D’ye know how ducks came to swim? Ye don’t? Ah, the sarrah be aff you for a scholar! Well I’ll tell ye.
When Our Lord was on earth, He was hidin’ from His enemies one day under a heap of flax-shoughs. An’ doesn’t a wastrel of a hin come up an’ start to tear with her feet. Bad scran to the same hins an’ their tearin’. She stripped the shoughs aff Him, indeed. But doesn’t the ducks come up then, an’ thim cacklin’ like mad, an’ they flew at the hin an’ scarred her aff. Then they covered Him agin with their beaks, an’ sat on Him, cackli’ away.
The sojers came an’ saw the cacklin’ ducks an’ passed it by.
The ducks couldn’t swim then, ye know. But doesn’t a big flood come over the country, an’ He gave the ducks the power to swim. The hins were drowned but the ducks were saved.
An’ THAT’S why ducks can swim now.