Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/89

 My horse and bridle and saddle!” and Guleesh took courage Irish and called out as loudly as any of them: “My horse and bridle and saddle! My horse and bridle and saddle.” But before the word was well out of his mouth another man cried out: “Ora! Guleesh, my boy, are you here with us again? How are you coming on with your woman? There’s no use in your calling for your horse to-night. I’ll go bail you won’t play on us again. It was a good trick you played on us last year!”

“It was,” said another man; “he won’t do it again.”

“Isn’t he a prime lad, the same lad, to take a woman with him that never said as much to him as ‘How do you do?’ since this time last year!” says the third man.

“Perhaps he likes to be looking at her,” said another voice.

“And if the omadawn only knew that there’s a herb growing up by his own door, and to boil it and give it to her, and she’d be well!” said another voice.

“That’s true for you.”

“He is an omadawn.”

“Don’t bother your head with him, we’ll be going.”

“We’ll leave the bodach as he is.”

And with that they rose up into the air, and out with them at one roolya-boolya the way they came; and they left poor Guleesh standing where they found him, and the two eyes going out of his head, looking after them and wondering.

He did not stand long till he turned back, and he thinking in his own mind on all he saw and heard, and wondering whether there was really a herb at his own door that would bring back the talk to the king’s daughter. “It can’t be,” says he to himself, “that they would tell it to me if there was any virtue in it; but perhaps the fairy didn’t observe himself when he let the word slip out of his mouth. I’ll search well as soon as the sun rises, whether there’s