Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/241

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The King who had Twelve Sons.
209

“I am asking nothing of you except your sword of light and the divided stone of your druidism.”

“Those are the two things that it is worst for me to part from.”

He went in and brought them out to her, and she went with herself to the smith, and she spent that night at the smith's house, and gave him a good hansel of gold for the sword he gave her. “Now,” said the smith, “though he put you under bonds to bring the sword to him, you did not promise more than to bring it to him. When you come to him and the things with you, and you take them up in your two hands and show them to him, you will say, though you promised to bring them to him, you did not promise to bring them for him and you will let them go, and they will be with me here in the winking of your eye. Unless they come back to me, the King of Rye will put me to death, as he knows I gave you my sword; and there will be peace made between him and me, and the quarrel between us will be at an end.”[1]

*****

And when the first wife saw the second wife

14
  1. The narrator's memory failed him at this point, and he was unable to relate the further developments of this remarkable game of plot and counterplot. Although the hen-wife was successful in the last event mentioned, it