Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/243

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SHIANA
229

"and he never makes any answer but, 'Ask something else.'"

"I declare on my honour," said Michael, "that I asked him that question a while ago, and that that is exactly the answer he made me. 'Ask something else,' said he to me."

"I heard," said Patrick, "that the way of it was that he was coming home from Cork one night with a new set of pipes which he had bought, and that he went astray, although he knew the place perfectly. Coming on toward Dripsey Bridge was where he went astray. A bewilderment came upon him, and he found himself on the bank of a river, in a place his eye had never rested on! He examined the ground under his feet, and a hedge that was near him, and a cave that was in a rock there, to see if he knew them, and he did not know them. At that moment he heard, at the other side of the river, the most beautiful music he had ever heard. What do you say to him if he didn't fit up the new pipes and begin to play the same music, along with the musician at the other side! He always had great nerve. All the fairies in Ireland would not frighten him. In the twinkling of an eye the whole inch on the bank of the river was filled with people moving over and hither among each other as if it were some sort of dance they were going on with. Soon the music at the other side changed. When it did, the man at this side took up the change without stop or stumble, and without missing a beat. The music at the other side was changed a second time. Well became the man at this side, he took up the change the instant it was made.

"For every turn and change that took place in