A friend was talking to me tonight and said that most people won't get the gist of these bits and pieces - that you have to read them with the accent in order to really appreciate them - so, spellings as are exactly as in the text, no changes or corrections. It also gives you an idea of how words were pronounced compared to how they are spelled. This is a story to be read thinking in terms of Maureen O'Hara an her Irish brogue. I've got notes in at the end to explain some of the terms used. Jane More on Paddy Welsh from Wildes Superstitions: It was said he had found a crook of gold in one of the towers of the old barns of Ballintober, which was not more than a mile and a half distant from his cabin, and where Paddy and his son were often seen in the twilight, looking, they said, for moths and wall-flies among the old ivy, or bats and starlings to manufacture fishing materials; at least, so they said, but the people thought otherwise. We often endeavoured to worm the story out of the cunning angler, but, drunk or sober, he was always on his guard, and generally passed it off with a joke, or - "Sure, Master Willie, you don't give into the likes-'tis only ould women's; talk. It's myself that would be glad to own to it if I got the goold, and not be slaying myself, summer and winter, by the river's brink, as I am." "Yes; but, Paddy, they say you made the attempt, at all events. Cannot you tell us what happened to you ?" "Oh, then, it's only all gollymoschought. But that's mighty fine parlimint* your honour has in the little flask; 'tis a pity it doesn't hould more, and the devil a tail we are rising to keep up our spirits." "Come now, Paddy, since you know very well it will be quite too bright and dull these two hours to stir even a roach, lot alone a trout - don't you perceive there isn't a cloud in the sky, and I can see the bottom as plain as my hand: look, oven the cows have left off feeding, and are standing in the ford switching their tails to keep of the clags ? - just stick the rods, and lie on your face in the grass there, and tell me all about the night you went to look after the money in the old bawne. Do, and you'll see I'll squeeze another mouthful out of the cruiskeen." "Well, but you're mighty 'cute and disquisitive after ould stories and pishogues. I suppose I may as well be after telling it to you while the breeze is getting up ; but keep an eye to the river, avourneen, and try could you see e'er a rise; and be sure you don't miss a gray coughlin or a merrow, if e'er a one flies past you; we'll want them coming on evening. But don't be tellin' on me, nor let on at the big house* that I told you the likes at all. Sure the mistress 'ud never forgive me for putting such things in your head; and maybe it's Father Crump she'd be after repatein' it to the next Sunday he dines; in Dundearmot; and if she did, troth I wouldn't face him for a month of Sundays. Maybe it's to St. Ball or to St. John's Well he' d send me for my night walkin'." "Oh, never fear, I'll keep your secret." "Well, then, avourneen, to make a long story short, I dhramed one night that I was walking about in the bawne, when I looked into the old tower that 's in the left hand corner, after you pass the gate, and there I saw, sure enough, a little crook, about the bigness of the bottom of a pitcher, and it full up of all kinds of money, goold, silver, and brass. When I woke next morning, I said nothin' about it, but in a few nights after I had the same dhrame over agin, ony I thought I was lookin' down from the top of the tower, and that all the flures were taken away. Peggy knew be me that I had a dhrame, for I wasn't quite asey in myself; so I ups and tells her the whole of it, when the childer had gone out. "Well, Paddy," says she, "who knows but it would come thrue, and be the making of us yet; but you must wait till the dhrame comes afore you the third time, and then, sure, it can do no harm to try, anyways." It wasn't long till I had the third dhrame, and as the moon was in the last quarter, and the nights mighty dark, Peggy put down the grisset and made a lock of candles; and so, throwin' the loy* over my showlder, and giving Michauleen the shovel, we set out about twelve o' clock, and when we got to the castle, it was as dark that you wouldn't see your hand before you; and there wasn't a stir in the ould place, barrin' the owls that wor snorin' in the chimley. To work we went just in the middle of the flure, and cleared away the stones and the rubbish, for nearly the course of an hour, with the candles stuck in pataties, resting on some of the big atones a wan side of us. Of coorse, sorra word we said all the while, but dug and shovelled away as hard as hatters, and a mighty tough job it was to lift the flure of the same buildin'. Well, at last the loy struck on a big flag, and my heart riz within me, for I often heard tell that the crock was always covered with a flag, and so I pulled away for the bare life, and at last I got it cleared, and was just lifting the edge of it, when--- "was that a trout I heard lep there abroad?" "No, Paddy, you know very well it wasn't. Go on with your story. Didn't you see a big goat with four horns and terrible red eyes, sitting on the flag, and guarding the gold. Now tell the truth." " Oh, what's the use in tellin' you anything about it; sure, I know by your eye you don't believe a word I am sayin'. The dickens a goat was sitting on the flag; but when both of us were trying to lift the stone, my foot slipped, and the clay and rubbish began to give way under us. "Lord betune us and harm," says the gossoon; and then, in the clapping of your hand, there wuz a wonderful wind rushed in through the dureway, and quinched the lights, and pitched us both down into the hole ; and of all the noises you ever heard, it was about us in a minute." M'anum san.Deowl! but I thought it was all over with us, and sorra wan of me ever thought of as much as crossin ' myself; but I made out as fast as I could, and the gossoon after me, and we never stopped running 'till we stumbled over the wall of the big intrance, and it was well we didn't go clane into the moat. Troth, you wouldn't three haypence for me when I was standin' in the road - the bouchal itself was stouter - with the wakeness that came over me. Och, millia murdher! I wasn't the same man for many a long day; but that was nawthin' to the turmintin' I got from every body about findin' the goold, for the shovel that we left after us was dishcovered, and there used to be daelers and gintlemin from Dublin, - antitrarians, I think they call them - comin' to the house continually, and axin' Peggy for some of the coins we found in the ould castle. "There now, you have the whole of it - wet the landin'-net agra and run after that beautiful green-drake that's just gone over us, while I see whether there is anything left in the bottle." NOTES: * Parlimint, used In contradistinction to potteen, or illicit whiskey. *The big house, or Teach more, is the term applied by the people to the residences of the gentry, except when they are of great extent or beauty, and then "the coort" is the word made use of. Old castles or ancient inclosures) are styled bawnes. *Grisset, a small narrow metal pan on three legs, used for melting grease, and dipping rushes in. Sometimes a fragment of an old pot is employed for the same purpose. The tongs are made red hot, and if there is no kitchen stuff at hand, a bit of fat of any kind is squeezed between the hot blades of the tongs into the grisset or its substitute, and the rushes, peeled of their outer green bark, all except one narrow stripe, are drawn through the melted grease, and laid across the stool to set. In order to permit the grease to exude with greater freedom, all the old-fashioned country pairs of tongs were made with holes In the flat of the blades. The dipt rushes were generally kept in a piece of badger's skin, hung to the roof. Rushlights are now scarcely known, nor the sconces in which they were fixed. Pieces of two dipped in resin are used instead. *The loy was the long, narrow, one-sided spade, with an unwieldy ash handle or feck, the only agricultural instrument known to the bulk of the western peasants twenty years ago.