I will content myself with a weird
Irish legend, narrated by Mr. Patrick Kennedy,[128] in which
we here and there catch glimpses of the primitive mythical
symbols, as fragments of gold are seen gleaming through the
crystal of quartz.
[128] Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 255-270.
Long before the Danes ever came to Ireland, there died at
Muskerry a Sculloge, or country farmer, who by dint of hard
work and close economy had amassed enormous wealth. His only
son did not resemble him. When the young Sculloge looked about
the house, the day after his father's death, and saw the big
chests full of gold and silver, and the cupboards shining with
piles of sovereigns, and the old stockings stuffed with large
and small coin, he said to himself, "Bedad, how shall I ever
be able to spend the likes o' that!" And so he drank, and
gambled, and wasted his time in hunting and horse-racing,
until after a while he found the chests empty and the
cupboards poverty-stricken, and the stockings lean and
penniless. Then he mortgaged his farm-house and gambled away
all the money he got for it, and then he bethought him that a
few hundred pounds might be raised on his mill. But when he
went to look at it, he found "the dam broken, and scarcely a
thimbleful of water in the mill-race, and the wheel rotten,
and the thatch of the house all gone, and the upper millstone
lying flat on the lower one, and a coat of dust and mould over
everything.
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