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The next night, he provided himself with a "shillalah," or big stick, and put on a pair of sharp spurs, and when the Phooka appeared, and invited him to take another little excursion, he mounted, and so belabored the head and cut up the sides of the beast, that he was quite subdued, and trotted home, with Jerry, to his own cabin door.
Over bogs and moors, ditches and walls, across streams, up and down mountains, he gallops, leaps, and plunges, making the welkin ring with his horrible horse-laugh, and snorting fire from his nostrils. There is a funny story told of one Jerry Deasy, who paid the Phooka well for such a ride.
'I'm sure I won't have him over my bed, said Fulbert, proceeding to rub him out; and though, for the moment, Achilles was saved by violent measures of Edgar's, yet before the end of the next day, Fulbert and Lance had made him black from head to foot, all but the whites of his eyes and his teeth; Robina and Angela had peeped in, and emulated the terror of the Trojans, or the savages; and Sibby had fallen on the young gentleman for being 'so bold' as to draw a frightful phooka upon their walls just to frighten the darlints.
The Phooka is said to be a half-wicked, half-mischievous spirit, who takes the form of many strange animals, but oftenest assumes that of a wild horse. His great object then, is to get a rider, and when he has persuaded a poor fellow to mount him, he never lets him off till he has treated him to a ride long and hard enough to last him his lifetime.
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