Irish Fairy Tales

Maurice Connor, a blind man, was the finest piper in Munster, and knew a tune that when he played, it forced everyone to dance. One day at a wedding by the sea, he drank a great deal of whiskey, and foolishly began to play that tune. Everyone, and every creature down to the crabs, scallops and oysters, began to dance. A mermaid came dancing up out of the sea and persuaded him to marry her and live in the sea. He promised his old mother to send, every year, a piece of burned wood to Trafraska to show he was alive and well.

His mother died soon after the wedding, but the piece of burned wood drifted ashore every year for more than a century.