No More Learning

One night as I sat eating Mrs. H----'s soda-bread, her husband told me a
longish story, much the best of all I heard in Rosses. Many a poor man
from Fin M'Cool to our own days has had some such adventure to tell
of, for those creatures, the 'good people,' love to repeat themselves.
At any rate the story-tellers do. 'In the times when we used to travel
by the canal,' he said, 'I was coming down from Dublin. When we came to
Mullingar the canal ended, and I began to walk, and stiff and fatigued
I was after the slowness. I had some friends with me, and now and then
we walked, now and then we rode in a cart. So on till we saw some girls
milking cows, and stopped to joke with them. After a while we asked
them for a drink of milk. "We have nothing to put it in here," they
said, "but come to the house with us. " We went home with them, and sat
round the fire talking. After a while the others went, and left me,
loath to stir from the good fire. I asked the girls for something to
eat. There was a pot on the fire, and they took the meat out and put it
on a plate, and told me to eat only the meat that came off the head.
When I had eaten, the girls went out, and I did not see them again.
It
grew darker and darker, and there I still sat, loath as ever to leave
the good fire, and after a while two men came in, carrying between them
a corpse. When I saw them coming I hid behind the door. Says one to the
other, putting the corpse on the spit, "Who'll turn the spit? " Says
the other, "Michael H----, come out of that and turn the meat. " I came
out all of a tremble, and began turning the spit. "Michael H----," says
the one who spoke first, "if you let it burn we'll have to put you on
the spit instead"; and on that they went out. I sat there trembling
and turning the corpse till towards midnight. The men came again, and
the one said it was burnt, and the other said it was done right. But
having fallen out over it, they both said they would do me no harm that
time; and, sitting by the fire, one of them cried out: "Michael H----,
can you tell me a story? " "Divil a one," said I. On which he caught
me by the shoulder, and put me out like a shot. It was a wild blowing
night. Never in all my born days did I see such a night--the darkest
night that ever came out of the heavens. I did not know where I was for
the life of me. So when one of the men came after me and touched me on
the shoulder, with a "Michael H----, can you tell a story now? " "I can,"
says I.