Fairies and Folk of Ireland | Page 4

any good times for Ireland? I mean for
all the people in it."
"There will," the old woman said. "Everything has an end, and so these
troubles of ours will end, and all the troubles of Ireland will end, too."
"And why should we believe that?" John asked again. "Wasn't Ireland

always the poor, unhappy country, and all the people in it, only the
landlords and the agents, and why should we think it will ever be
better?"
"Everything has an end," the old woman repeated. "Ireland was not
always the unhappy country. It was happy once and it will be happy
again. It's not you, John O'Brien, that ought to be forgetting the good
days of Ireland, long ago though they were. For you yourself are the
descendant of King Brian Boru, and you know well, for it's many times
I've told you, how in his days the country was happy and peaceful and
blessed. He drove out the heathen and saved the country for his people.
He had strict laws, and the people obeyed them. In his days a lovely
girl, dressed all in fine silk and gold and jewels, walked alone the
length of Ireland, and there was no one to rob her or to harm her,
because of the good King and the love the people had for him and for
his laws. And you, that are descended from King Brian, ask if Ireland
wasn't always the poor, unhappy country."
"But all that was so long ago," said John; "near a thousand years, was it
not? Since then it's been nothing but sorrow for the country and for the
people. What good is it to us that the country was happy in King
Brian's time? Will that help us pay the rent? And how we'll pay the rent
when the winter comes, I dunno, and if we don't pay it we'll be
evicted."
"Shaun," said his mother, calling him by the Irish name that she used
sometimes--"Shaun, we'll not be evicted; never fear that. Things are
bad, and they may be worse, but take my word, whatever comes, we'll
not be evicted."
"Mother," said the young man, "you never spoke the word, so far as I
know, that wasn't true, but I dunno how it'll be this time. We've been
workin' all we can and we only just manage to pay the rent and live,
and here's the summer over and the winter coming, and how will we
pay the rent then?"
The mother did not answer this question directly. She began talking in
a way that did not seem to have anything to do with the rent, though it

really had something to do with it, in her own mind, and perhaps in her
son's mind too.
"It's over-tired that you are with your hard day's work, Shaun," she said,
"and that and seeing Kitty so tired, too, has maybe made you look at
things a little worse than they are. We've never been so bad off as many
of our neighbors; you know that. And yet I know it's been worse of late
and harder for you than it might have been, and you can't remember the
better times that our family had, and that's why you forget that the
times were ever better. No, you wasn't born then, but the time was
when good luck seemed to follow your father and me everywhere and
always. Yes, and the good luck has not all left us yet, though we had
the bad luck to lose your father so long ago. We could not hope to be
rich or happy while the whole country was in such distress as it's been
sometimes, yet there were always many that were worse off than we,
and when I think of those days of '47 and '48 it makes the sorrows seem
light that we're suffering now. And I always know that whatever comes,
there'll be some good for me and mine while I live. I've told you how I
know that, but you always forget, and I must tell you again."
They had not forgotten. They knew the story that was coming by heart,
but they knew that the old woman liked to tell it, so they let her go on
and said not a word.
For a little while, too, the old woman said not a word. She sat with her
eyes closed, and smiling, as if she were in a dream. Then she began to
speak softly, as if she were still only just waking out of a dream.
"Blessed days there were," she said--"blessed days for Ireland
once--long ago--many hundreds of years. O'Donoghue--it was he was
the good King, and happy were his people. A fierce warrior he was to
guard them from their enemies, and