Celtic Fairy Tales | Page 9

mouth, laughing or smiling, and a thousand other signs, so that it
was not long until they understood each other very well. Guleesh was
always thinking how he should send her back to her father; but there

was no one to go with her, and he himself did not know what road to go,
for he had never been out of his own country before the night he
brought her away with him. Nor had the priest any better knowledge
than he; but when Guleesh asked him, he wrote three or four letters to
the king of France, and gave them to buyers and sellers of wares, who
used to be going from place to place across the sea; but they all went
astray, and never a one came to the king's hand.
This was the way they were for many months, and Guleesh was falling
deeper and deeper in love with her every day, and it was plain to
himself and the priest that she liked him. The boy feared greatly at last,
lest the king should really hear where his daughter was, and take her
back from himself, and he besought the priest to write no more, but to
leave the matter to God.
So they passed the time for a year, until there came a day when Guleesh
was lying by himself, on the grass, on the last day of the last month in
autumn, and he was thinking over again in his own mind of everything
that happened to him from the day that he went with the sheehogues
across the sea. He remembered then, suddenly, that it was one
November night that he was standing at the gable of the house, when
the whirlwind came, and the sheehogues in it, and he said to himself:
"We have November night again to-day, and I'll stand in the same place
I was last year, until I see if the good people come again. Perhaps I
might see or hear something that would be useful to me, and might
bring back her talk again to Mary"--that was the name himself and the
priest called the king's daughter, for neither of them knew her right
name. He told his intention to the priest, and the priest gave him his
blessing.
Guleesh accordingly went to the old rath when the night was darkening,
and he stood with his bent elbow leaning on a grey old flag, waiting till
the middle of the night should come. The moon rose slowly; and it was
like a knob of fire behind him; and there was a white fog which was
raised up over the fields of grass and all damp places, through the
coolness of the night after a great heat in the day. The night was calm
as is a lake when there is not a breath of wind to move a wave on it, and

there was no sound to be heard but the cronawn of the insects that
would go by from time to time, or the hoarse sudden scream of the
wild-geese, as they passed from lake to lake, half a mile up in the air
over his head; or the sharp whistle of the golden and green plover,
rising and lying, lying and rising, as they do on a calm night. There
were a thousand thousand bright stars shining over his head, and there
was a little frost out, which left the grass under his foot white and crisp.
He stood there for an hour, for two hours, for three hours, and the frost
increased greatly, so that he heard the breaking of the traneens under
his foot as often as he moved. He was thinking, in his own mind, at last,
that the sheehogues would not come that night, and that it was as good
for him to return back again, when he heard a sound far away from him,
coming towards him, and he recognised what it was at the first moment.
The sound increased, and at first it was like the beating of waves on a
stony shore, and then it was like the falling of a great waterfall, and at
last it was like a loud storm in the tops of the trees, and then the
whirlwind burst into the rath of one rout, and the sheehogues were in it.
It all went by him so suddenly that he lost his breath with it, but he
came to himself on the spot, and put an ear on himself, listening to
what they would say.
Scarcely had they gathered into the rath till they all began shouting, and
screaming, and talking amongst themselves; and then each one of them
cried out: "My horse, and bridle, and saddle! My horse, and bridle, and
saddle!" and Guleesh took courage,