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Updated: June 3, 2025


Shamus played his three songs, and the King of the Little People no longer pulled at his beard but sat as one in a dream. "Those are good songs," said he at last. "Give him a coat of the even cloth, and he shall play to me when I desire." Accordingly, Shamus was given a fine green coat and became a minstrel at the court of the King of the Little People.

"It's cracked he is out an' out of a certainty," said Nance, looking terrified at her husband. "Nothing else am I," shouted Shamus, after groping under the broken slab; "an', for a token, get along wid yourself out of this, ould gran!" He started up and seized her by the shoulder. Noreen remonstrated. He stooped for a stone; she ran; he pursued her to the arches of the ruin.

"Now as the night wore on, and whiles it would be dark and whiles the moon shone, a man came they did not know from where a big red man, and drew up to the fire, and was talking with them. And he asked where the Black Officer was, and they showed him. Now there was one man, Shamus Mackenzie they called him, and he was very curious, and he must be seeing what they did.

"Why, then, sir, only I am such a big fool for telling it to you, it's what brought me to Lunnon Bridge was a quare dhrame I had at home in Ireland, that tould me just to come here, and I'd find a pot of goold." For such was the interpretation given by Shamus to the vague admonition of his visionary counsellor.

Faix, sir, and sure that makes your dhrame quarer than ever; and the ground the ould abbey is on, sir, and the good acres round it, did you say they lay somewhere in the poor county myself came from?" "What county is that, friend?" demanded the publican, again with a studious frown. "The ould County Monaghan, sure, sir," replied Shamus, very deliberately.

Now, Shamus, having been reared in the country, knew that the Little People liked best to live in the hills and mountains. So to the mountains he went, making songs to lighten the long way. He made a song of running water, and of the wind in the trees, and of moonlight upon a grassy slope, and these he liked better than any songs he had yet composed.

"Brave and early, faix, sir," said Shamus, still hurrying off. "Stop a bit," resumed the publican. Shamus stood still. "I see you're a countryman of mine an Irishman; I'd know one of you at a look, though I'm a long time out of the country. And you're not very well off on London Bridge this morning, either."

But, repassing the house, the man still appeared, leaning against his door-jamb, and as if waiting for Shamus's return, whom, upon this second occasion, he eyed more attentively than before. "Sorrow's in him," thought Shamus, "have I two heads on me, that I'm such a sight to him? But who cares about his pair of ferret eyes? I 'll thrudge down the middle stone of it, at any rate!"

Without taking rest or food, Shamus proceeded to London Bridge, often put out of his course by wrong directions, and as often by forgetting and misconceiving true ones.

But when Shamus became able to refer to the motive of his pauper journey from his native solitudes into the thick of such a scene, it was no wonder that the zeal of superstition totally subsided amid the astounding truths he witnessed. In fact, the bewildered simpleton now regarded his dream as the merest chimera.

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