Mick came to her house at midnight
and pounded on Biddy’s door.
“I have murdered William O’Sheehy
for sucking the blood from the poor.
“He put me out of my cottage,
he burned my house to the ground.
I have murdered William O’Sheehy
and will hang for it, if I am found.”
Biddy spoke to her magic bottle,
she held it against her ear
and heard O’Sheehy’s men riding
and whispered, “Go far from here.
“Take the little road to Liscanoor.
Speak to nobody on the way.
Take the broken dinghy to Kilrush
and a ship to Amerikay.”
Mick wrote a name in the ashes
while the moon looked in at the door.
“Before I go, Biddy darling,
will you help me one time more?
“Will you tell the murdered man’s sister
I’m wanted dead or alive,
and if she’ll follow a wanted man
I’ll send for her when I arrive?”
Biddy spoke to her magic bottle,
and the woods and the roads fell asleep,
the tinkers and turnips and mill wheels,
the soldiers and salmon and sheep.
Mick the Moonlighter’s weariness left him.
It circled O’Sheehy’s land
and darted through Biddy’s window
and settled on Biddy’s hand.
She folded its wings with a promise,
she stroked its breast with a sigh,
she made it a nest in her right sleeve
and closed its wicked green eye.
Not a soul stirred or wakened
from Feakle to Usher’s Well.
O’Sheehy’s men came in the morning,
saying, “Tell, tell.”
“The bird has flown,” said Biddy,
“where the moon and the stars run free.
The man you seek is fast asleep,
safe on the Irish Sea.”