named.\n\n =St. P\u0103t\u2032r\u012dck=, the patron saint of Ireland, died March 17, about 465\n A.D.\n\n =sh\u0103m\u2032r\u014fck=, a three-leaved plant; the national emblem of Ireland.\n\n =sh\u012dl l\u0101\u2032l[a+]h=, a cudgel.\n\n =sh\u012dl\u2032l\u012dng=, a silver coin equal to about 24 cents.\n\n =Sl\u012b\u2032g\u014d=, a county in northwestern Ireland.\n\n =sp\u0103l\u2032pe\u035een=, good-for-nothing fellow.\n\n =st\u00eer\u2032[a+]; bo\u035cut=, oatmeal boiled in water.\n\n =T\u00e4\u2032r\u0227=, a hill near Dublin, where the high-kings of ancient Ireland\n lived.\n\n =th\u0103tch=, straw, rushes or the like, used for a roof.\n\n =T\u014d\u2032b[a+]r N'a\u0324lt\u2032=, a holy well in County Sligo.\n\n =T\u014fn r\u014de\u2032=, a village near Boyle in County Sligo.\n\n =whist= (hw\u012dst), hush; be still.","title":"Kathleen in Ireland","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":25053}