The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea Page A

head.
    ‘Listen!’ he said.
    It was the sound of a banjo.
    Two figures appeared, walking towards them from behind a small hill. Two tatterdemalion figures dressed in what looked like the sweepings of a Jumble Sale. They were an old man and an old woman.
    Tom’s tinkers,’ Brigit murmured.
    The old man was wearing the remains of a battered old billy-cock hat and a ragged faded mackintosh; and he had tattered trousers fluttering around his thin ankles. He was wearing a pair of torn tennis shoes and no socks. In his buttonhole, he sported an enormous pink rose and his face was split into a smile of ecstatic happiness.
    The old woman was wearing the motley found only on rubbish tips, topped by an outrageous hat which had every flower of the wild pinned all about it; all overpowered by masses of dandelions. It looked like a bowl of flowers on top of her head. She it was who played the banjo.
    She had a red concertina tied on a long string and fastened to a big button on her coat and it dangled and swung round her knees in time to the rhythm of her swaggering, dancing walk. She was singing ‘The Lark In The Morning’ in a voice that sounded far too young for her age. The old man was dancing by now. He held out the hem tips of his mack in a dainty way and did a little spinning turn.
    The song finished as they neared the children. The old man clapped his hands, laughed, flung his old billycock up into the air and caught it on the point of his walking-stick as it came back down. He twirled it round a few times and bowed to the children.
    From amid the flowers at the crown of the old woman’s hat came the pure beauty of a blackbird’s song. A butterfly fluttered onto the old man’s nose from a dandelion fastened to the hat’s brim. The old man at once went cock-eyed as he tried to see it.
    ‘Oh, I wish it would come on me,’ said a hopeful Brigit before Pidge could stop her.
    ‘Go on the little girl,’ said the old man.
    Oh botheration! Pidge thought uneasily. I wish I’d told Brigit all about it. She’s gone and made friends with them as if everything were just as usual because she doesn’t know any better. It’s my own fault—I should have told her!
    The butterfly obeyed the old man and presently it was standing on the very tip of Brigit’s nose; opening and closing its magnificent wings to show its beauty to the world. She could feel its delicate little legs barely resting on her skin. She held her breath and was as still as she could be. But after a moment, it tickled and she just had to sneeze. The butterfly wafted back to its dandelion.
    ‘Do you know,’ said the old woman, ‘I could do with a bite to eat. I could do with a pancake or two. Let us sit down a minute, Patsy, while I just have a rootle in me bageen.’
    ‘Do, Boodie, do. A good rootle is what’s needed, for a small hunger wakes in me at the thought of hard-boiled eggs.’
    ‘I don’t know about hard-boiled eggs!’ said Boodie. ‘I wonder now, did I put any fairy cakes in?’ And she smiled.
    ‘I hope not indeed!’ said Patsy. ‘After eating Boodie’s fairy cakes your stomach would feel like a bag of rocks.’ He smiled at the children to show that his remark was addressed to them.
    Boodie took a fit of laughter.
    ‘Will ye look at me shoes, Patsy! Curling up at the toes like two little rocking-boats! We’re all dressed up and nowhere to go!’
    ‘We look as if we’re dressed in potato peelings,’ agreed Patsy. ‘But, wise eyes will see beyond that and maybe even wish that they had shoes that were comical too.’
    ‘I wish I was the Queen of England, so I do,’ said Boodie. ‘Sitting down to High Tea in the palace. I’ll bet it’s so clean in there it’d make you want to spit on the floor.’
    Brigit giggled.
    She nudged Pidge. He was laughing too.
    ‘I’ll bet she’s even got someone to blow on her soup! I’ll bet she’s that rich; not like old Go-The-Roads such as ourselves!’ Boodie said, so cheerfully that it was