Humours of Irish Life

People may have heard of the renowned adventures of Daniel O’Rourke, but how few are there who know that the cause of all his perils, above and below, was neither more nor less than his having slept under the walls of the Phooka’s tower. I knew the man well: he lived at the bottom of Hungry Hill. He told me his story thus:— “I am often axed to tell it, sir, so that this is not the first time. The master’s son, you see, had come from beyond foreign parts; and sure enough there was a dinner given to all the people on the ground, gentle and simple, high and low, rich and poor. Well, we had everything of the best, and plenty of it; and we ate, and we drunk, and we danced. To make a long story short, I got, as a body may say, the same thing as tipsy almost. And so, as I was crossing the stepping-stones of the ford of Ballyasheenogh, I missed my foot, and souse I fell into the water. ‘Death alive!’ thought I, ‘I’ll be drowned now!’ However, I began swimming, swimming, swimming away for dear life, till at last I got ashore, somehow or other, but never the one of me can tell how, upon a dissolute island. “I wandered, and wandered about there, without knowing where I wandered, until at last I got into a big bog. The moon was shining as bright as day, or your lady’s eyes, sir (with your pardon for mentioning her), and I looked east and west, and north and south, and every way, and nothing did I see but bog, bog, bog. I began to scratch me head, and sing the Ullagone—when all of a sudden the moon grew black, and I looked up, and saw something for all the world as if it was moving down between me and it, and I could not tell what it was. Down it came with a pounce, and looked at me full in the face; and what was it but an eagle? So he looked at me in the face, and says he to me, ‘Daniel O’Rourke,’ says he, ‘how do you do?’ ‘Very well, I thank you sir,’ says I; ‘I hope you’re well’; wondering out of my senses all the time how an eagle came to speak like a Christian. ‘What brings you here, Dan?’ says he. ‘Nothing at all, sir,’ says I: ‘only I wish I was safe home again.’ ‘Is it out of the island you want to go, Dan?’ says he. ‘’Tis, sir,’ says I. ‘Dan,’ says he, ‘though it is very improper for you to get drunk on Lady-day, yet, as you are a decent, sober man, who ‘tends Mass well, and never flings stones at me or mine, nor cries out after us in the fields—my life for yours,’ says he, ‘so get on my back and grip me well for fear you’d fall off, and I’ll fly you out of the bog.’ ‘I am afraid,’ says I, ‘your honour’s making game of me; for who ever heard of riding horseback on an eagle before?’ ‘’Pon the honour of a gentleman,’ says he, putting his right foot on his breast, ‘I am quite in earnest: and so now either take my offer or starve in the bog—besides, I see that your weight is sinking the stone.’