‘Well, John,’ says the giant, ‘didst thou see such drink as this in thy father’s house in Erin?’
‘Pooh!’ says John, ‘hoo! my hero, thou other man, I have a drink this is unlike it.’ He gave the giant a glass out of the bottle, but the bottle was as full as it was before. [[276]]
‘Well!’ said the giant, ‘I will give thee myself two hundred notes,[2] a bridle, and a saddle for the bottle.’
‘It is a bargain, then,’ says John; ‘but that the first sweetheart I ever had must get it if she comes the way.’
‘She will get that,’ says the giant.
But to make the long story short, he left each loaf and cheese with the two other giants, with the same covenant that the first sweetheart he ever had should get them if she came the way. Now John reached his father’s big town in Erin, and he sees his two brothers as he left them, the blackguards. ‘You had best come with me, lads,’ says he, ‘and you will get a dress of cloth and a saddle and bridle each.’ And so they did; but when they were near to their father’s house, the brothers thought that they had better kill him, and so it was that they set on him. And when they thought he was dead, they threw him behind a dyke; and they took from him the three bottles of water, and they went home.
John was not too long here, when his father’s smith came the way with a cart-load of rusty iron. John called out, ‘Whoever the Christian is that is there, oh! that he should help him.’ The smith caught him, and he threw John amongst the iron. And because the iron was so rusty, it went into each wound and sore that John had; and so it was that John became rough-skinned and bald.
Here we will leave John, and we will go back to the pretty little jewel that John left in the Green Isle. She became pale and heavy, and at the end of three quarters she had a fine lad son. ‘Oh! in all the great world,’ says she, ‘how did I find this?’
‘Foil! foil!’ says the hen-wife, ‘don’t let that set thee thinking. Here’s for thee a bird, and as soon as he sees the father of thy son, he will hop on the top of his head.’
The Green Isle was gathered from end to end, and the people were put in at the back door and out at the front door; but the bird did not stir, and the babe’s father was not found. Now here she said she would go through the world altogether till she should find the father of the babe. Then she came to the house of the big giant and sees the bottle. ‘Ai! ai!’ said she, ‘who gave thee this bottle?’ [[277]]