“Not at all,” says he. “I have the circle beyond rooted up for to set potatoes in it.”
“Is it the fort!” says she.
When she heard what he was after doing she began for to roar and to cry.
“It is destroyed we are in this ill hour,” she lamented. “The Good People will be following us surely with the black wrath of vengeance and spite. Never before did I hear of a man setting spuds in a fort.”
“Quit raving,” says he.
“Many and many’s the time I have seen them, they riding down by the hill; their fiddles and fifes I have heard, their shouts and their laughs. But I had no cause for a dread till it come on me now,” she replies.
With that herself took the thorn from the fire, where he was after casting it down; she left it out on the door of the house.
“Let their branch stop beyond on the street,” says she, “the way they will not be entering here and they seeking for to bring it away.”
In the black darkness of midnight there came the awfullest cry on the street, on past the house and into the byre. Then a great lamentation came from the cows and the ass.
“The creatures are a killing this night,” says herself.