“With all my heart,” says Tom; “send a jackeen to show me where he lives, and we’ll see how he behaves to a stranger.”
The princess was not well pleased, for Tom looked a different person with fine clothes and a nice green birredh over his long curly hair; and besides, he’d got one laugh out of her. However, the king gave his consent; and in an hour and a half the horrible wolf was walking into the palace-yard, and Tom a step or two behind, with his club on his shoulder, just as a shepherd would be walking after a pet lamb.
The king and queen and princess were safe up in their gallery, but the officers and people of the court that wor padrowling about the great bawn, when they saw the big baste coming in, gave themselves up, and began to make for doors and gates; and the wolf licked his chops, as if he was saying, “Wouldn’t I enjoy a breakfast off a couple of yez!”
The king shouted out, “O Tom with the Goat-skin, take away that terrible wolf, and you must have all my daughter.”
But Tom didn’t mind him a bit. He pulled out his flute and began to play like vengeance; and dickens a man or boy in the yard but began shovelling away heel and toe, and the wolf himself was obliged to get on his hind legs and dance “Tatther Jack Walsh,” along with the rest. A good deal of the people got inside, and shut the doors, the way the hairy fellow wouldn’t pin them; but Tom kept playing, and the outsiders kept dancing and shouting, and the wolf kept dancing and roaring with the pain his legs were giving him; and all the time he had his eyes on Redhead, who was shut out along with the rest. Wherever Redhead went, the wolf followed, and kept one eye on him and the other on Tom, to see if he would give him leave to eat him. But Tom shook his head, and never stopped the tune, and Redhead never stopped dancing and bawling, and the wolf dancing and roaring, one leg up and the other down, and he ready to drop out of his standing from fair tiresomeness.
When the princess seen that there was no fear of any one being kilt, she was so divarted by the stew that Redhead was in, that she gave another great laugh; and well become Tom, out he cried, “King of Dublin, I have two halves of your daughter.”
“Oh, halves or alls,” says the king, “put away that divel of a wolf, and we’ll see about it.”
So Tom put his flute in his pocket, and says he to the baste that was sittin’ on his currabingo ready to faint, “Walk off to your mountain, my fine fellow, and live like a respectable baste; and if ever I find you come within seven miles of any town, I’ll–”
He said no more, but spit in his fist, and gave a flourish of his club. It was all the poor divel of a wolf wanted: he put his tail between his legs, and took to his pumps without looking at man or mortal, and neither sun, moon, or stars ever saw him in sight of Dublin again.
At dinner every one laughed but the foxy fellow; and sure enough he was laying out how he’d settle poor Tom next day.
“Well, to be sure!” says he, “King of Dublin, you are in luck. There’s the Danes moidhering us to no end. Deuce run to Lusk wid ’em! and if any one can save us from ’em, it is this gentleman with the goat-skin. There is a flail hangin’ on the collar-beam, in hell, and neither Dane nor devil can stand before it.”
“So,” says Tom to the king, “will you let me have the other half of the princess if I bring you the flail?”
“No, no,” says the princess; “I’d rather never be your wife than see you in that danger.”
But Redhead whispered and nudged Tom about how shabby it would look to reneague the adventure. So he asked which way he was to go, and Redhead directed him.
Well, he travelled and travelled, till he came in sight of the walls of hell; and, bedad, before he knocked at the gates, he rubbed himself over with the greenish ointment. When he knocked, a hundred little imps popped their heads out through the bars, and axed him what he wanted.
“I want to speak to the big divel of all,” says Tom: “open the gate.”
It wasn’t long till the gate was thrune open, and the Ould Boy received Tom with bows and scrapes, and axed his business.
“My business isn’t much,” says Tom. “I only came for the loan of that flail that I see hanging on the collar-beam, for the king of Dublin to give a thrashing to the Danes.”
“Well,” says the other, “the Danes is much better customers to me; but since you walked so far I won’t refuse. Hand that flail,” says he to a young imp; and he winked the far-off eye at the same time. So, while some were barring the gates, the young devil climbed up, and took down the flail that had the handstaff and booltheen both made out of red-hot iron. The little vagabond was grinning to think how it would burn the hands o’ Tom, but the dickens a burn it made on him, no more nor if it was a good oak sapling.
“Thankee,” says Tom. “Now would you open the gate for a body, and I’ll give you no more trouble.”
“Oh, tramp!” says Ould Nick; “is that the way? It is easier getting inside them gates than getting out again. Take that tool from him, and give him a dose of the oil of stirrup.”
So one fellow put out his claws to seize on the flail, but Tom gave him such a welt of it on the side of the head that he broke off one of his horns, and made him roar like a devil as he was. Well, they rushed at Tom, but he gave them, little and big, such a thrashing as they didn’t forget for a while. At last says the ould thief of all, rubbing his elbow, “Let the fool out; and woe to whoever lets him in again, great or small.”
So out marched Tom, and away with him, without minding the shouting and cursing they kept up at him from the tops of the walls; and when he got home to the big bawn of the palace, there never was such running and racing as to see himself and the flail. When he had his story told, he laid down the flail on the stone steps, and bid no one for their lives to touch it. If the king, and queen, and princess, made much of him before, they made ten times more of him now; but Redhead, the mean scruff-hound, stole over, and thought to catch hold of the flail to make an end of him. His fingers hardly touched it, when he let a roar out of him as if heaven and earth were coming together, and kept flinging his arms about and dancing, that it was pitiful to look at him. Tom run at him as soon as he could rise, caught his hands in his own two, and rubbed them this way and that, and the burning pain left them before you could reckon one. Well the poor fellow, between the pain that was only just gone, and the comfort he was in, had the comicalest face that you ever see, it was such a mixtherum-gatherum of laughing and crying. Everybody burst out a laughing–the princess could not stop no more than the rest; and then says Tom, “Now, ma’am, if there were fifty halves of you, I hope you’ll give me them all.”
Well, the princess looked at her father, and by my word, she came over to Tom, and put her two delicate hands into his two rough ones, and I wish it was myself was in his shoes that day!
Tom would not bring the flail into the palace. You may be sure no other body went near it; and when the early risers were passing next morning, they found two long clefts in the stone, where it was after burning itself an opening downwards, nobody could tell how far. But a messenger came in at noon, and said that the Danes were so frightened when they heard of the flail coming into Dublin, that they got into their ships, and sailed away.
Well, I suppose, before they were married, Tom got some man, like Pat Mara of Tomenine, to learn him the “principles of politeness," fluxions, gunnery, and fortification, decimal fractions, practice, and the rule of three direct, the way he’d be able to keep up a conversation with the royal family. Whether he ever lost his time learning them sciences, I’m not sure, but it’s as sure as fate that his mother never more saw any want till the end of her days.
Notes and References
It may be as well to give the reader some account of the enormous extent of the Celtic folk-tales in existence. I reckon these to extend to 2000, though only about 250 are in print. The former number exceeds that known in France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, where collection has been most active, and is only exceeded by the MS. collection of Finnish folk-tales at Helsingfors, said to exceed 12,000. As will be seen, this superiority of the Celts is due to the phenomenal and patriotic activity of one man, the late J. F. Campbell, of Islay, whose Popular Tales and MS. collections (partly described by Mr. Alfred Nutt in Folk-Lore, i. 369-83) contain references to no less than 1281 tales (many of them, of course, variants and scraps). Celtic folk-tales, while more numerous, are also the oldest of the tales of modern European races; some of them–e.g., “Connla,” in the present selection, occurring in the oldest Irish vellums. They include (1) fairy tales properly so-called–i.e., tales or anecdotes about fairies, hobgoblins, &c., told as natural occurrences; (2) hero-tales, stories of adventure told of national or mythical heroes; (3) folk-tales proper, describing marvellous adventures of otherwise unknown heroes, in which there is a defined plot and supernatural characters (speaking animals, giants, dwarfs, &c.); and finally (4) drolls, comic anecdotes of feats of stupidity or cunning.