Irish Folk Tales (30 page)

O
WEN ROE O’SULLIVAN

Owen Roe O’Sullivan was one of the greatest poets that ever was. It’s no use for anyone to be talking. They were all poets in those days, every bloody man.

But that was not all about Owen Roe. He was an auctioneer as well, and he was middling good as a doctor as well. He was good enough at every trade. He spent a part of his time in the navy, and was at the battle of Waterloo. But do you know what was his best trade, after poetry? It was making small lads.

He was one of the most frolicsome men that ever was. It was said of him that if he threw a copper over a fence it would, like as not, fall on the head of one of his own. He must have been as good as King Solomon almost.

One day a young gossoon met him on the road, and Owen spoke to him for a while, and then he gave him a penny, telling him that the next time that he saw him he would give him a shilling. Well, by the mockstick of war, what did the young lad do? He hopped over the fence and ran over a couple of fields and was there on the road before Owen Roe again.

“You said that you would give me a shilling the next time that you saw me,” said he.

“True for you,” answered Owen. “Here is the shilling, and another for your intelligence. You must be one of my own.”

Owen and the priests did not get on any too well together. Many is the time they had a battle, and Owen did not always get the worst of it, for he was a powerful and a barbarous man with his tongue. All true poets are. It’s a gift they have. They see things as they are, and have the power over words to describe things as they are.

Though Owen did not get on well with the priests, he got on very well with the women. I told you that he was a frolicsome class of a man, and the women were clean daft about him wherever he went. It was over a woman that he had one of his famous battles with a priest.

He was staying in the town of Mallow at the time, and he had committed himself with a woman of that town.

On Sunday, after Mass, the priest asked, “Is Owen Roe here?”

Owen stood up and showed himself, and said that he was.

“Very well,” said the priest. “I command you to leave this parish.”

“Whyfor that?” asked Owen, knowing well the reason the priest had against him.

“Because of what you have done with a woman of this place,” replied the priest.

Owen thought for a moment, and then he spoke up.

“Good enough!” said he, “but before I go I would first say this. Remember that it was on account of a woman that our first parents were cast out of the Garden of Eden; that it was over a woman that Samson lost his strength and the Philistines were defeated; that it was over a woman that the fierce wars of the Seven Branch Knights were fought; that it was over a woman that Troy was besieged and the long Trojan wars were waged; that it was over a woman that the misfortune came to King Lir; that it was over a woman that Caesar and Antony fell; that it was over a woman, Devorgilla, that the English first came to Ireland; that it was over a woman that England was lost to Rome; and that it is over a woman that I, Owen Roe, am forbidden the town of Mallow.”

“Hold!” said the priest to him then. “We’ll say no more about it. Mallow has misfortunes enough already. You’d better stay where you are, and let the women look after themselves, and you come and have the dinner with me.”

That was one battle out of many that he had and that he won. On another day he was passing a priest’s house with a companion, and there was a grand smell of salmon cooking coming out of the house. The two of them were middling hungry, and the companion said to Owen Roe, “ ’Tis a shame that we are starving and that the priest should have more than enough.”

“I’ll bet you for a wager,” said Owen, who was always ready for a bit of sport, “that I will both eat the dinner with the priest and put him to shame.”

“Done,” said the companion, and Owen set about the business. He knocked at the door of the priest’s house and asked if he could see the priest.

“You cannot,” said the housekeeper, after she had looked him up and down, “his reverence is just sitting down to his dinner, and he said that he was not to be disturbed.”

“But it is a very important matter,” said Owen then. “Go up to him and tell him that I have a troubled mind, and that I want to know what should a man do if he has money found.”

The housekeeper went up and told the priest, and came back and asked Owen inside.

“The priest says that, if you wait until he has his dinner finished, he will answer your question, and he told me to give you this herring,” said she, putting a sprateen of a herring before him.

Owen looked at the herring for a minute, and then he took it up on the fork, and he whispered to it, and then he put its mouth to his ear and listened. He had some sort of witchappery of talk. The housekeeper watched
him, and then she went up to the priest again, and she told him of Owen’s queer antics.

“Go down to him,” said the priest, “and ask him what he is doing, and why is he doing it.”

Down went the housekeeper again, and she asked Owen.

“Oh!” said Owen, “I had a brother who traveled to foreign parts years ago, and I was just asking the herring if he had any news of him.”

When the housekeeper told this to the priest, he thought that he had a simple fool to deal with, and would soon be able to settle the business of the found money.

“Send him up to me,” he told the housekeeper.

When Owen arrived in the dining room, the priest told him what the housekeeper had told him.

“You say that you can understand the language of fishes,” he said.

“Yes,” answered Owen.

“Well,” said the priest, “I had a brother, too, who traveled abroad. Could you get news of him for me from your friend the herring?”

“You had better ask that of the salmon before you,” answered Owen. “He is a much bigger and stronger fish, and more used to priests and their kin than the common herring.”

“You are a deal smarter man than I took you to be,” said the priest, thinking at the same time that he would have more trouble in settling the business of the found money than he thought at first. “You’d better sit down and eat the salmon with me,” he said then, thinking that they might be able to come to some agreement over the money.

They ate the salmon away together, and then he asked Owen to drink the punch with him, which Owen did. When the dinner was finished, and they had their bellies full, the priest turned to Owen.

“You sent up word that you had a troubled mind about found money,” he said then.

“That is true, I did,” replied Owen.

“Now how much money would it be that you found?” asked the priest.

“The divil a copper,” said Owen. “I was only wondering what would be the case if I did find money.”

He had the priest beaten, and put to shame, and had his wager won. I tell you he was the smart man, and the man who would beat him would be the divil of a man entirely.

R
OBERT BURNS

Bobby Burns. He was a sharp man.

This attorney or solicitor died, and the remains were a-carrying to the burying place, wherever he was a-burying.

And Bobby was standing carelessly at the corner and there was a few boys along with him. Dumfries in Scotland, that’s where he lived.

And says one of the boys to him, “Now Bobby,” he says, “there’s a solicitor there, his remains going out,” he says, “could you make a bit of a poem on it?”

“Aw,” says Bobby, “I think I could.”

There was four solicitors carrying him.

So Bobby
started off
:

He was a rogue, and the four that was carrying him was rogues: “One rogue above,” says he, “four in under. His body’s to earth; his soul’s on its journey. And the Devil’s at law and he wants an attorney.”

Well, he went to see this man, Bobby Burns, and he seen that he was in great pain, and that he was of a huge size, you see.

And he came to the conclusion he had led a bad life, and well, he pretended that the Devil was coming for him, you see.

It was the Devil was coming for him.

But the Devil wouldn’t take him, he was such a burden, you see. He was such a burden; he was that weighty.

When the Devil entered the room where Richard was in his last stage, says Bobby, he says:

He was Richard Lawton, this man; Lawton was his name. And Bobby made out that he had died from the effects of cutting his corns, you see.