We Rileys were no exception to the mores of family tradition. Our home was awash in blue china dogs, copper teakettles with bone handles, and needlepoints in glass frames. Our choicest relic, however, was an 18-inch long flute, given to my Uncle Seamus by his father, and, as is the way of things in Ireland, handed down from his father, who received it from his father before him.

   As a little lad, I remember the first time Uncle Seamus really let me look at his flute. Gently flipping up the brass snap locks, he raised the lid of the battered leather case, and there it lay, golden and gleaming on its plump red satin base.

   Uncle Seamus turned the instrument over with loving fingers. "No common tin flute this, you know. My word, no. This thing is solid gold, made in 1817 by Thomas Flaherty, the finest whistle maker in all of Ireland. "See here," he said. Finely etched on the back were the words: 'T. V. F. Flute maker to Royalty.' "I hear he made Prince Albert the very same kind of instrument." Expertly setting his fingers on the holes, he played a few notes of Danny Boy, crystal clear, shrill and sweet, then shut the instrument in its case and returned it to its place on the shelf by the fireplace nook.

   Uncle Seamus was not the greatest flute player, considering Ireland's talent of wonderful flutists today. He whistled the thing well enough, however, to be wheedled into playing at wakes and weddings and dances all over County Waterford. Once, he told us, he played for the Lord Mayor of Dublin at a banquet, and that he had led a parade one fine St. Patrick's day long ago when he could walk better. And sometimes, on the stoop on a warm summer evening, he would play for my mother when she asked him.

   My mother, God bless her, fussed. A canny, pessimistic soul, she viewed everything from its gloomiest side, forever predicting the worst. Perhaps her gloomy outlook served as a checkrein for my overly optimistic father, a hard-working glass blower at the Waterford crystal factory, excited by an ambition to open his own shop and blow fancy glassware for sale to tourists.

   My mother worried, afraid that one day father's expensive notions would run the family into the poorhouse. "'Tis an awful thing," she would say, "to owe money." The day my father told her he had leased a small factory in town and would approach the bank for a loan to stock the place with ovens and counters and roof fans and supplies of the best silica, she fled to the church to put up a candle.

   "Mary, the place will bring us a pot of gold bigger than the one at the end of the rainbow," my father exclaimed that night at supper. "And there is no risk at all. All that is needed is the house as collateral and both of our signatures on the loan papers."

   "How much is the loan?"

   "Three thousand good Irish pounds. Why, I can pay that back inside two years at the most. We'll do penance forever, Mary, if we let this chance wave us good-bye."

   "A mortgage?" my mother wailed. "And if we can't pay, just once, couldn't they take everything and turn us out into the street? Beggars we'd be, Liam."

   We cozied around the fireplace after the evening meal. I sat on the corner stool with my homework, father waved loan papers and pleaded with mother, and Uncle Seamus buried his head in the Evening Record, seemingly deaf to the conversation. Then he folded the newspaper, unhooked the wire arms of his glasses from his ears, and fixed my father with a hard stare.

   "Mary is right," he said. "You'd be beholden to people who would have no pity when it came to repossession." My father, his expression dour, returned his glare. "And there is nothing worse," Uncle Seamus went on, "than two people quarreling over what each believe to be a piece of the truth. I was just thinking, maybe I have a solution."

   He rose and took the flute from its place on the fireplace shelf. "I've read where a Flaherty-made flute sold for as much as eight thousand pounds. Take it, Liam. Sell it."

   "Oh, Seamus," my mother cried.

   "I couldn't bring myself to do that," my father replied.

   Seamus eased his turnip timepiece from his vest pocket and flipped it open. "If you hurry, you can catch old Slaney before he closes." I saw him tremble a little as he reopened his paper and hooked his glasses back on his nose, but his tone was perfectly steady. "I'm too old to be playing the thing anyway."

   My father left the house with the flute case under his arm. Slaney's music store was four blocks away. I went on with my homework, aware that something important had taken place. My mother, her face clouded with worry, looked to her darning. Uncle Seamus' lips formed the words as he read the newspaper.

   The front door rattled, then I heard my father's step. He was humming "My Irish Jaunting Car" as he strode into the room, walked to the shelf and replaced the flute. My mother's face brightened.

   Uncle Seamus arched his shaving brush eyebrows. "You didn't sell it?"

   "The moment I reached Slaney's store, I had a different turn of thought," my father explained. "Why not keep the flute? As long as it stays on the shelf, it's just like having eight thousand Irish pound notes ready for use if we need them. A three thousand-pound loan is the least of our worries. Right, Mary? We can pay off the thing at any time with a walk to Slaney's."

   My mother beamed. "I'm happy, Liam."

   The loan proved to be the lightest of millstones. My father paid it off in three years. He didn't exactly make a pot of gold, but he settled the mortgage on the house, put food on the table, and kept us respectably clad. I helped in the factory when time from high school permitted.

   Uncle Seamus serenely passed on one day in his sleep, just after I had graduated from high school. He left Flaherty's flute to me. I had grand notions about university and a degree in engineering if family finances could stretch that far. An occasional glance at the flute on the shelf, however, reminded me I had reserves, but my father began to develop an uncommon caution.

   "Don't they have some kind of plan at Dublin University where you can work as you learn?" he asked me one day when I was practicing blowing a slender vase at the factory.

   I assured him they had a student assistance plan.

   "Then that's the answer," he said. "You know, your mother thinks a lot of that flute. If it goes, it would leave her soul with a good part missing. I'll give you two hundred pounds when you leave. That will keep you going for a while."

   My mother, however, was more concerned about my ability to look after myself in the big city. She cornered me in the quiet of my room one evening. "You'll be forced to take to your bed with all that working and studying and no one there to see that you eat right," she insisted. "The flute is yours. I'm sure Uncle Seamus left it to you to pay for your college education. You have no inclination to play it. Sell it."

   The day before I was to leave, while my mother and father were away at the factory, I took the flute to Slaney's.

   "Worth about 20 or 25 pounds," old Slaney said, without looking at the instrument. "You're Liam Riley's son, right?"

   I nodded. "I don't understand," I said. "This is a Thomas Flaherty original, bought by my great, great, great-granduncle and kept in the family all these years."

   "It has Flaherty's signature on it," Slaney said. "Lots of flutes have that. But then Flaherty never did include the words 'to Royalty' on any of his works. The first forger did that, and all other forgers followed suit. Besides, Flaherty worked in gold. Brass and gold plated this one is."

   At supper that evening, my last supper before leaving for the university, my mother kept eyeing the empty shelf where the flute should have sat. Finally, in a burst of emotion, she asked: "The flute. Did you sell it?"

   My father dipped a worried head low into his soup plate.

   I shook my head. "I packed it with my things," I said. My mother beamed. "Besides," I went on, "if I happen to need money, it will be just like the flute case was full of bank notes. Won't it, father?"

   "It will, son, it will, " my father said, avoiding my eyes.