J. F. Campbell Collection > Fireside stories of Ireland

72 THE FIRESIDE STORIES OF IRELAND.
grass under one of them, and he had a vision of the same
beautiful lady ; but this time she had displeasure on her
face. He thought she was going to speak once or twice,
but she stopped herself just as her Hps were opening.
"When he woke, it was a fine sunny morning, and he found
himself hungry. Over his head were the loveliest coloured
apples, and in the other tree some dull-coloured pears. Up
he stretched his hand, and plucked an apple, and ate it.
It was very sweet, but before he could get another into his
mouth he felt something queer about his nose. It was
tickling him, and beginning to feel very heavy, and before
you could count three, the end of it was down on the ground,
and ploughing away through the grass. " Oh, Gracious ! "
says he, " what's this for ? '' But while he spoke, he felt it
pulUng his head down, so that he was obliged to squat as
low as he could to ease his face of the weight. The end of
his nose was now at the very end of the field.
I cant't tell, nor could you feel, the state he was in, for,
please God, nothing of the kind will ever happen to one of
ourselves ; but when he was looking at it running over the
ditch of the field, a pear dropped at his feet out of the next
tree. "^Tio knows," said he, '^ but this is a God-send 1 "
So he got a bit of it into his mouth as well as his nose
would let him, and the first swallow he made, off went the
new nose, and the near end kept creeping and curling away,
ding-dong, after the far end.
" Oh, thanks be to Goodness," said he, " and thank you
heartily, my good fairy ! I think my wicked old father-in-
law (that is to be) won't escape me this time."
He had some trifle of money left, and with this he bought
an old woman's cloak and bonnet, and a little basket, and
plucked off some apples and pears, and away with him to
the town outside the palace.
That day after dinner, the butler handed the king three
lovely apples, that he said the fruit-seller in the town
brought up an hour before. The king could hardly per-
suade himself to taste any of them, they looked so nice.
At last he put a piece of one in his mouth, but it was hardly
in his stomach when his nose was down on the carpet, over
to the wall, up on the window stool, out over the frame.