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Morag was taken to the Stone House by strong-armed bondswomen, and Baun and Deelish sat in corners and cried and did not go near her. That night the King's foster-daughters kept awake for long, and after Baun had sung to them they asked her to tell them what had happened in the Castle. Then Baun remembered the tumult in the kitchen that had come from the name given to Breas.
The bed was made for us, and the pillows were laid on the bed, and I knew that the slumber-pin was in each of the pillows. I wanted to put off the time for going to bed so I began to tell stories. Baun and Deelish said it was still young in the night, and that I should tell no short ones, but the long story of Eithne, Balor's daughter.
His boyish voice rang out clear and true, softening on the refrain to an indescribable tenderness that steeped the old song in the very essence of mystery and love. "As I kiss'd off her tears, I was nigh broken-hearted! Savourneen deelish, signan O!"
And the favor that Morag named was marriages for her foster-sisters with the two youths they loved, Downal and Dermott from the court of the King of Ireland. The Queen, when she heard this, brought fine clothes out of her chests and gave them to Baun and Deelish. When they had dressed in these clothes the Queen made them known to the two youths.
"That was it!" she cried. "It was on shipboard. I was standing by the railing one night and heard some one singing it in the steerage. I was just a little girl, but I've never forgotten that 'Savourneen deelish, nor the way he sang it." "Was it a man'?" asked Sandy, huskily. "No," she said, half frowning in her effort to remember; "it was a boy a stowaway, I think.
She came back without a pitcher, for it fell and broke on the flags of the well. The next day Baun and Deelish each plaited their hair, and they said to her who was foster-mother for the three of us: "No one will come to marry us in this far-away place. We will go into the world to seek our fortunes. So," said they, "bake a cake for each of us before the fall of the night."
The moment was sad when my love and I parted, Savourneen deelish, signan O! As I kiss'd off her tears, I was nigh broken-hearted! Savourneen deelish, signan O!" Ruth took her hand out of the water and looked at him with puzzled eyes. "Where have I heard it? On a boat somewhere, and the moon was shining. I remember the refrain perfectly." Sandy remembered, too.
The Spae-Woman put three cakes on the griddle and baked them. And when they were baked she said to Baun and Deelish: "Will you each take the half of the cake and my blessing, or the whole of the cake without my blessing?" And Baun and Deelish each said, "The whole of the cake will be little enough for our journey." Each then took her cake under her arm and went the path down the knowe.
The men who had sung in the Christmas carols remembered old English ditties, "How now, shepherd, what means that, Why that willow in thy hat?" and "Barbara Allen." Corporal O'Flynn, in the most incongruously sentimental and melancholy of tenors, sang "Savourneen Deelish eileen ogg."
She had a curious nervous trick of twitching her dress before she began to sing; this peculiarity was well known to all her friends, and Liston, who certainly was one of them, used to agonize the poor woman by standing at the side scene, while the symphony of her pathetic ballads was being played, and indicating by his eyes and gestures that something was amiss with the trimming or bottom of her dress; when, as invariably as he chose to play the trick, poor Miss Stephens used to begin to twitch and catch at her petticoat, and half hysterical, between laughing and crying, would enchant and entrance her listeners with her exquisite voice and pathetic rendering of "Savourneen Deelish" or "The Banks of Allan Water."
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