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Mastering the situation he runs off to the smith's house, and sains the new mother and her babe. And he is only just in time, for hardly has he finished than a great thud is heard outside. On going out a piece of bog-fir is found, the image the fairies intended to substitute for the smith's wife.
The next thing to do was to make himself comfortable for the night; and then he made a roaring fire on the ould hearth, for there was plenty of bog-fir there, closed the windows with the black cloaks, and wrapping two round himself, he sat down to cook a little supper he brought with him in case of need.
These torches were of bog-fir, dried and split for the occasion; all persons were accordingly furnished with them, and by their blaze contrived to make way across the country with comparative ease.
Over in one of the corners lay three or four budgets, old iron skillets, hammers, lumps of melted lead, broken pots, a quantity of cows' horns for spoons, wooden dishes that required clasping, old kettles that wanted repair, a couple of cast off Poteen Stills, and a new one half made all of which were visible by the light of a large log of bog-fir which lay burning in the fire-place.
Mounds of turf, bog-fir, and tar-barrels sent up their ruddy blaze, while hundreds of wild, but happy faces, flitted around and through them, now dancing merrily in chorus; now plunging madly into the midst of the fire, and scattering the red embers on every side.
This general elevation of spirits was nowhere more remarkable than in contemplating the thousands of both sexes, old, young, each furnished, as before said, with a blazing flambeau of bog-fir, all streaming down the mountain sides, along the roads, or across the fields, and settling at last into one broad sheet of fire.
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