1897.




DREAMS THAT HAVE NO MORAL


The friend who heard about Maive and the hazel-stick went to the
workhouse another day. She found the old people cold and wretched,
"like flies in winter," she said; but they forgot the cold when they
began to talk. A man had just left them who had played cards in a rath
with the people of faery, who had played "very fair"; and one old man
had seen an enchanted black pig one night, and there were two old
people my friend had heard quarrelling as to whether Raftery or
Callanan was the better poet. One had said of Raftery, "He was a big
man, and his songs have gone through the whole world. I remember him
well. He had a voice like the wind"; but the other was certain "that
you would stand in the snow to listen to Callanan." Presently an old
man began to tell my friend a story, and all listened delightedly,
bursting into laughter now and then. The story, which I am going to
tell just as it was told, was one of those old rambling moralless
tales, which are the delight of the poor and the hard driven, wherever
life is left in its natural simplicity. They tell of a time when
nothing had consequences, when even if you were killed, if only you had
a good heart, somebody would bring you to life again with a touch of a
rod, and when if you were a prince and happened to look exactly like
your brother, you might go to bed with his queen, and have only a
little quarrel afterwards. We too, if we were so weak and poor that
everything threatened us with misfortune, would remember, if foolish