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Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
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The Man and His Boots
THERE was a doubter in Donegal, and he would not hear of
ghosts or sheogues, and there was a house in Donegal that had been haunted as
long as man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got the
better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire in the room
under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them On the hearth, and
stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a time he prospered in his
unbelief; but a little while after the night had fallen, and everything had got
very dark, one of his boots began to move. It got up off the floor and gave a
kind of slow jump towards the door, and then the other boot did the same, and
after that the first boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck the man that an
invisible being had got into his boots, and was now going away in them. When the
boots reached the door they went up-stairs slowly, and then the man heard them
go tramp, tramp round the haunted room over his head. A few minutes passed, and
he could hear them again upon the stairs, and after that in the passage outside,
and then one of them came in at the door, and the other gave a jump past it and
came in too. They jumped along towards him, and then one got up and hit him, and
afterwards the other hit him, and then again the first hit him, and so on, until
they drove him out of the room, and finally out of the house. In this way he was
kicked out by his own boots, and Donegal was avenged upon its doubter. It is not
recorded whether the invisible being was a ghost or one of the Sidhe, but the
fantastic nature of the vengeance is like the work of the Sidhe who live in the
heart of fantasy.
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