He raised his hand in benediction, and the voice of him speaking was that sweet it charmed the birds off the bushes, the way they flew round him in the darkening night. "May the blessing of the King of Heaven be upon you. May He send you a cow will never run dry, and you milking her at all seasons of the year to the day of your departure from the world."
With that the place was bare of his presence. He was gone the like of a spirit has power to travel the land unseen.
At the morning of the day following the poor woman stood at her cottage door, facing out to the mountains are a long journey from that place. Didn't she see a great wonder:--A piece fell clean from the hillside and from it came a cow, white as the driven snow, she travelling faster nor the wind. The widow seen all as clear as we do be regarding the rising of the sun in the Eastern sky. Whatever power was laid on her eyes the distance was no obstruction to her vision that day. But it was not until the creature came and stood by herself that she bethought her of the benediction of the traveller, and the cow would never run dry.
That was the beast had the great renown on her: people came from every art and part to be looking on her. The milk she gave was richer nor the best of cream, and the butter off it was the best in Ireland.
The day the widow died, a young child seen the white cow travelling away to the mountains. And no man beheld her more, nor evenly heard tell of the like. But the Gap of Glan confronts us to this day, and that is where the creature rose to the light of the world.
Kate Ellen lived by her lone for her husband was employed overseas. She was a strange sort of a creature, pale and scared looking, with one blue eye in her head and the other one grey. She had some kind of disease that came at her with a fluttering in her heart. Sometimes she would die of it for a couple of hours, and all the while she was dead she'd be dreaming she was drowning.
There was a fort not a many perches distant from my poor Kate Ellen's house, and that was a noted place for the Good People to be out diverting themselves. Moreover it was well known to the neighbours that herself used to be away with them, but she allowed there was no truth in the report. Now it happened of a May eve that a young child seen her, and she milking the cushogues along with a score of the fairies. Another night a man on his way from a distant fair found her on the road before him riding with the little horseman.