Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/127

 Rh now can your honour help me?" he said, when he had finished it.

"I hope I can," said the prince; "anyhow, I'll do my best for you, as you came so far to see me. I'd have a bad right not to do my best. Come up into the parlour with me. The thing that old man told you is true. You swallowed an alt-pluachra, or something else. Come up to the parlour with me."

He brought him up to the parlour with him, and it happened that the meal he had that day was a big piece of salted beef. He cut a large slice off it, and put it on a plate, and gave it to the poor man to eat.

"Oro! what is your honour doing there?" says the poor man; "I didn't swallow as much as the size of an egg of meat this quarter, and I can't eat anything."

"Be silent, man," says the prince; "eat that, when I tell you."

The poor man eat as much as he was able, but when he left the knife and fork out of his hand, the prince made him take them up again, and begin out of the new (over again). He kept him there eating until he was ready to burst, and at last he was not able to swallow another bit, if he were to get a hundred pounds.

When the prince saw that he would not be able to swallow any more, he brought him out of the house, and he said to the daughter and the old beggarman to follow them, and he brought the man out with him to a fine green meadow that was forenent the house, and a little stream of water running through it.

He brought him to the brink of the stream, and told him to lie down on his stomach over the stream, and to hold his face over the water, to open his mouth as wide 6