Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/217

 Rh or shedding a single tear, for if you weep we shall lose one member of our members.”

And she said to them to make a little hut for her in the wood, and they made the hut and went away and left her there. She was not long till she began to get material for the shirts, and she began to make them; and she was not long in the house when George nă Riell came to her, and he was with her till she had a child to him.

A young man was in the wood one day and a dog with him, and the dog took him to the place where the woman was; and the man saw the woman and the child there, and he went home and told the queen that there was a beautiful woman in the wood. And she went and took the dog with her, as if the dog was with George na Riell. She went in and found the woman and the babe, and she killed the babe and caught some of the blood, and mixed the blood and ashes up together and made a cake, and she sought to put a piece of the bread into the woman's mouth. And the woman dropped one tear from her eye; but the other went away home to her wedded husband, and she said to him that great was the shame for him to have children by that woman, and that she had had to kill her own child and eat it.