Fairies and Folk of Ireland | Page 3

It was in a poor little cabin somewhere in Ireland. It does not matter
where. The walls were of rough stone, the roof was of thatch, and the
floor was the hard earth. There was very little furniture. Poor as it was,

the whole place was clean. It is right to tell this, because, unhappily, a
good many cabins in Ireland are not clean. What furniture there was
had been rubbed smooth and spotless, and the few dishes that there
were fairly shone. The floor was as carefully swept as if the Queen
were expected.
The three persons who lived in the cabin had eaten their supper of
potatoes and milk and were sitting before the turf fire. It had been a
poor supper, yet a little of it that was left--a few potatoes, a little milk,
and a dish of fresh water--had been placed on a bench outside the door.
There was no light except that of the fire. There was no need of any
other, and there was no money to spend on candles that were not
needed.
The three who sat before the fire, and needed no other light, were a
young man, a young woman, and an elderly woman. She did not like to
be called old, for she said, and quite truly, that sixty was not old for
anybody who felt as young as she did. This woman was Mrs. O'Brien.
The young man was her son, John, and the young-woman was his wife,
Kitty.
"Kitty," said John, "it's not well you're lookin' to-night. Are ye feelin'
anyways worse than common?"
"It's only a bit tired I am," said Kitty, "wid the work I was afther doin'
all day. I'll be as well as ever in the morning."
"It's a shame, that it is," said John, "that ye have to be workin' that way,
day afther day, and you not sthrong at all. It's a shame that I can't do
enough for the three of us, and the more, maybe, that there'll be, but
you must be at it, too, all the time."
"What nonsinse ye're talkin', John," Kitty answered. "What would I be
doin', settin' up here like a lady, doin' nothin', and you and mother
workin' away like you was my servants? Did you think it was a duchess
or the daughter of the Lord Lieutenant ye was marryin', that ye're talkin'
that way?"

"And it'll be worse a long time before it's betther," John went on. "Wid
the three of us workin' all the time, we just barely get along. And it's
the end of the summer now. What we'll do at all when the winter comes,
I dunno."
The older woman listened to the others and said nothing. Perhaps she
had heard such talk as this so many times that she did not care to join in
it again, or perhaps she was waiting to be asked to speak. For it was to
her that these younger people always turned when they were in trouble.
It was her advice and her opinion that they always asked when they felt
that they needed a better opinion than their own. The three sat silent
now for a time, and then John broke out, as if the talk had been going
on in his mind all the while: "What's the good of us tryin' to live at all?"
he said. "Is livin' any use to us? We do nothin' but work all day, and eat
a little to give us the strength to work the next day, and then we sleep
all night, if we can sleep. And it's that and nothing else all the year
through. Are we any better when the year ends than we were when it
began? If we've paid the rent, we've done well. We never do more."
"John," the old woman answered, "it's not for us to say why we're here
or what for we're living. It's God that put us here, and He'll keep us here
till it's our time to go. He has made it the way of all His creatures to
provide for themselves and for their own, and to keep themselves alive
while they can. When He's ready for us to die, we die. That's all we
know. The rest is with Him."
"I know all that's true, mother," said John; "but what is there for us to
hope for, that we'ld wish to live? It's nothing but work to keep the roof
over us. We don't even eat for any pleasure that's in it--only so that we
can work. If we rested for a day, we'ld be driven out of our house. If we
rested for another day, we'ld starve. Is there any good to be hoped for
such as us? Will there ever be