One time he met a strange little old quick-talking man who came to him; he seemed to just bob up in front of him from the road itself.
“Ah, good day t’ye, and phwat part are ye fram?”
“I’m from beyant,” said Tom Toole, nodding back[193] to the Knockmealdown Mountains where the good monks11 had lodged12 him for a night.
“Ah, God deliver ye and indeed I don’t want to know your business at all but ... but ... where are ye going?”
Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven little words there would be at least one spit. There was yellow dust in the flaps of his ears and neat bushes of hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered his nose, and the skull13 of him was bare but there was a good tuft on his chin. Tom Toole looked at him straight and queer for he did not admire the fierce expression of him, and there were smells of brimstone on him like a farmer had been dipping his ewes, and he almost expected to see a couple of horns growing out of his brow.
“It’s not meself does be knowing at all, good little man,” said Tom Toole to him, “and I might go to the fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk on to Dungarvan, in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of lobsters14 for me nice supper.”
And he turned away to go off upon his road but the little old man followed and kept by his side, telling him of a misfortune he had endured; a chaise of his, a little pony15 chaise, had been almost destroyed, but the ruin was not so great for a kind lady of his acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination16, had given him four pounds, one shilling and ninepence. “Ah, not that I’m needing your money, ma’am, says I, but damage is damage, I says, and it’s not right, I says, that I should be at the harm of your coachman.” And[194] there he was spitting and going on like a clock spilling over its machinery17 when he unexpectedly grasped Tom Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and Good luck, and that he might meet him again.
Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a cross roads, and there was the same old man sitting in a neat little pony chaise smoking his pipe.
“Where are ye going?” says he.
“Dungarvan,” said Tom Toole.
“Jump in then,” said the little old man, and they jogged along the road conversing18 together; he was sharp as an old goat.
“What is your aspiration19?” he said, and Tom Toole told him.
“That’s a good aspiration, indeed. I know what you’re seeking, Tom Toole; let’s get on now and there’ll be tidings in it.”
When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the public at Dungarvan there was a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive the traction20 engines, for there was a circus in it. Getting their fill of porter, they were, and the nice little white loaves; very decent boys, but one of them a Scotchman with a large unrejoicing face. And he had a hooky nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils21 and the two tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. Peter Mullane was telling a tale, and there was a sad bit of a man from Bristol, with a sickness in his breast and a cough that would heave out the side of a mountain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his friend sat down and then he proceeded with his tale.
[195]
“Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Carlin, and away he was gone to the four corners of the world. And when he came to the first corner he saw a place where the rivers do be rushing, ...”
“... the only darn thing that does rush then in this country,” interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer22.
“Shut your ...” began the man from Bristol, but he was taken with the cough, until his cheeks were scarlet23 and his eyes, fixed24 angrily upon the Highland25 man, were strained to teardrops. “Shut your ...” he began it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing26 spasm27 that rocked him, while his friends looked at him and wondered would he be long for this world. He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed “... dam face” to that Highland man. And then Peter Mullane went on:
“I am not given to thinking,” said he, “that the Lord would put a country the like of Ireland in a wee corner of the world and he wanting the nook of it for thistles and the poor savages28 that devour29 them. Well, Neal Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be rushing ...” he paused invitingly—“and he saw a little fairy creature with fine tresses of hair sitting under a rowan tree.”
“A rowan?” exclaimed the Highland man.
Peter nodded.
“A Scottish tree!” declared the other.
“O shut your ...” began the little coughing man, but again his conversation was broken, and by the time he had recovered from his spasms30 the company was mute.
[196]
“If,” said Peter Mullane, “you’d wish to observe the rowan in its pride and beauty just clap your eye upon it in the Galtee Mountains. How would it thrive, I ask you, in a place was stiff with granite31 and sloppy32 with haggis? And what would ye do, my clever man, what would ye do if ye met a sweet fairy woman...?”
“I’d kiss the Judy,” said the Highland man spitting a great splash.
Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two as if he did not love him very much, but then he continued:
“Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet creature. Warm! says she to him with a friendly tone. Begod, ma’am, it is a hot day, he said, and thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my aspiration. And sure enough when he sat down beside her she asked him What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin? and he said, saving your grace, ma’am, it is but to enjoy the world and to be easy in it. That is a good aspiration, she said, and she gave him some secret advice. He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, and he followed the advice, and in a month or two he had grown very wealthy and things were easy with him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy mind, and his farm looked a drifty little place that was holding him down from big things. So he was not satisfied though things were easy with him, and one night before he went sleeping he made up his mind ‘It’s too small it is. I’ll go away from it now and a farm twice as big I will have, three times as big, yes, I will[197] have it ten times as big.’ He went sleeping on the wildness of his avarice33, and when he rolled off the settle in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs he hit his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed it and had a kind of thought that the place had got smaller. As he went from the door he struck his brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the house. What is come to me, he roared in his pains; and looking into his field there were his five cows and his bullock no bigger than sheep—will ye believe that, then—and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits, mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws were no bigger than chafers and the neat little wood was no more account than a grove34 of raspberry bushes. Away he goes to the surgeon’s to have drops put in his eyes for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but on his return there was his bullock no bigger than an old boot, and his cabin had wasted to the size of a birdcage.”
Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of porter. And the Highland man asked him “Well, what happened?”
“O he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over the hedge as you might an old can, and then he strolled off to another corner of the world, Neal Carlin did, whistling ‘The Lanty Girl.’”
Tom Toole’s friend spoke35 to Peter Mullane. “Did ye say it was in the Galtee Mountains that the young fellow met the lady?”
“In the Galtee Mountains,” said Peter.
“To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom[198] Toole,” cried the little old man, “Come on now, there’ll be tidings in it!”
So off they drove; and when they had driven a day and slept a couple of nights they were there, and they came to a place where the rivers do be rushing and there was a rowan tree but no lady in it.
“What will we do now, Tom Toole?” says the old man.
“We’ll not stint36 it,” says he, and they searched by night and by day looking for a person would give them their youth again. They sold the chaise for some guineas and the pony for a few more, and they were walking among the hills for a thousand days but never a dust of fortune did they discover. Whenever they asked a person to guide them they would be swearing at them or they would jeer37.
“Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins for ye!” said one.
“Thinking of your graves and travelling to the priest ye should be!” said another.
“It’s two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye want,” said one, “take a sup of that and you’ll be young again!”
“Of black milk!” said Tom Toole’s friend; “where would we get that?”
The person said he would get a pull of it in the Comeragh Mountains, fifty miles away.
“Tom Toole,” said the little old-man, “it’s what I’ll do. I’ll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see[199] what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty guineas’ worth of blather. And when I find the cow I’ll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it.”
So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, “I’ll be a score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!” much as an old crow might shout it to a sweep.
When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world and the day after he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass4 carts were dribbling39 into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl in a field trying to secure an ass.
“Oi.... Oi...!” the girl was calling out to him and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture and it not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a long fall of hair that the wind was easy with.
“’Tis warm!” she said to Tom Toole. “Begod, ma’am,” says he to her quickly, taking his cue, “it is a hot day.”
“Where are ye going, Tom Toole?” she asked him, and he said, “I am seeking a little contrivance, ma’am, that will let me enjoy the world and live easy in it. That is my aspiration.”
“I’ll give you what you are seeking,” and she gave him a wee bottle with red juices in it.
“Indeed, ma’am, I’m obliged to ye,” and he took her by the hand and wished her Good day and Good luck and that he might meet her again.
When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his[200] searching. He hid the bottle in his breast and went up into the mountains as high as he could go to bide40 the coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but Tom Toole had never heard the name of him—it would be some foreign place in the corners of the world like Portugal, that he had come from; no doubt. Up he went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then fern and burst furze, and then little but heather, and great rocks strewn about like shells, and sour brown streams coming from the bog41. He wandered about for twenty days and the old man did not return, and for forty days he was still alone.
“The divil receive him but I’ll die against his return!” And Tom Toole pulled the wee bottle from his breast. He was often minded to lift the cork42 and take a sup of the elixir of youth. “But,” says he, “it would be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth sudden I’d be off to the wonders of the land and leave that old fool roaming till the day of Judgment43.” And he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A thousand days he was on his lonely wanderings, soft days as mellow44 as cream, and hard days when it is ribs45 of iron itself you would want to stiffen46 you against the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to the lappet of his coat, very ugly he was, but the little stranger sheep of the mountain were not daunted47 when he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft call for him. A thousand days was in it and then he said:
“Good evening to me good luck. I’ve had my enough of this. Sure I’ll despise myself for ever more if I[201] wait the tide of another drifting day. It’s tonight I’ll sleep in a bed with a quilt of down over me heart, for I’m going to be young again.”
He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and went in a room in the public to have a cup of porter. A little forlorn old man also came in from the road and sat down beside, and when they looked at each other they each let out a groan48. “Glory be!” says he. “Glory be,” cried Tom Toole, “it’s the good little man in the heel of it. Where in hell are ye from?”
“From the mountains.”
“And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?”
“Divil a clod.”
“Nor the Kerry cow?”
“Divil a horn.”
“Nor the good milk?”
“Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with the smell of it. Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high and the deep of this realm and believe you me it is not in it; the long and the wide of this realm ... not in it.” He kept muttering sadly “not in it.”
“Me good little man,” cried Tom Toole, “don’t be havering like an old goat. Here it is! the fortune of the world!”
He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it before his eyes. “The drops that ’ull give ye your youth as easy as shifting a shirt. Come, now. I’ve waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn’t bring myself to desart a comrade was ranging the back of the wild regions for the likes of me. Many’s the time I’ve lifted that cork, and thinks I: He’s gone,[202] and soon I’ll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was in it. I could not do it, not for silver and not for gold and not for all the mad raging mackerel that sleep in the sea.”
The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two hands. He was but a quavering stick of a man now; half dead he was, and his name it is Martin O’Moore.
“Is it the tale stuff, Tom Toole?”
“From herself I got it,” he said, and he let on to him about that sweet-spoken young girl.
“Did she give you the directions on the head of it?”
“What directions is it?”
“The many drops is a man to drink!”
“No, but a good sup of it will do the little job.”
“A good sup of it, Tom Toole, a good sup of it, ay?” says he unsqueezing the cork. “The elixir of youth, a good sup of it, says you, a good sup of it, a great good good sup of it!”
And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee bottle of its every red drop. He stood there looking like a man in a fit, holding the empty bottle in his hand until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very eyes he thought were deceiving him; not an inch of his skin but had the dew of fear on it, for the little old man began to change his appearance quick like the sand running through a glass, or as fast as the country changes down under a flying swan.
“Mother o’ God!” screamed Martin O’Moore, “it’s too fast backward I’m growing, dizzy I am.”
And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black[203] hair grown upon it, the whiskers flew away from him and his face was young. He began to wear a strange old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little knickerbockers of a boy before you could count a score. And he had a bit of a cold just then, though he was out of it in a twink, and he let a sneeze that burst a button off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all that ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell away, like the dust in an hour glass, till he was no bigger than an acorn49 and then devil a bit of him was left there at all.
Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emptiness and he made to go away, but he turned in the doorway50 and stretching out his arms to the empty room he whispered “The greed! the avarice! May hell pour all its buckets on your bad little heart! May....” But just then he caught sight of the cup of porter that Martin O’Moore had forgotten to drink, so he went back to drink his enough and then went out into the great roaring world where he walked from here to there until one day he came right back to his old Asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he was an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man from Kilsheelan digging potatoes just inside the gates of the sunny garden.
“’Tis warm!” said the traveller staring at him through the railings, but the man from Kilsheelan only said “Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying or going ye are?”
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1
fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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2
longevity
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| n.长命；长寿 | |
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3
elixir
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| n.长生不老药，万能药 | |
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4
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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5
incarceration
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| n.监禁，禁闭；钳闭 | |
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6
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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7
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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8
compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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9
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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10
philanderer
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| n.爱和女人调情的男人，玩弄女性的男人 | |
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11
monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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12
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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13
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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14
lobsters
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| 龙虾( lobster的名词复数 )； 龙虾肉 | |
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15
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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16
denomination
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| n.命名，取名，(度量衡、货币等的)单位 | |
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17
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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18
conversing
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的现在分词 ) | |
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aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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20
traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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21
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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23
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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24
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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vexing
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| adj.使人烦恼的，使人恼火的v.使烦恼( vex的现在分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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27
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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28
savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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29
devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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spasms
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| n.痉挛( spasm的名词复数 )；抽搐；（能量、行为等的）突发；发作 | |
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31
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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32
sloppy
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| adj.邋遢的，不整洁的 | |
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avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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35
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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36
stint
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| v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事 | |
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jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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38
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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39
dribbling
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| n.（燃料或油从系统内）漏泄v.流口水( dribble的现在分词 )；（使液体）滴下或作细流；运球，带球 | |
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40
bide
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| v.忍耐；等候；住 | |
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41
bog
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| n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖 | |
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42
cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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43
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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44
mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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45
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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46
stiffen
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| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
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47
daunted
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| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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49
acorn
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| n.橡实，橡子 | |
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50
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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