PADDY GALLAGHER: GIANT KILLER.

From the dark niche under the gray boulder where the violets grow, a
Donegal fairy flew to the mountain cabin to bring a birthday wish to
Patrick Gallagher. The fairy designed not that great good would come to
Paddy, but that great good would come to his people through him. At least
when Paddy grew up, he slew the child-eating giant, Poverty, who lived in
Donegal.

Paddy began to fight poverty when he could scarcely toddle. With his
father, whose back was laden with a great rush basket, he used to pad in
his bare feet down the mountainside to the Dungloe harbor--down where the
hills give the ocean a black embrace. Father and son would wade into the
ocean that was pink and lavender in the sunset. Above them, the white
curlews swooped and curved and opened their pine wood beaks to squawk a
prayer for dead fish. But the workers did not stop to watch. Their food
also was in question. They must pluck the black seaweed to fertilize their
field.

When the early sun bronzed the bog, and streaked the dark pool below with
gold, Paddy and his father began to feed the dried wavy strands of kelp
between the hungry brown furrow lips. They packed the long groove near the
stone fence; they rounded past the big boulder that could not be budged;
last of all, they filled the short far row in the strangely shaped little
field. At noon, Paddy's mother appeared at the half door of the cabin and
called in the general direction of the field--it was difficult to see them,
for their frieze suits had been dyed in bog water and she could not at once
distinguish them from the brown earth. They were glad to come in to eat
their sugarless and creamless oatmeal.