The Romance of the Fairy Cure
I.
Nelly Phelan’s child is ailing;
Hour by hour, the babe is failing;
Squeeling, kicking, biting, whining,
To an atomy he’s pining.
II.
Once he was a fine, wee fellow;
Now he’s wrinkled, thin, and yellow.
Playful then he was, and civil;
Now he’s cross-grained, as the devil.
III.
To a wise woman Nell’s walking;
Long time they’re in secret talking;
First she heard all Nell’s description;
Then she wrote out a prescription.
IV.
“Take this cure, although a strange one;
It is needed when they change one;
By it you’ll the fairies bother,
Get your child, and choke the other.
V.
“You must make the fairy speak out,
Ere your child, from them, you take out.
If you follow what’s here written,
You shall find the biter bitten.”
VI.
Cried Nell, “Be sure that I’ll observe it;
If I fail I’ll not deserve it:
I would walk the wide world over,
If my child I could recover.”
VII.
Five hundred egg-shells Nelly chooses
In a pot, the shells she bruises;
In spring water now they’re boiling,
Stirring round the pot she’s toiling.
VIII.
Red-hot now the poker’s ready;
While Nell stirs the pot, so steady:
From the child, in cradle lying,
Nell now hears a strange voice crying—
IX.
“Mammy! Mammy! what’s that boiling?
Why with potstick are you toiling?”
Nell, with fright, to drop was ready,
Yet she answered, cool, and steady—
X.
“Egg-shells, deary! I am brewing,
Cock’s broth for my babe I’m stewing.
When I skim off all the dripping,
Then it will be fit for sipping.”
XI.
“Though five hundred years I’m chewing,
Egg-shells never saw I brewing;
Though five centuries I’m cheating,
Ne’er have I seen cock’s broth eating.”
XII.
Quick the poker Nelly seizes;
To the cradle now she races;
Red-hot down its throat she crams it;
With her might and main she rams it.
XIII.
Gone like lightning is the fairy;
In its stead, there lies her deary—
Her brave boy—her darling Terry,
With his lip and cheek of cherry.
James Clarence Mangan.