Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/177

Rh Then King Brian trew back his head and, shutting his eyes, sung another ballad of forty-seven varses, which was Catherine McCabe’s answer to Hugh Reynolds, and which begins this away:

One song brought out another finer than the first, until the whole family, childher and all, jined in singing “Willie Reilly and His Dear Colleen Bawn.”

’Twould make your heart young agin to hear them. At the ind of aich varse all the Mulligans’d stop quick to let the King wobble his woice alone. Dark-eyed Susan was standing scratching herself inside the closed door, plazed but wondherin’; so, with sweet songs and ould tales, the hours flew like minutes till at last the ballad-maker pushed back the table and tuned his fiddle, while the whole family—at laste all of them ould enough to stand—smiling, faced one another for a dance.

The King chose Mrs. Ann Mulligan for a partner. Rh