t keep your hold. If you
fall, you will break your neck and your pipes." Then the Puca said to
him, "Play up for me the 'Shan Van Vocht.'"

"I don't know it," said the Piper.

"Never mind whether you do or you don't," said the Puca. "Play up, and
I'll make you know."

The Piper put wind in his bag, and he played such music as made himself
wonder.

"Upon my word, you're a fine music-master," says the Piper, then; "but
tell me where you're for bringing me."

"There's a great feast in the house of the Banshee, on the top of Croagh
Patric, to-night," says the Puca, "and I'm for bringing you there to
play music, and, take my word, you'll get the price of your trouble."

"By my word, you'll save me a journey, then," says the Piper, "for
Father William put a journey to Croagh Patric on me because I stole the
white gander from him last Martinmas."

The Puca rushed him across hills and bogs and rough places, till he
brought him to the top of Croagh Patric.

Then the Puca struck three blows with his foot, and a great door opened
and they passed in together into a fine room.

The Piper saw a golden table in the middle of the room, and hundreds of
old women sitting round about it.

The old women rose up, and said, "A hundred thousand welcomes to you,
you Puca of November. Who is this you have with you?"

"The best Piper in Ireland," says the Puca.

One of the old women struck a blow on the ground, and a door opened in
the side of the wall, and what should the Piper see coming out but the
white gander which he had stolen from Father William.

"By my conscience, then," says the Piper, "myself and my mother ate
every taste of that gander, only one wing, and I gave that to Red Mary,
and it's she told the priest I stole his gander."

The gander cleaned the table, and carried it away, and the Puca said,
"Play up music for these ladies."

The Piper played up, and the old women began dancing, and they were
dancing till they were tired. Then the Puca said to pay the Piper, and
every old woman drew out a gold piece and gave it to him.

"By the tooth of Patric," says he, "I'm as rich as the son of a lord."

"Come with me," says the Puca, "and I'll bring you home."

They went out then, and just as he was going to ride on the Puca, the
gander came up to him and gave him a new set of pipes.

The Puca was not long until he brought him to Dunmore, and he threw the
Piper off at the little bridge, and then he told him to go ho