Islandman by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated

15. A Merry Christmas

‘THERE’S A JOINT FOR YOU, LITTLE WOMAN’ · CHRISTMAS EVE: A JOLLY DRINK AND SINGING · THE HURLEY MATCH · DIARMID WOUNDED · THE SECOND GAME · TOM IS HURT · MUSIC TILL DAWN

IT was the morning of Christmas Eve. ‘I fancy that I may as well go and get a sheep,’ said I to my mother.

‘Don’t go,’ says she. ‘Give windy Diarmid his chance. We shall find out whether he comes up to his trumpeting. If he kills that big sheep there’ll be enough for the two houses in her, but I’m afraid he won’t made good his swaggering.’

She had far less confidence in him than I had. I expected that he’d keep his promise, if he did lay the big sheep low. He was a finished butcher, for those brothers had a big household when they kept house together. And often enough had the joker put a knife in a fine sheep of their flock without anybody telling him to.

I strolled out late in the evening to look if the cows were coming down from the hill, and what should I see but the rascal coming to the house with half the big sheep on his back. Diarmid had split the sheep so cleanly in two that half the head was still sticking to half the body.

When he went in, he threw off his load.

‘There’s a joint for you, little woman, for the Holy Day,’ says he.

‘May this day a year hence find you and us all in prosperity and joy,’ said she.

Just at that moment in I came. I looked at the present.

‘Yerra, a blessing on your arms, good old uncle!’ said I. ‘You’re a man of your word if anybody is.’

‘Didn’t I tell you that I’d do it?’ said he. ‘Sure, if it hadn’t been for you and the help of God, I shouldn’t have been alive to kill it. It’s in honour of God that I killed it, and to share it with you. I shall never forget the seals’ cave!’

I turned away from him and went to the box. I took out one of the four bottles that remained there, and came up to him.

‘There, you’ve earned this drink to-day if you ever did, Diarmid.’

‘Mary Mother! wherever did you get it all?’ says he.

‘Didn’t you get a bottle from your friends yourself?’

‘Devil a one except one my old friend Muirisín Bán gave me.’

Well, I filled him a glass and a half, for that was the full of the vessel I held in my hand.

‘O, King of the Angels! don’t you know that my old skeleton can’t take in all that at one gulp after the day’s toil?’

‘This is the little Christmas drink.’

He seized the glass, and before long all its contents were in a place that kept them safe, and he said directly:

‘I hope with God that we shall have a good Christmas and a good Shrove to follow.’

Then he jumped up and ran out through the door.

I ran after him and brought him in again.

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