The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

IT was on account of his daughter that Meehawl MacMurrachu had come to visit the Philosopher. He did not know what had become of her, and the facts he had to lay before his adviser were very few.

He left the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath taking snuff under a pine tree and went into the house.

“God be with all here,” said he as he entered.

“God be with yourself, Meehawl MacMurrachu,” said the Philosopher.

“I am in great trouble this day, sir,” said Meehawl, “and if you would give me an advice I’d be greatly beholden to you.”

“I can give you that,” replied the Philosopher.

“None better than your honour and no trouble to you either. It was a powerful advice you gave me about the washboard, and if I didn’t come here to thank you before this it was not because I didn’t want to come, but that I couldn’t move hand or foot by dint of the cruel rheumatism put upon me by the Leprecauns of Gort na Cloca Mora, bad cess to them for ever: twisted I was the way you’d get a squint in your eye if you only looked at me, and the pain I suffered would astonish you.”

“It would not,” said the Philosopher.

“No matter,” said Meehawl. “What I came about was my young daughter Caitilin. Sight or light of her I haven’t had for three days. My wife said first, that it was the fairies had taken her, and then she said it was a travelling man that had a musical instrument she went away with, and after that she said, that maybe the girl was lying dead in the butt of a ditch with her eyes wide open, and she staring broadly at the moon in the night time and the sun in the day until the crows would be finding her out.”

The Philosopher drew his chair closer to Meehawl.

“Daughters,” said he, “have been a cause of anxiety to their parents ever since they were instituted. The flightiness of the female temperament is very evident in those who have not arrived at the years which teach how to hide faults and frailties, and, therefore, indiscretions bristle from a young girl the way branches do from a bush.”

“The person who would deny that—” said Meehawl.

“Female children, however, have the particular sanction of nature. They are produced in astonishing excess over males, and may, accordingly, be admitted as dominant to the male; but the well-proven law that the minority shall always control the majority will relieve our minds from a fear which might otherwise become intolerable.”

“It’s true enough,” said Meehawl. “Have you noticed, sir, that in a litter of pups—”

“I have not,” said the Philosopher. “Certain trades and professions, it is curious to note, tend to be perpetuated in the female line. The sovereign profession among bees and ants is always female, and publicans also descend on the distaff side. You will have noticed that every publican has three daughters of extraordinary charms. Lacking these signs we would do well to look askance at such a man’s liquor, divining that in his brew there will be an undue percentage of water, for if his primogeniture is infected how shall his honesty escape?”

“It would take a wise head to answer that,” said Meehawl.

“It would not,” said the Philosopher. “Throughout nature the female tends to polygamy.”

“If,” said Meehawl, “that unfortunate daughter of mine is lying dead in a ditch—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Many races have endeavoured to place some limits to this increase in females. Certain Oriental peoples have conferred the titles of divinity on crocodiles, serpents, and tigers of the jungle, and have fed these with their surplusage of daughters. In China, likewise, such sacrifices are defended as honourable and economic practices. But, broadly speaking, if daughters have to be curtailed I prefer your method of losing them rather than the religio-hysterical compromises of the Orient.”

“I give you my word, sir,” said Meehawl, “that I don’t know what you are talking about at all.”

“That,” said the Philosopher, “may be accounted for in three ways—firstly, there is a lack of cerebral continuity: that is, faulty attention; secondly, it might be due to a local peculiarity in the conformation of the skull, or, perhaps, a superficial instead of a deep indenting of the cerebral coil; and thirdly—”

“Did you ever hear,” said Meehawl, “of the man that had the scalp of his head blown off by a gun, and they soldered the bottom of a tin dish to the top of his skull the way you could hear his brains ticking inside of it for all the world like a Waterbury watch?”

“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “Thirdly, it may—”

“It’s my daughter, Caitilin, sir,” said Meehawl humbly. “Maybe she is lying in the butt of a ditch and the crows picking her eyes out.”

“What did she die of?” said the Philosopher.

“My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the travelling man that had the musical instrument. She said it was a concertina, but I think myself it was a flute he had.”

“Who was this traveller?”

“I never saw him,” said Meehawl, “but one day I went a few perches up the hill and I heard him playing—thin, squeaky music it was like you’d be blowing out of a tin whistle. I looked about for him everywhere, but not a bit of him could I see.”

“Eh?” said the Philosopher.

“I looked about—” said Meehawl.

“I know,” said the Philosopher. “Did you happen to look at your goats?”

“I couldn’t well help doing that,” said Meehawl.

“What were they doing?” said the Philosopher eagerly.

“They were bucking each other across the field, and standing on their hind legs and cutting such capers that I laughed till I had a pain in my stomach at the gait of them.”

“This is very interesting,” said the Philosopher.

“Do you tell me so?” said Meehawl.