Page:Irish Fairy Tales (Stephens).djvu/373

CHAP. XV The priests were reading their offices, and mac an Dáv marvelled at that.

"What is it they are doing?" said he.

"They are reading."

"Indeed, and indeed they are," said mac an Dáv. "I can't make out a word of the language except that the man behind says amen, amen, every time the man in front puts a grunt out of him. And they don't like our gods at all!" said mac an Dáv.

"They do not," said Mongan.

"Play a trick on them, master," said mac an Dáv.

Mongan agreed to play a trick on the priests.

He looked at them hard for a minute, and then he waved his hand at them.

The two priests stopped, and they stared straight in front of them, and then they looked at each other, and then they looked at the sky. The clerk began to bless himself, and then Tibraidè began to bless himself, and after that they didn't know what to do. For where there had been a road with hedges on each side and fields stretching beyond them, there was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift, very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled across the torrent.

Tibraidè rubbed his eyes, and then he looked again.

"Do you see what I see?" said he to the clerk.

"I don't know what you see," said the clerk, "but what I see I never did see before, and I wish I did not see it now."