A Mainsail Haul/In a Castle Ruin
IN A CASTLE RUIN
"Very long ago," said the old man, "the castle was owned by a Scotchman named Carr, whose daughter was the most beautiful woman in the world. The name of this daughter was Clelia. She married Andy MacDonnell, who came over at the time of the Settlement; and after her marriage she lived on at the castle with her husband, helping Carr with the land. When Andy had been married about half a year, he was called away to Scotland on business; for he was a great man in Scotland, and at that time there was to be marrying between the royal families of Scotland and England, and he was wanted to carry a banner at the wedding. So he went to Scotland. And when they heard he was coming back they made all ready for a feast, and they had fires lighted, and all the fiddlers and the pipers came; and the poets came from the back hills making up new songs.
"Now at last, the ship which brought Andy MacDonnell came round the Point yonder, and Andy got ashore, and then the ship rowed away. Then Carr went up to him and asked why he was turning the ship away again. 'Isn't that the ship you sailed in?' he said. 'Isn't that your own ship?' 'It is not,' says Andy. 'My own ship's in Scotland. The King took a fancy to her.' So then Carr asked him what had become of all the men who had gone with him abroad. And he answered that the King had taken a fancy to them, and that they were all with the King in Scotland, every man jack of them down to Johnny O'Hara, the piper's boy. So Carr wondered a little at that, but said nothing; and they all went up to the castle to the feast.
"But there was a queer thing that was noticed. There was a little lad of the MacLearnon's running about bare foot among the horses. He was a little wee lad, the nicest little lad you would be seeing. So when Andy MacDonnell was coming to the castle from the shore, this little McLearnon looks at him; and he was near him; and he said to his mother, 'His Honour's ears is pointed.' They were pointed just the same as the ears on a terrier. Wasn't it wonderful that no one had ever noticed that before; that he should have pointed ears, and no one see it? I'm thinking that was a great wonder.
"Now after that, things settled down as before. Andy MacDonnell lived on with Carr at the Castle, and there was nothing much happened, except a little child was born to Clelia; and that was a queer thing, the child was. It was a little wee man of a child, and he was born with teeth in him, and the first thing his mother saw of him was that his ears were pointed; and the nurses said that that was a great shame, and she so beautiful a mother. There were other things, besides that, which seemed queer. Andy MacDonnell was another sort of a man than he had been. He used to go up beyond, in the back hills, at the time of a new moon. He got a bad name on to him for doing that; but that was nothing to what they caught him doing another time on the back hills, beyond the wood there. There's a flat place there, where they used to hold cock fights in the old times. It was a religious place before that, where they did the old religion, and there's wraiths in it, besides Themselves; and it was there they caught Andy. It was one twilight they caught him. He was standing on the grass, bowing to a great black goat; and every time he bowed the goat spoke to him in ancient Irish. Wasn't that a wonderful thing now? There was a strong magic in that; indeed there was. The shepherds didn't say anything, for Andy was a great gentleman, but they thought it a queer thing, for all that. And Carr kept wondering all the time what had become of the ship, and all the men left behind in Scotland.
"Now just about a year after Andy MacDonnell had come home, he and Carr, and Clelia and the child were sitting on the grass (on a carpet) looking out over the bay, and it was one evening, getting towards sunset; and as they were sitting talking, they saw a small boat pulling in to the bay, and Carr said, 'It's a tired man in that boat,' for he was pulling like a crazy man. And Clelia said, 'It'll be some poor man who has maybe lost his ship.' And Andy MacDonnell looked hard at the boat, and says he, 'I'll be going in,' he said, 'the evening strikes cold,' he says. So he turned, and went into the house. There was no one ever saw him again.
"Now the boat ran ashore on the beach, and the tired man got out of her, just by those rocks; and he was tired indeed. He could scarce climb up that bank of shingle. So Carr looks hard at him. 'Why,' he says, 'it's Johnny O'Hara, the piper's boy, that was left behind in Scotland. What news, Johnny!' he says. So Johnny comes near up to him, and, 'Bad news,' he says. 'It's bad news I'm bringing you this day. Your man is killed,' he says. 'Andy MacDonnell is killed,' he says. 'He was killed by the Scotch the day he was to have come home. And I've been a prisoner ever since.' So Carr got up on his feet, and he calls out 'Andy'; but no one ever came. And Clelia called out 'Andy'; but no one ever answered. And they went into the castle, but no Andy was there, and then they knew that they'd been living with a dragon-man, and that the real Andy had been dead a year. When Clelia knew that she'd been living with a dragon-man, she went upstairs to her room, and took out a kind of dirk she had, with a sharp point on it, and she said a prayer first, and then stuck herself, so that she fell dead. That was in one of the top chambers. It's all fallen in now, this long time; but that was where she killed herself. And when Carr knew that there had been a dragon-man, he looked at the child, and he knew it for a dragon-child, because its ears was pointed, so he took it up and swung it against the tower wall, against these corner stones, until he had it killed. Then he went down the strand yonder, to that point of rocks below my cabin, and there he drowned himself. That's why the point is called Carr's Point, to this day. He was the last man to live in the castle here. No one would ever live in it after that, and the floors fell in, and the wood-work was taken; and now there's the ivy on it."