Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/113

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HOW THE FAIRIES CAME TO IRELAND

the band. There was a thin rim of black whuskers undher his chin.”

Father Cassidy, liftin’ both hands in wondher, said: “If I hadn’t baptised him, and buried his good father before him, I’d swear ’twas Michael Pether McGilligan of this parish you were dayscribin’,” says he.

“The McGilligans ain’t dacint enough, nor rayfined enough, nor proud enough to be fairies,” says the King, wavin’ his pipe scornful. “But to raysume and to continue,” he says.

“Thaddeus and I used to frayquint a place they called the battlements or parypets—which was a great goold wall about the edge of heaven, and which had wide steps down on the outside face, where one could sit pleasant avenings and hang his feet over, or where one’d stand before going to take a fly in the fresh air for himself.

“Well, agra, the night before the great battle Thady and I were sitting on the lowest step, looking down into league upon league of nothing, and talking about the world, which was suxty thousand miles below, and hell, which was tunty thousand miles below that agin, when who should come blusthering over us,

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