BIDDY GILLIGAN'S FAIRY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 27, 6 July 1905, Page 24

BIDDY GILLIGAN'S FAIRY

Somd time or other, between two and three o'clock in the afternoon of each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Pat Nealon reached the little cabin where Biddy Gilligan lived. Pat was one of the local letter carriers attached to the post office in Lisnaskerry ; and for the modest sum of ten shillings a week he_, on these days, distributed the contents of the brown leather bag he carried among the inhabitants of the district lying south of the town. The wind was blowing boisterously one late March afternoon, and Pat ha<i long been due at Biddy's cabin, ©..ccordimg to its inmate's calculation. She was a bent Ql-d woma.il of perhaps eighty years of age, with snowwhite hair and ouiiously bright black eyes. As she sat on a stool by the hearth she kept an anxious look on the small window by which the leti^r carrier had to pass before reaching the door. ' It takes Pat longer than e\er on his rounds,' she muttered querulously, as she placed a fresh sod on the flre. Then, with many a groan and ejaculation, she raised herself from her seat and hot-bled, by the aid of a stick, to the door. ' Yonder he is at last/ she remarked to herself, as Pat came into view. A few moments brought him to the street. ' 1 was near giving you up, man,' Biddy said, in tones of mingled welcome and fault-finding. 'It must be Long after three o'clock.'. 'It wants a minute of three ' ; Pat consulted the watch he carried, ' a minute exactly.' 1 It must be more,' the old woman disputed. ' Anyway the kettle's on the boil this hour past, so come in.' The pair entered the house, and Pat produced two miniature packages containing tea and sugar, ana a, buttered bun from the 'bag he carried, and proceeded to prepare his meal. 'Biddy had taken her seat by the fire. ' There's milt in the bowl,' she said. 'AH otight,' Pat responded. ' Nothing strange ? ' 1 Oh, nothing particular. .The new curate was in yesterday evening and stayed a brave while.' ' Father Ryan. He's a fine young man entirely,' Pat said. ' Sure never a one of us e\er heard the like of the sermon he preached last Sunday.' Biddy sniffed. ' Oh, I suppose lie can talk ; but I haven't much opinion of him. He's fresh from college- ' He is, I believe,' Pat assented. ' When I told him a>bout the amount of land the Gilligans used to own, sure he didn't seem to take it in at 1 all. And when I mentioned the fairies — Well,_ you should "have scon the look he gave me. "My good woman," said he, " there isn't such a thing as a fairy." ' Pat was pouring out lea ' Well 7 ' he said laconically. ,' I told him how every Satin day night in the year, let it blow fair or foul, there is a white shilling left tinder the door there.' ' And what did he say ? ' Pat had got settled to his meal. 'He la,uflhed, and said it was a human fairy, and that I sihould have more sense than to belike in such nonsense. Father Brady never made a remark like that.' 1 Dili you hear that Ned O'Cojnnlor has got his tickpit for America ? ' asked PaT, moving his stool to the fire. ' Not a word. How should I hear anything ? And has he got his ticket ? ' ' Ay, and isn't it well" 7 Th-erc is more rent and debt aga.inst the place than it is worth. Sure the old man, his father, was the terrible ill-doing man entirely.' ' And the mother always at death's door,' Biddy said, ' And who sent him the ticket *>" ' His cousin, Peter O'Connor, that wont to America seven years ago. Sure Mary Blake won't like Ned going away' "Mary Blake, a girl without a penny ! Ned wouldn't be seen spealkiing to her.' ' Troth he would ! It iV t many pennies he has himself, a n'l Mary's the brave little girl.' ' I have no opinion of the Blakes,' ihc old woman said. ' Only for Denis Blake going to law with mv father— God rest him—over a bit of boc that always bcVlonped to the OilH^aivs, it isn't here I'd he now, Pat Nealon. And 'tis you yourself might know that.' ' Oh, to be sure. The law put both ihe men to the bad, t hint's whftt it did. Still, Mary Blake had no hand in it.' Pat laughed. ' You're like all men,' Biddy rejoined, contemptuously 1 , ' easily taken with a handsome face, and I supposo Mary Blake has that, though I have no likine: for her.' ' She -works hard enough at the lace-making to support her bedridden mother. She's your nearest neighbor, too.'

Well, I don't see her, nor want I>o see her,* that* all. 'I never had nor never will have any neighborhood with one of the name.,' , < . 9 ' Oh, well,' Pat said pacifically, ' that's right enough, or anyway, it is your own affair. And now I must be going. There's a grain of uhe tea and sugar the,re ; maybe you'll use it, Biddy.' Pat rose hastily. ' Good evening and good luck to you.' Such was Pat's usual mode of departure. Biddy brewed the remainder of his tea and pondered, as she diank it, on what Father Ryan had saia to her. ' A human fairy ! I'd like to find out. Well, please God, I'll sit up next Saturday night and see'for myself,' she muttered. Biddy did as she said. On the following Saturday night £(he left the door pushed to, but unlatched, and took a 'position on a stool beside it. She had' kept her {lace for a very lengthened period according to her reckoning, and was about to retire to bed satisfied that Faxher Ryan was totally wrong, when she caught the sound of a, cautious step, and the next instant the gleam of something white beneath the door caught her eye. With a speed with which few would have credited her, Biddy flung open the do o r and made a grasp at the shawled figure tnat stood for a brief second thunderstruck. After that momentary pause the figure d-ashed away, leaving the shawl in Biddy's hands. ' Amd so the new curate was right,' the^ old woman soliloquised sadly as she sat huddled up over a smouldering soa. For years— ever since the rheumatism had ta\en such a grip of han— she had risen every Sunday morning to lift the silver coin from "the threshold, in the belief that, however low the last of the Gilligans had fallen in tihe social scale, the fairy folk still remembered them. And now she knew that the shilling had leen left weekly by a woman, and worse still, by a woman she did not love. ' Sure Mary Blake's mother had just such a Paisley jJiawl for her w.ediding ! And Mary goes with the lace to the convent every Saturday, Pat says ; and she'could come homie this way. Oh, dear, 'tis chilled I am to the heart ' ' Whether old Biddy had caught cold by sitting at the door on the frosty March night, or whether the shattering of her cherished beliefs had, as she expressed it, chilled her to the bone, a neighbor who qalleS to see the old woman, on her wav back from second Mass at cne of the country chapels, fotind her in such a bad state fnat she deemed it well to summon Father Ryan and the dispensary doctor. 'The two met in the evening in the cabin. ' She'll go out like the snuff of a candle/ the doctor said. ' Weak heart, "bad circulation, and bronchitis.' And the priest set about preparing the lonely old woman for her last journey. ' And now, your Reverence,' Biddy said, when the last rites were administered, ' sure I have to ask your pardon. You were rigfft about the fairies. The shilling was l"ft by a neighbor , <and there are a few 'things I'd li' c to dispose of".' ' Very well,' Father Ryan said 1 indly. "I !ea^ e rone of my own behind me,' Biddy went on, ' and I'd like Jane Conway, the woman that's outfi 'c, to havo the few bits of thins; 1 ; inside, except the led and the fiddle I always intenSed to leave the bed —a fire feather bed it is— to Pat Nealon. He can get it.' ' Ard the fiddle 9 ' the priest ssled. 'Ttis in the case under the bod. May he your Reverence would pull it out. The fiddle was mv father's, and foe set lierrible store by it. Sure he could all but irake it sneak.' ' To whom do you wish to give it ? ' ' To the fairy that left the shilling on the Saturday nights.' Biddy gave a wheeling laugh. ' That's her shawl inside th>o cas'C ' Fa.ther Rvan walked home through the mirple a"usk of the March evening with the fWdle and the Paisley shawl in the old black ca,se under his arm. It so ch»anced that a former college friend who had been abroad music was his guest, and to him the priest told of Biddy's bequests. ' Let us see the fiddle,' Plhilip Derey said, and he fra- c a cry when he beheld it. ' Why, it is a Stradi'ari'js ; a eennine Stradivarius,' he cried after a brief examination. 'Tt is worth — ' He mentioned a sum thp.t sounded preposterous in the priest's ears. And thus it was that Mary Blake became in course of time an heiress in a small way. Matt Gilligan's fiddle was sold by Philip Derey for a sum that enabled Ned O'Conndlr to clear up the debts on his farm and start farming afresh when he married Mary Blake, or, as Father Rvan termed her, ' Biddy Gilligan's Fairy.'— ' Benziger's Magazine.'