Darby O'Gill & the Good People

Author:Herminie Templeton Kavanagh [Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton]
Format: epub
Tags: Demonoid Upload 5
ISBN: 9780966670103
Publisher: Lisa's E-Book Collection
Published: 2010-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

THE BANSHEE'S HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN night to all unhappy ghosts is about the same as St. Patrick's day is to you or to me - 'tis a great holiday in every church-yard. An' no one knew this betther or felt it keener than did Darby O'Gill that same Halloween night as he stood on his own door-step, with the paper of black tay for Eilleen McCarthy safely stowed away in the crown of his top hat.

No one in that Barony was quicker than he at an act of neighborly kindness. But now, as he huddled himself together in the shelther of his own eaves, an' thought of the dangers before, an' of the cheerful fire an' comfortable bed he was leaving behint, black raybellion rushed shouting across his heart.

"Oh my, oh my, what a perishin' night to turn a man out into," he says, "It'd be half a comfort to know I was goin' to be kilt before I got back, just as a warnin' to Bridget," says he.

The misthrayted lad turned a sour eye on the chummultuous weather, an' groaned deep as he pulled closer about his chowldhers the cape of his great coat, an' plunged into the daysarted an' flooded roadway.

Howsumever, 'twas not the pelting rain, nor the lashing wind, nor yet the pitchy darkness that bothered the heart out of him as he wint splashing an' stumbling along the road. A thought of something more raylentless than the storm, more mystarious than the night's blackness, put pounds of lead into the lad's unwilling brogues, for somewhere in the shrouding darkness that covered McCarthy's house the Banshee was waiting this minute, perhaps, ready to jump out at him as soon as he came near her.

And oh, if the Banshee nabbed him there, what in the wide worruld would the poor lad do to save himself?

At the rayalization of this sitiwation the goose flesh crept up his back, an' settled on his neck an' chowldhers. He began to cast about in his mind for a bit of cheer or a scrap of comfort, as a man in such sarcumstances will do. So, grumblin' an' sore-hearted, he turned over Bridget's parting worruds. "If one goes on an errant of marcy," Bridget had said, "a score of God's white angels, with swoords in their hands, march before an' beside an' afther him, keeping his path free from danger."

He felt anxious in his hat for the bit of charitable tay he was bringin', an' was glad to find it there safe an' dhry enough, though the rest of him was drenched through an' through.

"Isn't this an act of charity I'm doin', to be bringin' a cooling dhrink to a dyin' woman?" he axed himself aloud. "To be sure it is. Well, then, what rayson have I to be afeared?" says he, pokin' his two hands into his pockets. Arrah, it's aisy enough to bolster up one's heart with wise sayin's an' hayroic praycepts when sitting commodious by one's own fire; but talkin' wise

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