“When he saw that he could not see a glimpse, and when I myself said to him that I would get out in spite of him, he gave a spring out of the water, and he stood in the mouth of the cave, and he said that he would have revenge for the sight of his eye. I had but to stay there crouched the length of the night, holding in my breath in such a way that he might not find out where I was.
“When he felt the birds calling in the morning, and knew that the day was, he said–’Art thou sleeping? Awake and let out my lot of goats.’ I killed the buck. He cried, ’I do believe that thou art killing my buck.’
“’I am not,’ said I, ’but the ropes are so tight that I take long to loose them.’ I let out one of the goats, and there he was caressing her, and he said to her, ’There thou art thou shaggy, hairy white goat; and thou seest me, but I see thee not.’ I kept letting them out by the way of one and one, as I flayed the buck, and before the last one was out I had him flayed bag-wise. Then I went and I put my legs in place of his legs, and my hands in place of his forelegs, and my head in place of his head, and the horns on top of my head, so that the brute might think that it was the buck. I went out. When I was going out the giant laid his hand on me, and he said, ’There thou art, thou pretty buck; thou seest me, but I see thee not.’ When I myself got out, and I saw the world about me, surely, oh, king! joy was on me. When I was out and had shaken the skin off me, I said to the brute, ’I am out now in spite of you.’
“’Aha!’ said he, ’hast thou done this to me. Since thou wert so stalwart that thou hast got out, I will give thee a ring that I have here; keep the ring, and it will do thee good.’
“’I will not take the ring from you,’ said I, ’but throw it, and I will take it with me.’ He threw the ring on the flat ground, I went myself and I lifted the ring, and I put it on my finger. When he said me then, ’Is the ring fitting thee?’ I said to him, ’It is.’ Then he said, ’Where art thou, ring?’ And the ring said, ’I am here.’ The brute went and went towards where the ring was speaking, and now I saw that I was in a harder case than ever I was. I drew a dirk. I cut the finger from off me, and I threw it from me as far as I could out on the loch, and there was a great depth in the place. He shouted, ’Where art thou, ring?’ And the ring said, ’I am here,’ though it was on the bed of ocean. He gave a spring after the ring, and out he went in the sea. And I was as pleased then when I saw him drowning, as though you should grant my own life and the life of my two sons with me, and not lay any more trouble on me.
“When the giant was drowned I went in, and I took with me all he had of gold and silver, and I went home, and surely great joy was on my people when I arrived. And as a sign now look, the finger is off me.”
“Yes, indeed, Conall, you are wordy and wise,” said the king. “I see the finger is off you. You have freed your two sons, but tell me a case in which you ever were that is harder than to be looking on your son being hanged tomorrow, and you shall get the soul of your eldest son.”
“Then went my father,” said Conall, “and he got me a wife, and I was married. I went to hunt. I was going beside the sea, and I saw an island over in the midst of the loch, and I came there where a boat was with a rope before her, and a rope behind her, and many precious things within her. I looked myself on the boat to see how I might get part of them. I put in the one foot, and the other foot was on the ground, and when I raised my head what was it but the boat over in the middle of the loch, and she never stopped till she reached the island. When I went out of the boat the boat returned where she was before. I did not know now what I should do. The place was without meat or clothing, without the appearance of a house on it. I came out on the top of a hill. Then I came to a glen; I saw in it, at the bottom of a hollow, a woman with a child, and the child was naked on her knee, and she had a knife in her hand. She tried to put the knife to the throat of the babe, and the babe began to laugh in her face, and she began to cry, and she threw the knife behind her. I thought to myself that I was near my foe and far from my friends, and I called to the woman, ’What are you doing here?’ And she said to me, ’What brought you here?’ I told her myself word upon word how I came. ’Well then,’ said she, ’it was so I came also.’ She showed me to the place where I should come in where she was. I went in, and I said to her, ’What was the matter that you were putting the knife on the neck of the child?’ ’It is that he must be cooked for the giant who is here, or else no more of my world will be before me.’ Just then we could be hearing the footsteps of the giant, ’What shall I do? what shall I do?’ cried the woman. I went to the caldron, and by luck it was not hot, so in it I got just as the brute came in. ’Hast thou boiled that youngster for me?’ he cried. ’He’s not done yet,’ said she, and I cried out from the caldron, ’Mammy, mammy, it’s boiling I am.’ Then the giant laughed out HAI, HAW, HOGARAICH, and heaped on wood under the caldron.
“And now I was sure I would scald before I could get out of that. As fortune favoured me, the brute slept beside the caldron. There I was scalded by the bottom of the caldron. When she perceived that he was asleep, she set her mouth quietly to the hole that was in the lid, and she said to me ’was I alive?’ I said I was. I put up my head, and the hole in the lid was so large, that my head went through easily. Everything was coming easily with me till I began to bring up my hips. I left the skin of my hips behind me, but I came out. When I got out of the caldron I knew not what to do; and she said to me that there was no weapon that would kill him but his own weapon. I began to draw his spear and every breath that he drew I thought I would be down his throat, and when his breath came out I was back again just as far. But with every ill that befell me I got the spear loosed from him. Then I was as one under a bundle of straw in a great wind for I could not manage the spear. And it was fearful to look on the brute, who had but one eye in the midst of his face; and it was not agreeable for the like of me to attack him. I drew the dart as best I could, and I set it in his eye. When he felt this he gave his head a lift, and he struck the other end of the dart on the top of the cave, and it went through to the back of his head. And he fell cold dead where he was; and you may be sure, oh king, that joy was on me. I myself and the woman went out on clear ground, and we passed the night there. I went and got the boat with which I came, and she was no way lightened, and took the woman and the child over on dry land; and I returned home.”
The king of Lochlann’s mother was putting on a fire at this time, and listening to Conall telling the tale about the child.
“Is it you,” said she, “that were there?”
“Well then,” said he, “’twas I.”
“Och! och!” said she, “’twas I that was there, and the king is the child whose life you saved; and it is to you that life thanks should be given.” Then they took great joy.
The king said, “Oh, Conall, you came through great hardships. And now the brown horse is yours, and his sack full of the most precious things that are in my treasury.”
They lay down that night, and if it was early that Conall rose, it was earlier than that that the queen was on foot making ready. He got the brown horse and his sack full of gold and silver and stones of great price, and then Conall and his three sons went away, and they returned home to the Erin realm of gladness. He left the gold and silver in his house, and he went with the horse to the king. They were good friends evermore. He returned home to his wife, and they set in order a feast; and that was a feast if ever there was one, oh son and brother.
Hudden and Dudden and Donald O’neary
There was once upon a time two farmers, and their names were Hudden and Dudden. They had poultry in their yards, sheep on the uplands, and scores of cattle in the meadow-land alongside the river. But for all that they weren’t happy. For just between their two farms there lived a poor man by the name of Donald O’Neary. He had a hovel over his head and a strip of grass that was barely enough to keep his one cow, Daisy, from starving, and, though she did her best, it was but seldom that Donald got a drink of milk or a roll of butter from Daisy. You would think there was little here to make Hudden and Dudden jealous, but so it is, the more one has the more one wants, and Donald’s neighbours lay awake of nights scheming how they might get hold of his little strip of grass-land. Daisy, poor thing, they never thought of; she was just a bag of bones.
One day Hudden met Dudden, and they were soon grumbling as usual, and all to the tune of “If only we could get that vagabond Donald O’Neary out of the country.”
“Let’s kill Daisy,” said Hudden at last; “if that doesn’t make him clear out, nothing will.”
No sooner said than agreed, and it wasn’t dark before Hudden and Dudden crept up to the little shed where lay poor Daisy trying her best to chew the cud, though she hadn’t had as much grass in the day as would cover your hand. And when Donald came to see if Daisy was all snug for the night, the poor beast had only time to lick his hand once before she died.
Well, Donald was a shrewd fellow, and downhearted though he was, began to think if he could get any good out of Daisy’s death. He thought and he thought, and the next day you could have seen him trudging off early to the fair, Daisy’s hide over his shoulder, every penny he had jingling in his pockets. Just before he got to the fair, he made several slits in the hide, put a penny in each slit, walked into the best inn of the town as bold as if it belonged to him, and, hanging the hide up to a nail in the wall, sat down.
“Some of your best whisky,” says he to the landlord.
But the landlord didn’t like his looks. “Is it fearing I won’t pay you, you are?” says Donald; “why I have a hide here that gives me all the money I want.” And with that he hit it a whack with his stick and out hopped a penny. The landlord opened his eyes, as you may fancy.
“What’ll you take for that hide?”
“It’s not for sale, my good man.”
“Will you take a gold piece?”
“It’s not for sale, I tell you. Hasn’t it kept me and mine for years?” and with that Donald hit the hide another whack and out jumped a second penny.
Well, the long and the short of it was that Donald let the hide go, and, that very evening, who but he should walk up to Hudden’s door?
“Good-evening, Hudden. Will you lend me your best pair of scales?”
Hudden stared and Hudden scratched his head, but he lent the scales.
When Donald was safe at home, he pulled out his pocketful of bright gold and began to weigh each piece in the scales. But Hudden had put a lump of butter at the bottom, and so the last piece of gold stuck fast to the scales when he took them back to Hudden.
If Hudden had stared before, he stared ten times more now, and no sooner was Donald’s back turned, than he was of as hard as he could pelt to Dudden’s.
“Good-evening, Dudden. That vagabond, bad luck to him–”
“You mean Donald O’Neary?”
“And who else should I mean? He’s back here weighing out sackfuls of gold.”
“How do you know that?”
“Here are my scales that he borrowed, and here’s a gold piece still sticking to them.”
Off they went together, and they came to Donald’s door. Donald had finished making the last pile of ten gold pieces. And he couldn’t finish because a piece had stuck to the scales.
In they walked without an “If you please” or “By your leave.”
“Well,
Hudden nudged Dudden, and Dudden winked at Hudden.
“Good-evening, Donald O’Neary.”
“Good-evening, kind friends.”
The next day there wasn’t a cow or a calf that belonged to Hudden or Dudden but her hide was going to the fair in Hudden’s biggest cart drawn by Dudden’s strongest pair of horses.
When they came to the fair, each one took a hide over his arm, and there they were walking through the fair, bawling out at the top of their voices: “Hides to sell! hides to sell!”
Out came the tanner:
“How much for your hides, my good men?”
“Their weight in gold.”
“It’s early in the day to come out of the tavern.”
That was all the tanner said, and back he went to his yard.
“Hides to sell! Fine fresh hides to sell!”
Out came the cobbler.
“How much for your hides, my men?”
“Their weight in gold.”
“Is it making game of me you are! Take that for your pains,” and the cobbler dealt Hudden a blow that made him stagger.
Up the people came running from one end of the fair to the other. "What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” cried they.
“Here are a couple of vagabonds selling hides at their weight in gold,” said the cobbler.
“Hold ’em fast; hold ’em fast!” bawled the innkeeper, who was the last to come up, he was so fat. “I’ll wager it’s one of the rogues who tricked me out of thirty gold pieces yesterday for a wretched hide.”
It was more kicks than halfpence that Hudden and Dudden got before they were well on their way home again, and they didn’t run the slower because all the dogs of the town were at their heels.
Well, as you may fancy, if they loved Donald little before, they loved him less now.
“What’s the matter, friends?” said he, as he saw them tearing along, their hats knocked in, and their coats torn off, and their faces black and blue. “Is it fighting you’ve been? or mayhap you met the police, ill luck to them?”
“We’ll police you, you vagabond. It’s mighty smart you thought yourself, deluding us with your lying tales.”
“Who deluded you? Didn’t you see the gold with your own two eyes?”
But it was no use talking. Pay for it he must, and should. There was a meal-sack handy, and into it Hudden and Dudden popped Donald O’Neary, tied him up tight, ran a pole through the knot, and off they started for the Brown Lake of the Bog, each with a pole-end on his shoulder, and Donald O’Neary between.
But the Brown Lake was far, the road was dusty, Hudden and Dudden were sore and weary, and parched with thirst. There was an inn by the roadside.
“Let’s go in,” said Hudden; “I’m dead beat. It’s heavy he is for the little he had to eat.”
If Hudden was willing, so was Dudden. As for Donald, you may be sure his leave wasn’t asked, but he was lumped down at the inn door for all the world as if he had been a sack of potatoes.
“Sit still, you vagabond,” said Dudden; “if we don’t mind waiting, you needn’t.”
Donald held his peace, but after a while he heard the glasses clink, and Hudden singing away at the top of his voice.
“I won’t have her, I tell you; I won’t have her!” said Donald. But nobody heeded what he said.
“I won’t have her, I tell you; I won’t have her!” said Donald, and this time he said it louder; but nobody heeded what he said.
“I won’t have her, I tell you; I won’t have her!” said Donald; and this time he said it as loud as he could.
“And who won’t you have, may I be so bold as to ask?” said a farmer, who had just come up with a drove of cattle, and was turning in for a glass.
“It’s the king’s daughter. They are bothering the life out of me to marry her.”