“Ah, my poor man,” says Shamus, says he, “don’t be asking me, for there's no use in telling you, you could do nothing to help me.”
“You don’t know that,” says the Wee Red Man, says he. “It’s no harm to tell me anyhow.”
So Shamus, to relieve his mind, ups and tells the Wee Red Man what Prince Connal had threatened to do to him if he had not a grand castle finished on that spot in three weeks.
Says the little man, says he: “Go to the Fairies’ Glen at moonrise the night, and under the rockin’ stone at the head of the glen you’ll find a white rod. Take that rod with you, and mark out the plan of the castle on this ground with it; then go back and leave the rod where you got it, and by the time you get back again your castle will be finished.”
At moonrise that night Shamus, as you may be well assured, was at the rockin’ stone at the head of the Glen of the Fairies, and from under it he got a little white rod. He went to the hill where the Prince’s castle was to be built, and with the point of the rod he marked out the plan of the castle, and then he went back and left the rod where he got it.
The next morning, when Prince Connal got up
