Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/107

 Rh not to be seen. Says the short green man to the man who was sending round the windmill with his nostril: "Rise up and try would you put back that hag." He put his finger to his nose, and when the hag was coming he put a blast of wind under her that swept her back again. She was coming again, and he did the same thing to her. Every time she used to be coming near them he would be sending her back with the wind he would blow out of his nostril. At last he blew with the two nostrils and swept the hag back to the western world again. Then the foot-runner of the king of Ireland's son came, and that day was won.

There was great anger on the woman when she saw that her own foot-runner did not arrive first, and she said to the king's son: "You won't get me now till you have walked three miles, without shoes or stockings, on steel needles." She had a road three miles long, and sharp needles of steel shaken on it as thick as the grass, and their points up. Said the short green man to the man who broke stones with the side of his thigh: "Go and blunt those." That man went on them with one thigh, and he made stumps of them. He went on them with the double thigh, and he made powder and prashuch of them. The king of Ireland's son came and walked the three miles, and then he had his wife gained.

The couple were married then, and the short green man was to have the first kiss. The short green man took the wife with him into a chamber, and he began on her. She was full up of serpents, and the king's son would have been killed with them when he went to sleep, but that the short green man picked them out of her.

He came then to the son of the king of Ireland, and he told him: "You can go with your wife now. I am the man who was in the coffin that day, for whom you paid