Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/167

Rh and struck him a hard fist on the jaw. "Be off with yourself," says he, "I can't stand you any longer."

Guleesh got up and put a hand to his jaw, where he got the fist. "Only that it's yourself that's in it, who gave me that blow," said he, "another blow you'd never strike till the day of your death." He went out of the house then and great anger on him.

There was the finest lis, or rath, in Ireland, a little way off from the gable of the house, and he was often in the habit of seating himself on the fine grass bank that was running round it. He stood, and he half leaning against the gable of the house, and looking up into the sky, and watching the beautiful white moon over his head. After him to be standing that way for a couple of hours, he said to himself: "My bitter grief that I am not gone away out of this place altogether. I'd sooner be any place in the world than here. Och, it's well for you, white moon," says he, "that's turning round, turning round, as you please yourself, and no man can put you back. I wish I was the same as you."

Hardly was the word out of his mouth when he heard a great noise coming like the sound of many people running together, and talking, and laughing, and making sport, and the sound went by him like a whirl of wind, and he was listening to it going into the rath. "Musha, by my soul," says he, "but ye're merry enough, and I'll follow ye."

What was in it but the fairy host, though he did not know at first that it was they who were in it, but he followed them into the rath. It's there he heard the fulparnee, and the folpornee, the rap-lay-hoota, and the roolya-boolya. that they had there, and every man of