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The Story:
The old swing, ya see it there, lad? That’s what me father an’ I erected when I were just a wee one like you. An’ that well standin’ there… Aye, that cursed well.
I didn’t have your fancy swing sets an’ your outdoor games of every sorts, but I had that swing. It couldn’t go high, the sluggish mule, but swing it did. An’ I would swing every chance I got.
One day I were a-swingin’ up a storm as always when I remembered somethin’ me friend, Hamish, had told me at lessons.
“Toss a coin in that well,” he said. “Make a wish on it, an’ it comes to a truth!”
Now, you can imagine, a boy my size, why not test his theory, aye? So, I hopped off that swing an’ tossed me a coin, straightaway. I wished as hard as any boy had ever mustered for a bicycle with whitewall tires.
When I arrived to the cottage for supper, there sat a brand new bicycle with whitewall tires, leanin’ right against me bedroom wall. Again, a boy my size, well… I had to ride it. Me mother were a lousy cook, anyhow.
The wind in me hair, the speed in me legs, an’ the freedom in me heart, I rode her till dark. But at me cottage, I learned me freedom cost that of another. I saw him, me own father, bein’ led away by the clasps. “A bicycle were missin’ from the shop,” I overheard.
Me pa a suspect for the wish I made. Well, I were havin’ none of it, I tell ya! I rode it out to that old well and peered over its rocky sides. Just too deep to climb down safely, she was. But I wanted me pa back.
I saw only a singular solution. I picked up that bicycle and shoved it down that well’s throat. “You can keep it!” That’s what I told that old well.
The next day, me pa returned with the charges dropped. “It was all a misunderstanding,” they said. Aye, it were a misunderstandin’ alright—a big one.
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