ngeance.

"Open! Open!" they screamed. "Open, feet-water!"

"I cannot," said the feet-water; "I am scattered on the ground, and my
path is down to the Lough."

"Open, open, wood and trees and beam!" they cried to the door.

"I cannot," said the door, "for the beam is fixed in the jambs, and I
have no power to move."

"Open, open, cake that we have made and mingled with blood!" they cried
again.

"I cannot," said the cake, "for I am broken and bruised, and my blood is
on the lips of the sleeping children."

Then the witches rushed through the air with great cries, and fled back
to Slievenamon, uttering strange curses on the Spirit of the Well, who
had wished their ruin. But the woman and the house were left in peace,
and a mantle dropped by one of the witches was kept hung up by the
mistress as a sign of the night's awful contest; and this mantle was in
possession of the same family from generation to generation for five
hundred years after.

189

The story of "King O'Toole and His Goose" is
from Samuel Lover's _Stories and Legends of the
Irish Peasantry_, as reprinted in slightly
abridged form in William Butler Yeats's _Irish
Fairy Tales_. The extreme form of the dialect
is kept as in the original, since the humor is
largely dependent on the language of the
peasant who tells the story. It will serve as a
good illustration for practice work for the
amateur story-teller. Probably most teachers
would find it necessary to "reduce" this
dialect or to eliminate it altogether. Mr.
Jacobs, who includes this story in his _Celtic
Fairy Tales_, reduces the dialect very
materially, keeping just enough to remind one
that it is Irish. He also says the final word
as to the moral of the story: "This is a moral
apologue on the benefits of keeping your word.
Yet it is told with such humor and vigor, that
the moral glides insensibly into the heart."

KING O'TOOLE AND HIS GOOSE

"By Gor, I thought all the world, far and near, heerd o' King
O'Toole--well, well, but the darkness of mankind is ontellible! Well,
sir, you must know, as you didn't hear it afore, that there was a king,
called King O'Toole, who was a fine ould king in the ould ancient times,
long ago; and it was him that owned the churches in the early days. The
king, you see, was the right sort; he