Tales for the Telling by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fairy stories, Folklore, Irish, Ireland, bedtime stories, celtic, legends
Publisher: BSB
Published: 2011-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Lord Mount Dhraggin

Once upon a time there was a little weaver, a very honest and industrious man with a wife and plenty of children. It was up early and bed late with him and the loom never standin’ still. One mornin’ his wife called to him and he busy throwin’ the shuttle and she says, ‘Jewel, come and ate your breakfast.’

He ignored her and went on workin’ so she called again and he drove the shuttle faster than before. She tried coaxing him. ‘Come at wanst, Thady dear, or your porridge will be stone cowld.’

‘I can’t, till I complate this,’ said Thady.

‘Faith, I’ll not ax you again,’ says she and she flounced off in a huff to the wash-house.

Well, he left the loom at last, and went over to the stirabout, and what would you think but when he looked at it, it was as black as a crow; for you see, it was in the height of summer, and the flies lit upon it in such a host that the stirabout was covered with them.

‘Why, thin, bad luck to your impidence,’ says the weaver, ‘would no place sarve you but that? And is it spyling my brekquest yiz are, you dirty bastes?’ And with that bein’ altogether bad tempered at the time, he lifted his hand, and he made one great slam at the dish o’ stirabout, and killed no less than three score and ten flies at the one blow. It was three score and ten exactly, for he counted the little carcases one by one, and laid them out an a tin plate, for to view them.

Well, he felt a powerful spirit rising in him, when he saw the slaughter he had done, and with that, he got a swelled head, and not a stroke more work would he do that day, but out he went and was fractious and contrary to every one he met, and was squarein’ up into their faces and sayin’, ‘Look at that fist! That’s the fist that killed three score and tin at one blow – Whoop!’

With that, all the neighbours thought he was cracked, and the poor wife herself thought the same when he came home in the evenin’, after spendin’ every rap he had in drink, swaggerin’ about the place, and looking at his brave hand every minute.

‘Indeed an’ your hand is very dirty, sure enough, Thady, jewel,’ says the poor wife, and true for her, for he rolled into a ditch comin’ home. ‘You had betther wash it, darlin’.’

‘How dar’ you say dirty to the greatest hand in Ireland,’ says he, going to strike her.

‘Well, it’s nat dirty,’ says she, ‘only a bit soiled.’

‘It is throwin’ away my time I have been all my life,’ says he, ‘livin’ with you and all, and stuck to my loom, nothin’ but a poor waiver, when it is Saint George or the Dhraggin I ought to be, or any one of the seven champions o’ Christendom.’

‘Sure what’s champions to uz?’ says she, ‘we’re paupers.

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