Then another of them took him by the shoulder and faced him away round again.
"Good-night, my brave Michael," says he. Well the whole score of fairies kept turning him round until he seen the stars dropping down from the sky and his ears were deafened with a sound like the sea. And every one that took him by the shoulder would say: "Good-night, my brave Michael, good-night!"
The poor fellow didn't know what in under the shining Heaven was he to do. He seen they were setting him astray, but he couldn't continue for to keep on the path, and he was in odious dread they'd furl him into the shaking scraw where he'd sink from the sight of man.
A sudden thought struck his mind of a saying he heard from his ma. He whipped the coat off his back and he put it on with the wrong side turned out. And then he found he was standing alone in the field, on the edge of the scraw, and no person near him at all. So he went away home without any mishap, but indeed he was trembling with dread.
There was a young lad living in these parts, not long since at all, and his name was Francis John.
It chanced of a May morning that water was scarce for the tea, the way his mother put a bucket in his hand and hunted him off to the spring.
Now an old lassie lived by her lone in a little wee house was built right close to the path. The door stood open that morning, and my brave Francis John looked in when he went on his way to the well. He seen the old girl sitting on a small creepy stool by the fire, with a row of clay images baking in front of the turf. Wasn't she singing a song--and a queer cracked voice was her own--every word of it came good and plain to the ears of the lad.
Ye that I bake before the fire, Bring me the milk from my neighbour's byre; Gather the butter from off the churn And set it forenenst me before you burn.
Francis John didn't ask to disturb her diversions at all, so he went on his way and filled up his can at the spring. But all the road home the old lassie's song tormented his mind, and as he came in at the door he began for to sing:
Ye that she bakes before the fire, Bring me the milk from the neighbour's byre; Gather the butter from off the churn And set it forenenst me before you burn.