Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/69

Rh "Wait there until I come back again," says he.

The tailor went forward the next day, and he had not walked very far until he met a modder-alla (lion?) and the lion greeted him, and asked him where was he going.

"I'm going to Dublin till I make a court for the king, if I'm able to make it," said the tailor.

"If you were to make a plough for me," said the lion, "I and the other lions could be ploughing and harrowing until we'd have a bit to eat in the harvest."

"I'll do that for you," said the tailor.

He brought his axe and his saw, and he made a plough. When the plough was made, he put a hole in the beam of it, and he said to the lion to go in under the plough till he'd see was he any good of a ploughman. He placed the tail in the hole he had made for it, and then clapped in a peg, and the lion was not able to draw out his tail again.

"Loose me out now," said the lion, "and we'll fix ourselves and go ploughing."

The tailor said he would not loose him out until he came back himself. He left him there then, and he came to Dublin.

When he came to Dublin he put forth a paper, desiring all the tradesmen that were raising the court to come to him, and that he would pay them; and at that time workmen used only to be getting one penny in the day. A number of tradesmen gathered the next day, and they began working for him. They were going home again after their day, when the tailor said to them "to put up that great stone upon the top of the work that they had done." When the great stone was raised up, the tailor put some sort of contrivance under it, that he might be able to throw it down as soon as the giant would come as far as it. The work people went home then, and the tailor went in hiding behind the big stone.