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Updated: May 15, 2025
"Halt, Pooka," said Flann in a commanding voice. The black horse halted and the Pooka that was its rider slipped down to its tail. Flann held the snorting horse and Morag got on its back. Then Flann sprang up between Morag and the horse's head. Crom Duv was just beside them. "Away, Pooka, away," said Flann, and the horse started through the wood like the wind of March.
They crossed the river that marked the bounds of Crom Duv's domain and they were safe. Flann pulled up the horse and jumped on to the ground. Morag sprang down with the Little Red Hen. Then the Pooka swung forward and whispered into his horse's ear. Instantly it struck fire out of its hooves and sprang down the side of a hill.
Others had come out of the house and were mewing and spitting in the courtyard. Only one had fastened itself on Flann's jerkin, and this one would not let go. "Come into the wood, come into the wood," said Morag. "Now we must stand between the house and the mound, and wait till the Pooka rides by."
"I never tasted anything sweeter in my life," said the Pooka, crunching it between his teeth, "and now if you can give me a sup of milk, I'll want for nothing." The huntsman's wife brought him a peggin of milk. When he had drunk it, "Now," says the Pooka, "go back to your beds, and I'll curl myself up by the fire and sleep like a top till morning." And soon everybody in the hut was fast asleep.
From that day to this Morag nor Flann ever saw sight of the Pooka and his big, black, snorting and foaming horse. "Dost thou know where we are, my Little Red Hen?" said Morag when the sun was in the sky again. "There are things I know and things I don't know," said the Little Red Hen, "but I know we are near the place we started from."
Flann put the two berries into her hand, they jumped across the chain, and ran from the house of the Giant Crom Duv. They went into the wood, Flann and Morag, and the Little Red Hen was under Morag's arm. They thought they would hide behind trees until they heard the coming of the Pooka and his horse. But they were not far in the wood when they heard Crom Duv coming towards his house.
They saw the Little Red Hen rouse herself up, shake her wings and turn a bright eye on them. "What dost thou say, my Little Red Hen?" said Morag. "The Pooka," murmured the Little Red Hen. "The Pooka rides a fierce horse, but the Pooka himself is a timid little fellow." Then the Little Red Hen drooped her wings again, and went on picking in the courtyard.
Few children, born or reared in that county thirty, or even five-and-twenty years ago, who were not occasionally frightened into 'being good, and going to sleep, and not crying when left alone in the dark, by huggath a' Pooka, or, 'here's Lady Betty. The only fragment of her history which we have been able to collect is, that she was a person of violent temper, though in manners rather above the common, and possessing some education.
"I told you I'd do you a good turn," said the Pooka, "for the kindness you and yours did me on that wild winter's night. The day is passing. You have no time to lose. The white steed of the plains is coming to the starting-post. Jump on my back, and remember, 'Faint heart never won fair lady."
The Pooka, who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare is by many believed to have adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who combined "horse-play" with viciousness, but also at times helped with the housework. The Dullaghan was a churchyard demon whose head was of a movable kind. Dr.
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