The Magic Apples

A poor man called Marty lived in a little hut in the middle of a rushy field and every morning and every evening he was seen, on his knees, traversing the field, gathering something. Now what he gathered was manna which fell to the earth with the dew and sufficed him for his breakfast and his supper.

One day a beggar man came to the hut, along with his daughter, Sinead, and he asked for food and shel­ter. Marty shared his manna with them and after the supper they went to sleep beside the fire. In the morning when they were about to leave Marty real­ised that he had taken a fancy to Sinead so he called the beggar man aside and asked if he could have her as his wife.

‘How will you support her?’ asked the beggar man.

‘On manna,’ said Marty, ‘the way I support myself.’

The beggar man hummed and hawed until Sinead showed by her smile that she was prepared to stay and become Marty’s wife. She was tired of travelling, tired of walking barefoot over roads and by-roads and she hated knocking on doors begging for bread and milk.

The couple were married and in time they had one son whom they named Marteen after his father. They lived on the manna and they never felt hungry be­cause of it being so peculiarly filling. After some years Marty died and so the wife had to gather the manna herself. She was a lazy woman and she didn’t like going out into the fields twice a day so what she decided to do was to bring out a big basin and to gather enough Manna for a week. But her greed and her laziness were her undoing because after that not a bit of manna fell on the field and she was so hungry that she had to go and work for farmers and on Sunday she had to beg at the chapel gates. Now her son Marteen was a very precocious boy: he could do tricks with matches, he could make fire with pieces of stone and he was great at somersaults. He had it in mind to travel the world when he grew up. He used to sit at crossroads and talk to pedlars and enquire of the big deeds that went on in the big world.

One day a pedlar told him about a lord in the city of Limerick who had a beautiful house in its own grounds, who kept a capital table, served fine wines and victuals, had his carriage and equipage and a daughter that had no equal for sauciness. Marteen decided that he wanted to see this lord and this daughter and that he would go there and impress them with his clever ways.

‘You fool,’ his mother said and reminded him that he was descended from beggars.

Still the, wanderlust was on him and he vowed to go even if he should die of hunger on the roadside. His mother loved him so much that she wanted to help him and so she went from one house to another explaining her plight. All in all she collected sixpence, gave it to him and wished him God speed.

He had gone a few miles when he met a man who asked him for alms and he gave him a little of his money and went on. Then he met another man who begged for something and he gave him some more and went on. By the time he met the third beggar he was reluctant to part with any of his money.

‘I have hardly anything left,’ he said.

The beggar said that they would go together to the inn and would buy something and eat it together as friends. In the inn they ordered bread and milk and while they were eating he told the beggar man his story; how he had always dreamed of adventure and how he was setting out for the lord’s house in the hope of wooing the daughter. Now they ate and drank ravenously because they were so hungry but Marteen noticed something very extraordinary and it was this: the loaf didn’t get any smaller and neither did the measure of milk, so much so that when the landlady came out she remarked that they had eaten nothing and she refused to take any money from them. Marteen insisted that she take a little and she blessed him for his good heart and sent him with a drop of holy water on his way.

As he was speaking the beggar walked into the solid earth with the same ease as if passing through a bead curtain. Marteen put the ring into his pocket and straightaway it bulged out with gold, he then put it into his other pocket and the same thing happened and there he was walking along with two finikins of gold, chuckling at his good luck. When he got to the town he brought himself a serge suit, a white shirt with a stiff collar, a peaked cap and a hunter watch. He also bought a doctor’s bag in which to carry his gold. He then set out for the lord’s palace which was on the outskirts of the town. It was a palace made of pink stone with waterfalls on either side and peacocks in the front garden unfurling their tails and letting out their mysterious cries. He walked like a toff up the front steps and because of being dressed so smartly and talking so fluently he was admitted and made such an impression on the lord that it was assumed that he was a king’s son.

The young daughter linked him as they went in to dinner and joked with him about being so educated. He drank the wine in great gulps and felt himself to be falling in love with the young girl, but due to intoxication he fell asleep and had to be carried to bed by the servants. On the way the ring slipped off his finger and the lord’s daughter found it. She was going to keep it safely for him and was just admiring it when her stepsister pounced on her. ‘Give me that,’ said the stepsister, ‘I’ll keep it for him.’

‘No you won’t,’ said the daughter, and they had a tussle over it and the stepsister got it and ran to her room and locked her door. To her great delight she found that the casket where she placed it filled up with gold and that when she put it into the washbasin the same thing happened, and finally she stuffed it into her wardrobe which began to bulge with gold bars.

When the daughter asked the stepsister in the morn­ing to give the ring back she said she had thrown it in the lake because it was an unlucky ring.

On his way he chanced upon three talking cats. Soon they were joined by a fourth cat who had just come from the lord’s castle and was all agog relay­ing the story of what had happened to her in the castle and of what could be done to avert a tragedy, which she had caused by accident. As she was invis­ibly leaping about the room the lord’s knife struck her tail and three drops of blood fell into his venison which he ate without realising it. As a result the lord had three kittens inside of him and was dying of an agony that could not be cured until he drank three draughts of water from the boundary well of Coolawn.

Now this well was near to Marteen’s home so he hurried on and got his mother to fill three bottles from the well and he set out again for the lord’s house. There were doctors and nurses around the lord’s bedside but none of them knew what to do and there was he, roaring like billyo.

‘I’ll cure him,’ said Marteen and asked to be left alone with the patient.

He then made him drink from the three bottles and out jumped the kittens and bolted up the chimney. Within minutes the lord was up and well and asking for oysters. Marteen endeavoured again to get his ring back, but the daughter explained that she did not have it. In fact it was spawning gold in the stepsister’s room but no one knew. He said goodbye to them and set off hoping he might remeet the beggar man, who had given it to him in the first place.

‘I want us to divide these treasures,’ said the young­est boy.

‘So do I,’ said the middle boy

‘But I have a right to the lot,’ said the eldest and so they started sparring again.

Marteen told them to go home and that if they came back on the morrow he would sort it out for them and find a solution to their quarrel. So the boys promised to be peaceable until they met next day. When they were gone, he went to an old farmyard nearby, found a shovel and came back and dug and dug until he found the ring, the goblet and the harp, buried under clay and flint.

The ring had the powers to transport him anywhere in two minutes, so he made the wish and immediately was knocking on the lord’s door and being admitted. He was invited to join the lords and ladies as they went in to dinner.

He called on his harp to amuse the assembled company with various tunes, he drank from his goblet which was always full and unfortunately his head became heavy and once again he fell asleep and had to be put to bed. Now while he was asleep the step­sister took the ring off his finger, took the harp and the goblet and hid them in her chambers. Marteen was horrified when he wakened up. Again he asked the servants and he asked the daughter but they all pleaded ignorance and so he set out for home.

He walked and he walked until he came to a wild orchard where there were apples growing. On some trees the apples were bright red and on others they were golden russet. Being hungry and thirsty he plucked a red apple and ate it. As he was eating he ­felt a great disturbance in his head – ‘Crunch, Crunch’ – and then he felt some protuberances and when he put his hand up he found that he had sprouted two great horns. He ran down to the lake to take a look at himself and was delirious with fright. Some little voice inside him told him to eat one of the golden russet apples and as he did there was another almighty ‘Crunch, Crunch’ and the horns snapped and fell at his feet.

The daughter began to cry. She looked quite pathetic with tears dropping on to her bright green horns. Some horns had grown so long that their owners began to butt the floor like wild animals. The lamenta­tions filled the hall as they begged Marteen to relent.

‘Not unless I have my rings, my goblet and my harp back,’ said Marteen, adamantly.

‘Who has them?’ asked the lord, trying to be majes­tic but his silly horns made him quite absurd-looking.

‘She has them,’ said the daughter, pointing to her stepsister whose horns were a very nasty purple, magenta even.

‘Villanous,’ said the lord and he dispatched her to get them.

The two rings, the goblet and the harp were brought before Marteen and then the lord placed his daughter’s hand in Marteen’s and said, ‘She is yours, make her obey you.’

Marteen opened the second bag and gave each of them a golden apple. At once the horns snapped off and fell to the floor where they were gathered into a big heap. The crowd began to chant and intone a song of praise as they formed a chain and danced around the pyre to the strains of the melodious harp. The daughter squeezed Marteen’s hand and with her big blue limpid eyes conveyed her love to him. He chuckled to himself, knowing at last that all his wishes had come true – the daughter’s heart beat with love and gratitude towards him and they had as much gold as they would need for the whole of their lives. As for the stepsister, she was sent to the kitchen where she would have to do a year’s hard work as penance for her wicked deed.

He could only put it down to good luck, and good luck is something you’re born with.