There was a king in Erin once who had a leash of sons. John was the name of the youngest one, and it was said that he was not wise enough. And this good, worldly king lost the sight of his eyes and the strength of his feet. The two eldest brothers said that they would go seek three bottles of the water of the green isle that was about the heaps of the deep. And so it was that these two brothers went away. Now the fool said that he would not believe but that he himself would go also. And the first big town he reached in his father’s kingdom, there he sees his two brothers there, the blackguards.
‘Oh! my boys,’ says the young one, ‘is it thus you are?’
‘With swiftness of foot,’ said they, ‘take thyself home, or we will have thy life.’
‘Don’t be afraid, lads. It is nothing to me to stay with you.’
Now John went away on his journey till he came to a great desert of a wood. ‘Hoo, hoo!’ says John to himself, ‘it is not canny for me to walk this wood alone.’ The night was coming now, and growing pretty dark. John ties the cripple white horse to the root of a tree, and he went up in the top himself. He was but a very short time in the top, when he saw a bear coming with a fiery cinder in his mouth.
‘Come down, son of the King of Erin,’ says he.
‘Indeed, I won’t come. I am thinking I am safer where I am.’
‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ said the bear. [[273]]
‘Art thou, too, taking me for a fool?’ says John. ‘A shaggy, shambling creature like thee, climbing a tree.’
‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ says the bear, as he fell out of hand to climbing the tree.