The crone of every village has plenty of stories to make her hearers wonder, how fortunes have been arrived at by extraordinary short cuts; and as it has been laid down as an axiom, "That there never was a fool who had not a greater fool to admire him," so there never was any old woman who told such stories without plenty of listeners.
Now, Darby Kelleher was one of the latter class, and there was a certain collioch[1] who was an extensive dealer in the marvellous, and could supply "wholesale, retail, and for exportation" any customer such as Darby Kelleher, who not only was a devoted listener, but also made an occasional offering at the cave of the sibyl, in return for her oracular communications. This tribute generally was tobacco, as the collioch was partial to chewing the weed; and thus Darby returned a _quid pro quo_, without having any idea that he was giving a practical instance of the foregoing well-known pun.
Another constant attendant at the hut of the hag was Oonah Lenehan, equally prone to the marvellous with Darby Kelleher, and quite his equal in idleness. A day never passed without Darby and Oonah paying the old woman a visit. She was sure to be "at home," for age and decrepitude rendered it impossible for her to be otherwise; the utmost limit of her ramble from her own chimney-corner being the seat of sods outside the door of her hut, where, in the summer time, she was to be found, so soon as the sunbeams fell on the front of her abode, and made the seat habitable for one whose accustomed vicinity to the fire rendered heat indispensable to comfort. Here she would sit and rock herself to and fro in the hot noons of July and August, her own appearance and that of her wretched cabin being in admirable keeping. To a fanciful beholder the question might have suggested itself, whether the hag was made for the hovel, or it for her; or whether they had grown into a likeness of one another, as man and wife are said to do, for there were many points of resemblance between them. The tattered thatch of the hut was like the straggling hair of its mistress, and Time, that had grizzled the latter, had covered the former with gray lichens. To its mud walls, a strong likeness was to be found in the tint of the old woman's shrivelled skin; they were both seriously out of the perpendicular; and the rude mud and wicker chimney of the edifice having toppled over the gable, stuck out, something in the fashion of the doodeen, or short pipe, that projected from the old woman's upper story; and so they both were smoking away from morning till night; and to complete the similitude sadly, both were poor,--both lonely,--both fast falling to decay.