Section 1
ONE FINE DAY IN HARVEST—it was indeed Lady-day in harvest, that everybody knows to be one of the greatest holidays in the year—Tom Fitzpatrick was taking a ramble through the ground, and went along the sunny side of a hedge; when all of a sudden he heard a clacking sort of noise a little before him in the hedge. “Dear me,” said Tom, “but isn’t it surprising to hear the stonechatters singing so late in the season?”
So Tom stole on, going on the tops of his toes to try if he could get a sight of what was making the noise, to see if he was right in his guess. The noise stopped; but as Tom looked sharply through the bushes, what should he see in a nook of the hedge but a brown pitcher, that might hold about a gallon and a half of liquor; and by-and-by a little wee teeny tiny bit of an old man, with a little motty of a cocked hat stuck upon the top of his head, a deeshy daushy leather apron hanging before him, pulled out a little wooden stool, and stood up upon it, and dipped a little piggin into the pitcher, and took out the full of it, and put it beside the stool, and then sat down under the pitcher, and began to work at putting a heel-piece on a bit of a brogue just fit for himself.
“Well, by the powers,” said Tom to himself, “I often heard tell of the Lepracauns, and, to tell God’s truth, I never rightly believed in them—but here’s one of them in real earnest. If I go knowingly to work, I’m a made man. They say a body must never take their eyes off them, or they’ll escape.”
Tom now stole on a little further, with his eye fixed on the little man just as a cat does with a mouse. So when he got up quite close to him, “God bless your work, neighbour,” said Tom.
The little man raised up his head, and “Thank you kindly,” said he.
“I wonder you’d be working on the holiday!” said Tom.
“That’s my own business, not yours,” was the reply.
“Well, may be you’d be civil enough to tell us what you’ve got in the pitcher there?” said Tom.
“That I will, with pleasure,” said he; “it’s good beer.”
“Beer!” said Tom. “Thunder and fire! where did you get it?”
“Where did I get it, is it? Why, I made it. And what do you think I made it of?”
“Devil a one of me knows,” said Tom; “but of malt, I suppose, what else?”
“There you’re out. I made it of heath.”
“Of heath!” said Tom, bursting out laughing; “sure you don’t think me to be such a fool as to believe that?”
“Do as you please,” said he, “but what I tell you is the truth. Did you never hear tell of the Danes?”
“Well, what about them?” said Tom.
“Why, all the about them there is, is that when they were here they taught us to make beer out of the heath, and the secret’s in my family ever since.”
“Will you give a body a taste of your beer?” said Tom.
“I’ll tell you what it is, young man, it would be fitter for you to be looking after your father’s property than to be bothering decent quiet people with your foolish questions.
There now, while you’re idling away your time here, there’s the cows have broke into the oats, and are knocking the corn all about.”
