Francis Pat had to hold herself by the arm to keep her from running to gather the delf. Voices came shouting, and there was a stamping of feet through the house. The woman began for to cry and to roar, but himself kept a hold on her and nothing enticed him away.
"Sure what would it be only a wind was fit to batter the horns off the cows!" says Francis Pat.
When they went into the kitchen what did they find only the image lying on the floor. The wood was cut into the living likeness of the woman of the house, and the Good People had thrown it there in the anger of the disappointment was on them.
So my brave Francis Pat told his wife the whole story of the cutting of the tree.
There was a strong farmer one time and he was the boastfullest man in all Ireland. He had a tidy, comfortable place, sure enough, but to hear him speaking you'd be thinking his house was built of silver and thatched with the purest gold.
Herself was a very different sort of a person, kindly and simple-hearted; she took no pleasure in making out she had more property and grandeur than another body; and she was neither envious, uncharitable, nor a clash.
The two had but one child, a daughter, and she was their whole delight. Bride was a beautiful white girl with a countenance on her would charm a king from his golden throne to be walking the bogs with herself. The boys were flocking after her by the score, and she had but to raise her hand to draw any one of them to her side. But, being a seemly, well-reared lass, she took her diversion without any consideration of marriage at all--well satisfied her father would be making a fitting settlement for her when the time came.
The youth of the world will always be playing themselves and chatting together, all the while them that have right wit and a good upbringing do leave their settlement in the hands of the parents have the best understanding for the same.
"I'm thinking," says himself one evening, "that it's old and stiff I am growing. It might be a powerful advantage to take a son-in-law into the place, the way I'd get sitting in peace by the hearth, and he out in the fields attending to the management of all."
"Bride is full young to be joining the world," says his wife. "But I will not be putting any hindrance in the way of it, for maybe it's better contented she'd be to have a fine man of her own, foreby to be looking on an old pair like ourselves, and we dozing by the fire of an evening."