John and the night of her betrothal to Namara
of the Lake, and she would have you there that, when they bid her
drink to him she loves best, as the way is, she may drink to you,
Tumaus Costello, and let all know where her heart is, and how little
of gladness is in her marriage; and I myself bid you go with good men
about you, for I saw the horse-thieves with my own eyes, and they
dancing the "Blue Pigeon" in the air.' And then he held the now empty
noggin towards Costello, his hand closing round it like the claw of a
bird, and cried: 'Fill my noggin again, for I would the day had come
when all the water in the world is to shrink into a periwinkle-shell,
that I might drink nothing but Poteen.'
Finding that Costello made no reply, but sat in a dream, he burst
out: 'Fill my noggin, I tell you, for no Costello is so great in the
world that he should not wait upon a Daly, even though the Daly
travel the road with his pipes and the Costello have a bare hill, an
empty house, a horse, a herd of goats, and a handful of cows.'
'Praise the Dalys if you will,' said Costello as he filled the
noggin, 'for you have brought me a kind word from my love.'
For the next few days Duallach went hither and thither trying to
raise a bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello,
how he killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt
that went about them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how
when somewhat older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the
Unchion for a wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel
horseshoe in Mayo; how he drove many men before him through Rushy
Meadow at Drum-an-air because of a malevolent song they had about his
poverty; and of many another deed of his strength and pride; but he
could find none who would trust themselves with any so passionate and
poor in a quarrel with careful and wealthy persons like Dermott of
the Sheep and Namara of the Lake.
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