"The Red-Etin of Ireland
Ance lived in Ballygan,
And stole King Malcolm's daughter,
The King of fair Scotland.
He beats her, he binds her,
He lays her on a band,
And every day he dings her
With a bright silver wand.
Like Julian the Roman,
He's one that fears no man.
"It's said there's ane predestinate
To be his mortal foe,
But that man is yet unborn,
And lang may it be so."
"Plague on this old Red-Etin; I wonder when I will get out of his domains," he muttered to himself; and he journeyed still further.
Presently he came to a very, very old man—so old, indeed, that he was quite bent with age—and he was herding a flock of goats.
Once more the traveller asked to whom the animals belonged, and once more he got the same answer:
"The Red-Etin of Ireland
Ance lived in Ballygan,
And stole King Malcolm's daughter,
The King of fair Scotland.
He beats her, he binds her,
He lays her on a band,
And every day he dings her
With a bright silver wand.
Like Julian the Roman,
He's one that fears no man.
"It's said there's ane predestinate
To be his mortal foe,
But that man is yet unborn,
And lang may it be so."
But this ancient goatherd added a piece of advice at the end of his rhyme. "Beware, stranger," he said, "of the next herd of beasts that ye shall meet. Sheep, and swine, and goats will harm nobody; but the creatures ye shall now encounter are of a sort that ye have never met before, and they are not harmless."
The young man thanked him for his counsel, and went on his way, and he had not gone very far before he met a herd of very dreadful creatures, unlike anything that he had ever dreamed of in all his life.
For each of them had three heads, and on each of its three heads it had four horns; and when he saw them he was so frightened that he turned and ran away from them as fast as he could.