GULEESH
IrishThere was once a boy in the County Mayo, and Guleesh was his name, and there was the finest lis, or rath, in Ireland a little way off from the gable of the house where he lived, and he was often in the habit of seating himself on the fine grass bank that was running round it. One night he stood and half leaned against the gable of the house looking up into the sky, and watching the beautiful white moon over his head. After him to be standing that way for a couple of hours, he said to himself: “My bitter grief that I am not gone away out of this place altogether. I’d sooner be any place in the world than here. Och, it’s well for you, white moon,” says he, “that’s turning round, turning round, as you please yourself, and no man can put you back. I wish I was the same as you.”
Hardly was the word out of his mouth when he heard a great noise coming like the sound of many people running together, and talking and laughing and making sport, and the sound went by him like a whirl of wind, and he was listening to it going into the rath. “Musha, by my soul,” says he, “but ye’re merry enough, and I’ll follow ye.”
What was in the rath but the fairy host, though he did not know at first that it was they who were in it, but he
