The Long Spoon

The devil and the hearth-money collector for Bantry set out one summer morning to decide a bet they made the night before over a jug of punch. They wanted to see which would have the best load at sunset, and neither was to pick up anything that wasn't offered with the good-will of the giver. They passed by a house, and they heard the poor ban-a-t'yee[58] cry out to her lazy daughter, "Oh, musha, ---- take you for a lazy sthronsuch[59] of a girl! do you intend to get up to-day?" "Oh, oh," says the taxman, "there's a job for you, Nick." "Ovock," says the other, "it wasn't from her heart she said it; we must pass on." The next cabin they were passing, the woman was on the bawn-ditch[60] crying out to her husband that was mending one of his brogues inside: "Oh, tattheration to you, Nick! you never rung them pigs, and there they are in the potato drills rootin' away; the ---- run to Lusk with them." "Another windfall for you," says the man of the ink-horn, but the old thief only shook his horns and wagged his tail. So they went on, and ever so many prizes were offered to the black fellow without him taking one. Here it was a gorsoon playing _marvels_ when he should be using his clappers in the corn-field; and then it was a lazy drone of a servant asleep with his face to the sod when he ought to be weeding. No one thought of offering the hearth-money man even a drink of buttermilk, and at last the sun was within half a foot of the edge of Cooliagh. They were just then passing Monamolin, and a poor woman that was straining her supper in a skeeoge outside her cabin-door, seeing the two standing at the bawn gate, bawled out, "Oh, here's the hearth-money man--run away wid him." "Got a bite at last," says Nick. "Oh, no, no! it wasn't from her heart," says the collector. "Indeed, an' it was from the very foundation-stones it came. No help for misfortunes; in with you," says he, opening the mouth of his big black bag; and whether the devil was ever after seen taking the same walk or not, nobody ever laid eyes on his fellow-traveller again.

[Footnote 57: _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts._]

[Footnote 58: Woman of the house.]

[Footnote 59: Ir. _str[)o]inse_--_i.e._, a lazy thing.]

[Footnote 60: Ir. _bádhun_--_i.e._, enclosure, or wall round a house. From _ba_, cows, and _dún_, a fortress. Properly, cattle-fortress.]