Donegal Fairy Tales - McManus Seumas (книги читать бесплатно без регистрации TXT) 📗

“Oh,” says she, “I have something grand for you. Let me comb your hair with this comb.”

Hookedy-Crookedy put his head in her lap, and she combed out a bushel of gold and silver and when he stood up again, she saw Hookedy-Crookedy no more, but instead the beautiful prince that had been trying to win her in her father’s drawing-room for the last three days; and then and there to her Jack told his whole story, and it’s Yellow Rose who is the delighted girl.

With little delay they were married. The wedding lasted a year and a day, and there were five hundred fiddlers, five hundred fluters and a thousand fifers at it, and the last day was better than the first.

Shortly after the marriage, Jack and his bride were out walking one day. A beautiful young woman crossed their path. Jack addressed her, but she gave him a very curt reply.

“Your manners are not so handsome as your looks,” said Jack to her.

“And bad as they are, they are better than your memory, Hookedy-Crookedy,” says she.

“What do you mean?” says Jack.

She led Jack aside, and she told him, “I am the mare who was so good to you. I was condemned to that shape for a number of years, and now my enchantment is over. I had a brother who was enchanted into a bear, and whose enchantment is over now also. I had hopes,” she says, “that some day you would be my husband, but I see,” she says, “that you quickly forgot all about me. No matter now,” she says; “I couldn’t wish you a better and handsomer wife than you have got. Go home to your castle, and be happy and live prosperous. I shall never see you, and you will never see me again.”

Donal That Was Rich and Jack That Was Poor

ONCE there were two brothers named Donal and Jack. Donal was hired by a rich man who had one daughter, and when his master died, he married the daughter.

Jack, he lived close by, with his wife and a big family of children, and he was very poor; but Donal, he was no way good to Jack, and would never reach his hand to him with a thing. And when the hunger would come into Jack’s house, Jack, he used to think it little harm to steal a bullock out of Donal’s big flock, and kill it for his family.

At length Donal began to suspect that Jack was taking his bullocks, but he didn’t know how he would find out for sure. Donal’s old mother-in-law proposed a plan by which she could catch Jack. She made Donal put her into a big chest that had little spy-holes in it, and put in with her beef and brandy enough to last her nine days. Then Donal was to take the chest to Jack’s, and have it left there on some excuse.

Donal went to Jack, and said he had a big chest of things that was in his way, and asked Jack if he would be so good as to allow him to leave it in his kitchen for a week or so. Jack said he was very welcome to put in ten chests if he liked. So Donal had the chest with the mother-in-law and her provisions in it, carried to Jack’s, and planted in a good place in the kitchen.

On the very first night that the chest and the mother-in-law were at Jack’s, he stole and killed and brought in another bullock, and the old woman was watching it all through the spy-holes of the chest. And after Jack and his wife and children had eaten a hearty supper off the bullock, he and his wife began talking over one thing and another, and says he: “I’d like to know what Donal has in that chest.”

So off he went to a locksmith, and he got the loan of a whole bundle of keys, and he came and tried them all in the chest till he got one that opened it.

When Jack found what was in the chest, he lost little time taking away the beef and the brandy, and he put in their place empty bottles and clean-picked bones, and locked the old woman up with these again.

At the end of nine days, Donal came for the chest. He thanked Jack for giving him house room for it for so long, and said he had now room for it himself and so he had come to take it home. And behold you, when Donal and his wife opened the chest at home, there was the old woman dead of starvation, and a lot of bones and empty bottles in the chest.

Says Donal: “She got greedy, and ate and drank the whole of the provisions the first day, and this is her deserving.”

Well, Donal and the wife waked her and buried her, with a purse of money under her head to pay her way in the next world, as they used to do in those days.

Jack, of course, he went to the wake and to the funeral, and sympathized sore with Donal and Donal’s wife both. But the very next night after the funeral, Jack dug up the corpse to get the money, as it was so useful to him. Then he took the old woman’s body on his shoulder and carried it off to Donal’s, and went down into Donal’s wine cellar. He put it sitting in a chair by a puncheon there, and put a glass into its hand, and turned on the wine.

In the morning Donal’s first race was always to the cellar to have a drink, and when he came down this morning he fell over and fainted with the fright when he saw his old mother-in-law sitting by the puncheon drinking. When he came to himself he had her taken up and laid out in the wake-room again.

Jack, he came walking over to see Donal like to bid him the time of day in the morning. “Good morning to you, Donal,” says he, “and how do you find yourself this morning?”

“Och! Och! Och! Jack! Jack!” says Donal, says he, “I’m in a terrible fix entirely.”

“Why, what’s the matter? ”says Jack.

“Why,” says he, “my old mother-in-law got up out of the grave in the night time and came back; and when I went down to the cellar in the morning to get a drink of wine, there was the old lady sitting by the puncheon, and she having the puncheon drunk empty. What am I to do at all, at all?” says he.

“ Well,” says Jack, says he, “I know why she got up out of her grave again.”

“For what did she?” says Donal.

“Because you didn’t bury her half decently,” says Jack, “you only put ten pound under her head, and it’s fifty pound you should have put.”

“Well, I’m sure I’m sorry for that,” says Donal, “and I’ll make certain that I’ll bury her decently enough this time.”

So Jack went with him to help him bury her this day again, and he saw Donal put a purse of fifty sovereigns under her head. “Now,” says Donal, says he, “she’ll surely not come back to bother me.”

But that night Jack went to the graveyard and raised the body again, and got the fifty pounds. And he took the body then with him on his shoulder off to Donal’s, and he went into the stables, and he put the body sitting on the finest big horse in Donal’s stable, and he tied it there, and he tied a sword into its hand. Now Donal was to have gone off next morning, riding on a little black mare that was a favorite of his, to the town to pay the accounts of the funeral; and Jack, he had known this, and when Donal came down in the very early morning, when it was still dark, he went into the stable, and he took out the little black mare.

The horse on which Jack had tied the old woman was a great companion of this little black mare, and both of them used to run on the grass together; so when the little black mare was taken out by Donal, the horse (which Jack had left loose) trotted out after.

When Donal saw the appearance of the horse coming out of the stable, and on its back the old mother-in-law with the sword lifted up in her hand, he gave a yell, and he jumped up on the mare, and off as fast as he could gallop.

Off after the little mare the big horse started, and the faster Donal went, the faster came the big horse trotting behind him; and every time he looked over his shoulder, there he saw his old mother-in-law with the sword lifted, ready, as he thought, to cut him down, and all that he could do, he couldn’t gain ground.