Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/216

 2o8 Lela7td L. Duftcan.

but yet it micrht be worse ; for he was a good-natured man, and didn't like to hurt his wife's feelings.

The child was put out as before, and the herdsman found it and brought it home to his wife, and his wife grumbled ; but he said, " No matter, though they're not your own, you'll be paid for it yet."

Cul-corrach got sick when she saw all that was done to her, and the two sisters took her, unknown to the lord, in her bed and night-dress as she was, to the brink of the sea, but it was a bed of phoenix feathers she had, and it could not sink. The herdsman was by the sea-shore that day, and he saw the beautiful lady on the bed, sailing on the brink of the sea, and he took her in and asked what did it mean, and what was it about. Cul-corrach said it was her sisters had put her there, and she didn't know what it was for, and that the lord would be looking for her. Cul-fin, however, went and lay in the lord's bed, and let on she was sick. The lord admired her, and thought it might be his wife, as sickness might change her, but yet he scarcely knew her. That evening he met the herdsman out, who asked him how his mistress did, and the lord said, " Very poorly." The herdsman asked him had he his wife at all, and the lord said, " To be sure I have." Then the herdsman brought the lord to his house, and there was Cul-corrach, and he said, " Isn 't that your wife ?" And he said it was. Then he told the lord how that the two sisters had put her out to drown, and that he had got her floating on the sea, as the phoenix feathers could not let her drown.

" What became of your three children ?" said he, and the lord was ashamed to tell him ; but the herdsman said he might, as he knew how everything happened.

Says he to the lord's wife, " How many births had you?" and she said, " Three." Then he brought down the three boys, and said, " There are your three children" ; and the lord admired how it was. The herdsman told him he was at the back of the yard and saw the children thrown out, and had taken them home.