Robert Mackenzie - Bits of Blarney

"You know the high hill that overlooks the town of Fermoy? Handsome and thriving place as it now is, I remember the time when there were only two houses in that same town, and one of them was then only in course of building! Well, there lived on the other side of Corran Thierna (the mountain in question, though Corrig is the true name) one of the Barrys, a gentleman who was both rich and good. I wish we had more of the stamp among us now – 'tis little of the Whiteboys or Ribbonmen would trouble the country then. He had a fine fortune, kept up a fine house, and lived at a dashing rate. It does not matter, here nor there, how many servants he had; but I mention them, because one of them was a very remarkable fellow. His equal was not to be had, far or near, for love nor money.

"This servant was called Con O'Keefe. He was a crabbed little man, with a face the very color and texture of old parchment, and he had lived in the family time out of mind. He was such a small, dwarfish, deeny creature, that no one ever thought of putting him to hard work. All that they did was, now and again, from the want of a better messenger at the moment, or to humor the old man, to send him to Rathcormac post-office for letters. But he was too weak and feeble to walk so far – though it was only a matter of three or four miles; so they got him a little ass, and he rode upon it, quite as proud as a general at the head of an army of conquerors. 'Twas as good as a play to see Con mounted upon his donkey – you could scarcely make out which had the most stupid look. But neither man nor beast can help his looks.

"At that time Rathcormac, though 'tis but a village now, was a borough, and sent two members to the Irish Parliament. Was not the great Curran, the orator and patriot, member for Rathcormac, when he was a young man? Did not Colonel Tonson get made an Irish peer, out of this very borough, which his son William is, to this very day, by the title of Baron Riversdale of Rathcormac? Does not his shield bear an open hand between two castles, and is not the motto, 'Manus hæc inimica tyrannis' – which means that it was the enemy of tyrants? Did not the Ulster King of Arms make the Tonsons a grant of these arms, in the time of Cromwell? But here I have left poor little Con mounted on his donkey all this time.

"Con O'Keefe was not worth his keep, for any good he did; but, truth to say, he had the name of being hand and glove with the fairies; and, at that time, Corran Thierna swarmed with them. They changed their quarters when the regiments from Fermoy barracks took to firing against targets stuck up at the foot of the mountain. Not that a ball could ever hit a fairy (except a silver one cast by a girl in her teens, who has never wished for a lover, or a widow under forty who has not sighed for a second husband – so there's little chance that it ever will be cast), but they hate the noise of the firing and the smell of gunpowder, quite as much as the Devil hates holy water.

"'Tis reckoned lucky in these parts to have a friend of the fairies in the house with you, and that was partly the reason why Con O'Keefe was kept at Barry's-fort. Many and many a one could swear to hearing him and 'the good folk' talk together at twilight on his return from Rathcormac with the letter-bag. My own notion is, that if he had anything to say to them, he had more sense than to hold conversation with them on the high road, for that might have led to a general discovery. Con was fond of a drop, and, when he took it (which was in an algebraic way, that is, 'any given quantity'), he had such famous spirits, and his tongue went so glibly, that, in the absence of other company, he was sometimes forced to talk to himself, as he trotted home.

"One night, as he was going along, rather the worse for liquor, he thought he heard a confused sound of voices in the air, directly over his head. He stopped, and, sure enough, it was the fairies, who were chattering away, like a bevy of magpies; but he did not know this at the time.

"At first he thought it might be some of the neighbors wanting to play him a trick. So, to show that he was not afraid (for the drink had made him bold as a lion), when the voices above and around him kept calling out 'High up! high up!' he put in his spoke, and shouted, as loud as any of them, 'High up! high up with ye, my lads!' No sooner said than done. He was whisked off his donkey in a twinkling, and was 'high up' in the air, in the very middle of a crowd of 'good people' – for it happened to be one of their festival nights, and the cry that poor little Con heard was the summons for gathering them all together. There they were, mighty small, moving about as quickly as motes in the sunshine. Although Con had the reputation at Barry's-fort of being well acquainted with them all, you may well believe that there was not a single face among the lot that he knew.

"In less than no time, off they went, when their leader – a little morsel of a fellow, not bigger than Hop-o'-my Thumb – bawled out, 'High for France! high for France! high over!' Off they went, through the air – quick as if they were on a steeplechase. Moss and moor – mountain and valley – green field and brown bog – land and water were all left behind, and they never once halted until they reached the coast of France.

"They immediately made for the house (there it is called the château ) of a great lord – one of the Seigneurs of the Court – and bolted through the key-hole into his wine-cellar, without leave or license. How little Con was squeezed through, I never could understand, but it is as sure as fate that he went into the cellar along with them. They soon got astride the casks, and commenced drinking the best wines, without waiting to be invited. Con, you may be sure, was not behind any of them, as far as the drinking went. The more he drank, the better relish he had for their tipple. The 'good people,' somehow or other, did not appear at all surprised at Con's being among them, but they did wonder at his great thirst, and pressed him to take enough – and Con was not the man who'd wait to be asked twice. So they drank on till night slipped away, when the sun – like a proper gentleman as he is – sent in one of his earliest beams, as a sort of gentle hint that it was full time for them to return. They had a parting-glass, and, in half an hour or so, had crossed the wide sea, and dropped little Con ('pretty well, I thank you,' by this time) on the precise spot he had left on the evening before. He had been drinking out of a beautiful golden cup in the cellar, and, by some mistake or other, it had slipped up the sleeve of the large loose coat he wore, and so he brought it home with him. Not that Con was not honest enough, but surely a man may be excused for taking 'a cup too much' in a wine-cellar.

"Con was soon awakened by the warm sunbeams playing upon his face. At first, he thought he had been dreaming, and he might have thought so to his dying day, but that, when he got on his feet, the golden cup rolled on the road before him, and was proof positive that all was a reality.

"He said his prayers directly, between him and harm. Then he put up the cup and walked home, where, as his little donkey had returned on the previous night without him, the family had given him up as lost or drowned. Indeed, some of them had sagaciously suggested the probability of his having gone off for good with the fairies.

"Now, does not my story convince you that there must be such things as fairies? It is not more than twenty years since I heard Con O'Keefe tell the whole story from beginning to end; and he'd say or swear with any man that the whole of it was as true as gospel. And, as sure as my name is Patrick McCann, I do believe that Con was in strange company that night."