is to go out and sing that song for a while, to the tune of the Green
Bunch of Rushes, to everyone you meet, and to the old men
themselves.'

'I will do that,' said one of the little lads; 'I know old Paddy Doe
well. Last Saint John's Eve we dropped a mouse down his chimney, but
this is better than a mouse.'

'I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,' said
another of the boys. 'Do that,' said Hanrahan, 'and go into the
Burrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them
sing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever
they go.' The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief,
calling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no
danger it would not be heard.

He was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his
scholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all
come, and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to
know whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was
like the buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a
hidden river in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the
cabin from the road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made
up of old men, and that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael
Gill and Paddy Doe, and there was not one in the crowd but had in his
hand an ash stick or a blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of
him, the sticks began to wave hither and thither like branches in a
storm, and the old feet to run.

He waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till