silly woman to ordher you or to cross you or to belittle you. Look at meself. Afther all the rayspect I’ve climbed into from being with the fairies, and afther all the knowledge I’ve got from them, there’s one person in this parish who has no more riverence for me now than she had the first day she met me—sometimes not so much, I’m thinking,” he says, hurt-like.
“I’ve seen the workings of families during more than five thousand years,” says the little King, “so you needn’t tell me who that one person is, me poor man—’tis your own wife, Bridget.”
“Thrue for you! Whin it’s the proud woman she ought to be this day to have the likes of me for a husband,” says Darby. “Ah, then, you ought to be the happy man, whatever wind blows,” he sighed again; “when you see a fat pig you like, you take it without so much as saying by your lave; if you come upon a fine cow or a good horse, in a twinkling you have it in Sleive-na-mon. A girl has a good song with her, a boy has a nimble foot for a jig, or an ould woman a smooth tongue for a tale, and, whisk! they’re gone into the heart of the mountain to sing or dance for you, or to beguile you with ould tales until the Day of Judgment.”
