"Come with me," says the Púca, "and I'll bring you home."
They went out then, and just as he was going to ride on the Púca, the gander came up to him and gave him a new set of pipes.
The Púca was not long until he brought him to Dunmore, and he threw the Piper off at the little bridge, and then he told him to go home, and says to him, "You have two things now that you never had before--you have sense and music." The Piper went home, and he knocked at his mother's door, saying, "Let me in, I'm as rich as a lord, and I'm the best Piper in Ireland."
"No, indeed," says the Piper, "I haven't drunk a drop."
The mother let him in, and he gave her the gold pieces, and, "Wait now," says he, "till you hear the music I'll play."
He buckled on the pipes, but instead of music there came a sound as if all the geese and ganders in Ireland were screeching together. He wakened the neighbours, and they were all mocking him, until he put on the old pipes, and then he played melodious music for them; and after that he told them all he had gone through that night.
The next morning, when his mother went to look at the gold pieces, there was nothing there but the leaves of a plant.
The piper went to the priest and told him his story, but the priest would not believe a word from him, until he put the pipes on him, and then the screeching of the ganders and the geese began.
"Leave my sight, you thief," says the priest.
But nothing would do the Piper till he put the old pipes on him to show the priest that his story was true.
He buckled on the old pipes, and he played melodious music, and from that day till the day of his death there was never a Piper in the county Galway was as good as he was.
Dermod O'Byrne of Omah town In his garden strode up and down; He pulled his beard, and he beat his breast; And this is his trouble and woe confessed:
"The good-folk came in the night, and they Have stolen my bonny wean away; Have put in his place a changeling, A weashy, weakly, wizen thing!
"From the speckled hen nine eggs I stole, And lighting a fire of a glowing coal, I fried the shells, and I spilt the yolk; But never a word the stranger spoke.
"A bar of metal I heated red To frighten the fairy from its bed, To put in the place of this fretting wean My own bright beautiful boy again.