Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/355

 Rh tell, and he said he was in dread that the king would put him to death. The king told him that he be to go off out to the giant-lands and see would he find a giant strong enough to guard the fairy-tree and to sleep in its branches at night. The queen was awful lost [i.e. very sorry], and so were the rest of the fairies; for no fiddler on his fiddle nor piper on his pipes could play half as sweet as he could on an ivy-leaf; for many a time had they danced to his music, and now perhaps they would never dance again to it.

So on his departing out of the fairylands the queen gave him a handful of berries that he might give the giant, that the giant might feast or live on them and sleep in the branches at night, and that his breath might be poison to birds and bees.

The fairies escorted him out of the fairylands, and as he was going up the high mountain he looked back with a sick heart on the mossy paths of the fairylands; perhaps he would never leave foot again on them; and as he ascended the top of the high mountain and looked back once more a great mist shut out the fairylands. As he looked on the other side he saw the giant-lands stretching far away. He lay down on a bank to rest his wearied limbs and fell asleep. The noise of a great giant wakened him on the next day, and as he sat up on the bank he saw him coming up to him. He lifted him up between his finger and thumb, did the giant, and asked him who he was. He said he was Pinkeen, a fairy out of the fairylands that came to see would he get a giant willing and able to guard a fairy-tree that was in Doolas Woods, "and here are the berries that he shall be eating from morning till night." When the giant took some of the berries and swallowed them, he bounded with joy. "I will guard all the trees in the wood," he says, "if I get eating of those berries;" and with the shout he gave of joy his brother-giants came flocking up the mountain and asked him what was wrong with him.