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The Irish Presbyterians who settled in New Hampshire about the year 1720 brought indeed with them, among other strange matters, potatoes and fairies; but while the former took root and flourished among us, the latter died out, after lingering a few years in a very melancholy and disconsolate way, looking regretfully back to their green turf dances, moonlight revels, and cheerful nestling around the shealing fires of Ireland.
From a shealing of turf and straw, within the pitch of a bar from the spot where we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning on a crutch. "I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the chield be drowning, that he skirls sae uncannilie?" said the old woman, seating herself on the ground, and looking earnestly at the water.
It would not be readily supposed that a road so hopeless and so difficult could lead to any habitation more important than the summer shealing of a shepherd. Yet the glen, though lonely, nearly inaccessible, and sterile, was not then absolutely void of beauty.
"It's no use crying, mavourneen. I'll be back to dance at my own wedding, if so be I can." "There'll be neither wedding for you, Patrick, nor wake either, for you'll lie on the cold ground, and be ploughed in like muck." "That's but cold comfort from you, Judith, but we'll hope for a better ending; but I must go back now, and you'll meet me this evening beyond the shealing."
The happy earl, with many a hearty laugh, enjoyed the jollity of his people; and while the steward stood at his lord's back describing whose sons and daughters passed before him in the reel, Mar remembered their parents-their fathers, once his companions in the chase or on the wave; and their mothers, the pretty maidens he used to pursue over the hills in the merry time of shealing.
And still exulting in that rare solitude of two he went farther off by Little Fox Loch and sought for white heather, symbol of luck and love, as rare to find among the red as true love is among illusion. Searching the braes he could hear, after a little, Nan sing at the shealing hut.
Conolly, who had understood the conversation which had taken place, called out in Irish, at the same time as he walked round behind the walls, "I think ye'll be after giving us our duds now, ye dirty spalpeens, so bring 'um wid you quick;" a request which was immediately complied with, the clothes being collected by two of the Irish, and taken to the men who had retired behind the walls of the shealing.
She had been kept, the dear heart, he told himself; she had been kept by her modesty waiting for the dusk, and fallen asleep for weariness. He went awkwardly off the customary track so that he might reach the shealing the quicker by a short cut that led through boggy grass.
He raised his call to his mouth, and, with a sonorous whistle, cried out, "All you without trousers behind shealing, hoy!" an order immediately obeyed by the men who had been deprived of their habiliments.
Enraged at the loss of the spirits, and hoping to gain possession of the cask before it was all out, the Irish returned with renewed violence to the assault, and drove the English to the other side of the shealing, obtaining possession of the door, which they burst into, to secure their prey.
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