Lives of the Fur Folk

Brownie was one of the first family of Fluff-Button and Cuni. It has already been related how she fought the rats in the Garry's Hill burrow, and enough has been said to show th...

The spoor was impressed deeply in the muddy ground where a stream ran by the path. The broad toes were well defined, and the punctures of the great digging claws had cut the cla...

On the northern slope of Knockdane there is a little glen whose sides are hung with ivy and aromatic ale-hoof, and which is so deep that even on the longest day of the year the...

'Get out, ye baste!' growled Marky Borrigan, shaking the sack he carried over the mouth of a barrel. There was a stifled grunt, a struggle, and a grey bundle fell into the cask...

From Kilmanagh Hill the highlands stretch north and south mile after mile, with here and there the grey head of a limestone crag protruding through the heather. In the less rugg...

On the sunny side of the wood where the larches spindle up tall and thin, each trying to outstrip the rest in the race for free air and sunshine, is the 'earth' which Stubbs and...

The day on which the first swallow came was marked with white in Grimalkin's calendar. He was looking for chaffinches' nests in the big whitethorn hedge at the back of Ballymore...

The temptation came late in February, for that is famine time in the country-side. The rabbits were alert, and it was difficult to stalk birds successfully when the leaves were...

A lane winds steeply through Knockdane Wood; and at the top of the hill where the trees grow sparsely, there is a gate leading to a furze-grown field. The grass is cropped short...

A little band of forewandered plover flapped southwards drearily. To the east the mountains were still encumbered with the great snowclouds which had driven over Knockdane an ho...

All the following winter Redpad hunted in Knockdane. Several times the hounds came and he had to run for his brush, but it takes a great deal to catch a hardy Irish fox who is s...

Fluff-Button and Cuni re-opened the big burrow at the top of Garry's Hill. Garry's Hill is a big grassy mound just outside Knockdane, with one stunted hawthorn growing on the to...

In the valley at the foot of Knockdane Hill there is a great meadow. It is like an island surrounded by the sea, for the woods come close up to its hedge on all sides except on...

So this was the coming of Redpad to Knockdane. A whole book might be written about his early adventures, but as this is to be his history, I must pass them by to speak of those...

When it was discovered that the stable-cat had a litter of kittens in the hayloft, sentence of death was pronounced immediately, and before noon three little grey corpses floate...

Vix lay under a bush with her brush curled round her nose and eyes. Only her ears, ever wakeful and alert, kept watch while she slept. It was six o'clock, and a still misty morn...

In September daylight and darkness are equally divided. The days are still and mellow, with a blue haze which clings to the shadows of the woods; and at night the big moon rolls...

Vix found the old drain at the beginning of March. It was warm and roomy, and ran under the gate of the Plantation Field. Once upon a time, before the reservoir was built furthe...

Four summers have passed over Grimalkin's head since we saw him last; four years of uninterrupted supremacy in the woods. His own kind feared him; the lesser Fur Folk fled from...