Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/180

 148 save them, “and I cannot marry a woman till I go to my father and then I will come back to you.”

And the daughter said, “Marry one of us and then go to your father, and then you can come back.”

He said he could not do that, that he would go to his father first. Said she,—

“If you do not marry one of us, I will put you for a year under disesteem and bad esteem; every one will be spitting on you and cursing you; whoever is meanest you shall be under his curses; and till you marry one of us, or get cause for laughter, your mouth to be at the back of your head.”

And when he saw that, “If I were going this hour to marry you, I would not marry you now.”

The disfigurement came on him. He turned to the door and opened his hand, and all that were between him and the door he killed. He went on from place to place in hopes of getting a cure for himself, and he left not a doctor in the place that he was not getting the water of healing and every sort of drugs from them.

He was going till a man met him who was giving food and work to every one, and he went to him and asked him for work. The man said he would give it if the workmen would take him. He had eighteen men, six of them each in different places he had, and he went up to one set of six and said to them, “Here is a helper I am