Since the earth began its twisting, or since very soon after it began, there have been persons on it who perceived more or less early in life that it was seldom possible to get something in return for quite nothing, and that even if you did the delicate situation then arising was attended often with at least as much personal danger as delight, and generally with much more. Tom Toole knew all about it, so he was not going to sell his own little white soul to the devil, though he was sixty years of age and his soul, he expected, was shrivelled a bit now like a dried fig. He had no faith in Wishing Hats, or Magic Carpets, or Herbs of Longevity, and he had not heard of the Philosopher’s Stone, but he had a belief in an Elixir, somewhere in the world, that would make you young again. He had heard, too, of the Transmutation of Metals; indeed, he had associated himself a great many years ago with a Belfast brassfounder in the production of certain sovereigns. The brassfounder perished under the rigours of his subsequent incarceration in gaol, but Tom Toole had been not at all uncomfortable in the lunatic asylum to which a compassionate retribution had assigned him. It was in the Asylum that he met the man from Kilsheelan who, if you could believe him, really had got a “touch” from the fairies and could turn things he had no wish for into the things he would be wanting. The man from Kilsheelan first discovered his gift, so he told Tom Toole, when he caught a turtle dove one day and changed it into a sheep. Then he turned the sheep into a lather-pot just to make sure, and it was sure. So he thought he would like to go to the land of the Ever Young which is in the western country, but he did not know how he could get there unless he went in a balloon. Sure, he sat down in his cabin and turned the shaving-pot into a fine balloon, but the balloon was so large it burst down his house and he was brought to the asylum. Well that was clear enough to Tom Toole, and after he had got good advice from the man from Kilsheelan it came into his mind one day to slip out of the big gates of the asylum, and, believe me, since then he had walked the roads of Munster singing his ballads and searching for something was difficult to find, and that was his youth. For Tom Toole was growing old, a little old creature he was growing, gay enough and a bit of a philanderer still, but age is certain and puts the black teeth in your mouth and the whiteness of water on your hair.

One time he met a strange little old quick-talking man who came to him; he seemed to just bob up in front of him from the road itself.

“Ah, good day t’ye, and phwat part are ye fram?”

“I’m from beyant,” said Tom Toole, nodding back to the Knockmealdown Mountains where the good monks had lodged him for a night.

“Ah, God deliver ye and indeed I don’t want to know your business at all but ... but ... where are ye going?”

Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven little words there would be at least one spit. There was yellow dust in the flaps of his ears and neat bushes of hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered his nose, and the skull of him was bare but there was a good tuft on his chin. Tom Toole looked at him straight and queer for he did not admire the fierce expression of him, and there were smells of brimstone on him like a farmer had been dipping his ewes, and he almost expected to see a couple of horns growing out of his brow.

“It’s not meself does be knowing at all, good little man,” said Tom Toole to him, “and I might go to the fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk on to Dungarvan, in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of lobsters for me nice supper.”

And he turned away to go off upon his road but the little old man followed and kept by his side, telling him of a misfortune he had endured; a chaise of his, a little pony chaise, had been almost destroyed, but the ruin was not so great for a kind lady of his acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination, had given him four pounds, one shilling and ninepence. “Ah, not that I’m needing your money, ma’am, says I, but damage is damage, I says, and it’s not right, I says, that I should be at the harm of your coachman.” And there he was spitting and going on like a clock spilling over its machinery when he unexpectedly grasped Tom Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and Good luck, and that he might meet him again.

Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a cross roads, and there was the same old man sitting in a neat little pony chaise smoking his pipe.

“Where are ye going?” says he.

“Dungarvan,” said Tom Toole.

“Jump in then,” said the little old man, and they jogged along the road conversing together; he was sharp as an old goat.

“What is your aspiration?” he said, and Tom Toole told him.

“That’s a good aspiration, indeed. I know what you’re seeking, Tom Toole; let’s get on now and there’ll be tidings in it.”

When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the public at Dungarvan there was a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive the traction engines, for there was a circus in it. Getting their fill of porter, they were, and the nice little white loaves; very decent boys, but one of them a Scotchman with a large unrejoicing face. And he had a hooky nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils and the two tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. Peter Mullane was telling a tale, and there was a sad bit of a man from Bristol, with a sickness in his breast and a cough that would heave out the side of a mountain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his friend sat down and then he proceeded with his tale.

“Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Carlin, and away he was gone to the four corners of the world. And when he came to the first corner he saw a place where the rivers do be rushing, ...”

“... the only darn thing that does rush then in this country,” interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer.

“Shut your ...” began the man from Bristol, but he was taken with the cough, until his cheeks were scarlet and his eyes, fixed angrily upon the Highland man, were strained to teardrops. “Shut your ...” he began it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing spasm that rocked him, while his friends looked at him and wondered would he be long for this world. He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed “... dam face” to that Highland man. And then Peter Mullane went on:

“I am not given to thinking,” said he, “that the Lord would put a country the like of Ireland in a wee corner of the world and he wanting the nook of it for thistles and the poor savages that devour them. Well, Neal Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be rushing ...” he paused invitingly—“and he saw a little fairy creature with fine tresses of hair sitting under a rowan tree.”

“A rowan?” exclaimed the Highland man.

Peter nodded.

“A Scottish tree!” declared the other.

“O shut your ...” began the little coughing man, but again his conversation was broken, and by the time he had recovered from his spasms the company was mute.

“If,” said Peter Mullane, “you’d wish to observe the rowan in its pride and beauty just clap your eye upon it in the Galtee Mountains. How would it thrive, I ask you, in a place was stiff with granite and sloppy with haggis? And what would ye do, my clever man, what would ye do if ye met a sweet fairy woman...?”

“I’d kiss the Judy,” said the Highland man spitting a great splash.

Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two as if he did not love him very much, but then he continued:

“Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet creature. Warm! says she to him with a friendly tone. Begod, ma’am, it is a hot day, he said, and thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my aspiration. And sure enough when he sat down beside her she asked him What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin? and he said, saving your grace, ma’am, it is but to enjoy the world and to be easy in it. That is a good aspiration, she said, and she gave him some secret advice. He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, and he followed the advice, and in a month or two he had grown very wealthy and things were easy with him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy mind, and his farm looked a drifty little place that was holding him down from big things. So he was not satisfied though things were easy with him, and one night before he went sleeping he made up his mind ‘It’s too small it is. I’ll go away from it now and a farm twice as big I will have, three times as big, yes, I will have it ten times as big.’ He went sleeping on the wildness of his avarice, and when he rolled off the settle in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs he hit his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed it and had a kind of thought that the place had got smaller. As he went from the door he struck his brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the house. What is come to me, he roared in his pains; and looking into his field there were his five cows and his bullock no bigger than sheep—will ye believe that, then—and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits, mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws were no bigger than chafers and the neat little wood was no more account than a grove of raspberry bushes. Away he goes to the surgeon’s to have drops put in his eyes for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but on his return there was his bullock no bigger than an old boot, and his cabin had wasted to the size of a birdcage.”

Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of porter. And the Highland man asked him “Well, what happened?”

“O he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over the hedge as you might an old can, and then he strolled off to another corner of the world, Neal Carlin did, whistling ‘The Lanty Girl.’”

Tom Toole’s friend spoke to Peter Mullane. “Did ye say it was in the Galtee Mountains that the young fellow met the lady?”

“In the Galtee Mountains,” said Peter.

“To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom Toole,” cried the little old man, “Come on now, there’ll be tidings in it!”

So off they drove; and when they had driven a day and slept a couple of nights they were there, and they came to a place where the rivers do be rushing and there was a rowan tree but no lady in it.

“What will we do now, Tom Toole?” says the old man.

“We’ll not stint it,” says he, and they searched by night and by day looking for a person would give them their youth again. They sold the chaise for some guineas and the pony for a few more, and they were walking among the hills for a thousand days but never a dust of fortune did they discover. Whenever they asked a person to guide them they would be swearing at them or they would jeer.

“Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins for ye!” said one.

“Thinking of your graves and travelling to the priest ye should be!” said another.

“The nails of your boots will be rusty and rotted searching for the like of that,” said a third.

“It’s two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye want,” said one, “take a sup of that and you’ll be young again!”

“Of black milk!” said Tom Toole’s friend; “where would we get that?”

The person said he would get a pull of it in the Comeragh Mountains, fifty miles away.

“Tom Toole,” said the little old-man, “it’s what I’ll do. I’ll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty guineas’ worth of blather. And when I find the cow I’ll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it.”

So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, “I’ll be a score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!” much as an old crow might shout it to a sweep.

When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world and the day after he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass carts were dribbling into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl in a field trying to secure an ass.

“Oi.... Oi...!” the girl was calling out to him and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture and it not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a long fall of hair that the wind was easy with.

“’Tis warm!” she said to Tom Toole. “Begod, ma’am,” says he to her quickly, taking his cue, “it is a hot day.”

“Where are ye going, Tom Toole?” she asked him, and he said, “I am seeking a little contrivance, ma’am, that will let me enjoy the world and live easy in it. That is my aspiration.”

“I’ll give you what you are seeking,” and she gave him a wee bottle with red juices in it.

“Indeed, ma’am, I’m obliged to ye,” and he took her by the hand and wished her Good day and Good luck and that he might meet her again.

When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his searching. He hid the bottle in his breast and went up into the mountains as high as he could go to bide the coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but Tom Toole had never heard the name of him—it would be some foreign place in the corners of the world like Portugal, that he had come from; no doubt. Up he went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then fern and burst furze, and then little but heather, and great rocks strewn about like shells, and sour brown streams coming from the bog. He wandered about for twenty days and the old man did not return, and for forty days he was still alone.

“The divil receive him but I’ll die against his return!” And Tom Toole pulled the wee bottle from his breast. He was often minded to lift the cork and take a sup of the elixir of youth. “But,” says he, “it would be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth sudden I’d be off to the wonders of the land and leave that old fool roaming till the day of Judgment.” And he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A thousand days he was on his lonely wanderings, soft days as mellow as cream, and hard days when it is ribs of iron itself you would want to stiffen you against the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to the lappet of his coat, very ugly he was, but the little stranger sheep of the mountain were not daunted when he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft call for him. A thousand days was in it and then he said:

“Good evening to me good luck. I’ve had my enough of this. Sure I’ll despise myself for ever more if I wait the tide of another drifting day. It’s tonight I’ll sleep in a bed with a quilt of down over me heart, for I’m going to be young again.”

He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and went in a room in the public to have a cup of porter. A little forlorn old man also came in from the road and sat down beside, and when they looked at each other they each let out a groan. “Glory be!” says he. “Glory be,” cried Tom Toole, “it’s the good little man in the heel of it. Where in hell are ye from?”

“From the mountains.”

“And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?”

“Divil a clod.”

“Nor the Kerry cow?”

“Divil a horn.”

“Nor the good milk?”

“Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with the smell of it. Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high and the deep of this realm and believe you me it is not in it; the long and the wide of this realm ... not in it.” He kept muttering sadly “not in it.”

“Me good little man,” cried Tom Toole, “don’t be havering like an old goat. Here it is! the fortune of the world!”

He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it before his eyes. “The drops that ’ull give ye your youth as easy as shifting a shirt. Come, now. I’ve waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn’t bring myself to desart a comrade was ranging the back of the wild regions for the likes of me. Many’s the time I’ve lifted that cork, and thinks I: He’s gone, and soon I’ll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was in it. I could not do it, not for silver and not for gold and not for all the mad raging mackerel that sleep in the sea.”

The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two hands. He was but a quavering stick of a man now; half dead he was, and his name it is Martin O’Moore.

“Is it the tale stuff, Tom Toole?”

“From herself I got it,” he said, and he let on to him about that sweet-spoken young girl.

“Did she give you the directions on the head of it?”

“What directions is it?”

“The many drops is a man to drink!”

“No, but a good sup of it will do the little job.”

“A good sup of it, Tom Toole, a good sup of it, ay?” says he unsqueezing the cork. “The elixir of youth, a good sup of it, says you, a good sup of it, a great good good sup of it!”

And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee bottle of its every red drop. He stood there looking like a man in a fit, holding the empty bottle in his hand until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very eyes he thought were deceiving him; not an inch of his skin but had the dew of fear on it, for the little old man began to change his appearance quick like the sand running through a glass, or as fast as the country changes down under a flying swan.

“Mother o’ God!” screamed Martin O’Moore, “it’s too fast backward I’m growing, dizzy I am.”

And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black hair grown upon it, the whiskers flew away from him and his face was young. He began to wear a strange old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little knickerbockers of a boy before you could count a score. And he had a bit of a cold just then, though he was out of it in a twink, and he let a sneeze that burst a button off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all that ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell away, like the dust in an hour glass, till he was no bigger than an acorn and then devil a bit of him was left there at all.

Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emptiness and he made to go away, but he turned in the doorway and stretching out his arms to the empty room he whispered “The greed! the avarice! May hell pour all its buckets on your bad little heart! May....” But just then he caught sight of the cup of porter that Martin O’Moore had forgotten to drink, so he went back to drink his enough and then went out into the great roaring world where he walked from here to there until one day he came right back to his old Asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he was an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man from Kilsheelan digging potatoes just inside the gates of the sunny garden.

“’Tis warm!” said the traveller staring at him through the railings, but the man from Kilsheelan only said “Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying or going ye are?”

THE CHERRY TREE