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The two parties were off, like two little swarms of bees, the one with Naggeneen and the other with the woman. The rest of the fairies waited. The Queen sat on her throne, with her face turned away from the rest and hidden in her hands. The King, with a troubled face, sat looking straight before him, not moving an eye or a hand. The others stood as far off as they could go.
The fairies were far past caring whether they heard a story or not, but they listened as Naggeneen went on. "I'm after tellin' you," he said, "that if there was any way that one of us could be gettin' a soul, I'ld have had one long ago. This was the way I tried it, and a silly mortal outwitted me. Guleesh na Guss Dhu was the name that was on him.
"Now," said the King, "what have ye been doin' to the Sullivans, that they're lavin' the counthry and persuadin' the O'Briens to go wid them?" "I've been doin' nothin'," said Naggeneen, "but what you said I might do." "Oh, haven't ye?" said the King. "And what was that?"
But not every fairy in Ireland can play them as Naggeneen did. They were tunes which everybody listening in that rath had known for hundreds of years.
They had found a green place where they could dance, near the palace, but it was winter now, and the snow was over everything much of the time. They went to the O'Briens every day for the food that was left outside the window for them, and, for the most part, they spent the rest of the time in the palace. Often Naggeneen played the fiddle or the pipes for them.
It was the only thing that Naggeneen was good for, and the only thing that was not mischief that he liked to do. He took a fiddle from one of the fairies who had been playing for the dancing before all the confusion began. He held the fiddle under his chin for a moment, while everybody waited, and then he began to play. He played first some old tunes that every fairy in Ireland knows well.
If you do, they'll work some charm on you and be rid of you, and then we'll have to send back the real child, and all your own plan will be lost." "And how will you carry out my plan without me?" Naggeneen asked. "Don't I always tell you what to do? You'll want me a dozen times a day." "We'll not want you at all.
It might be that a new counthry would be as good for us as for the O'Briens or the Sullivans, and, anyway, we'ld still be near to them." "Do ye mean," the Queen said, "that ye think we might all go to the States along wid the O'Briens and the Sullivans and Naggeneen?"
"And where is Terence, then?" the King asked. "He's not come in yet," somebody answered. "You know where he must be by this time," said Naggeneen. "He's back with his father and his mother by now. Where else could he be?" "There'll be no geometry to-night," the King said. "It's all done; we've failed in that. We'll always be as we are, as you told us, Naggeneen.
Peter brought the fiddle and Terence played, and the fiddle sang a great song of gladness the song of a soul born to find itself a full man all at once. "Ah! don't you see now? Don't you see now?" Kathleen cried. "That means something!" The fairies in the hill were dancing their endless dance, when Naggeneen, as if he had been lifted up in the air and dropped, was suddenly among them.
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