‘What should I say but that I came to steal the marvellous bird?’

‘Hu! hu!’ said the fox, ‘thou wilt not return. But,’ said the fox, ‘take thou service with this giant to be a stable-lad. And there is no sort of bird under the seven russet rungs of the world that he has not got. And when he brings out the marvellous bird, say thou, “Fuith! fuith! the nasty bird, throw it out of my sight. I could find braver birds than that on the middens at home.” ’

Brian did thus.

‘S’tia!’ said the big one, ‘then I must go to thy country to gather a part of them.’

But Brian was pleasing the giant well. But on a night of the nights Brian steals the marvellous bird, and drags himself out with it. When he was a good bit from the giant’s house, ‘S’tia!’ said Brian to himself, ‘I don’t know if it is the right bird I have after every turn.’ Brian lifts the covering off the bird’s head, and he lets out one screech, and the screech roused the giant.

‘Oh! oh! son of the king of Greece,’ said the giant, ‘that I have coming to steal the marvellous bird. The prophet was saying that he would come to his gird.’

Then here the giant put on the shoes that could make nine miles at every step, and he wasn’t long catching poor Brian. They returned home to the giant’s house, and the giant laid the binding of the three smalls on him, and he threw Brian into the peat-corner, and he was there till the morning on the morrow’s day.

‘Now,’ said the giant, ‘son of the king of Greece, thou hast thy two rathers—Whether wouldst thou rather thy head to be on yonder stake, or go to steal the White Glaive of Light that is in the realm of Big Women?’

‘A man is kind to his life,’ said Brian. ‘I will go to steal the White Glaive of Light.’ [[285]]

But never mind. Brian had not gone far from the giant’s house when the fox met with him. ‘O man without mind or sense, thou didst not take my counsel, and what will now arise against thee? Thou art going to the realm of Big Women to steal the White Glaive of Light. That is twenty times as hard for thee as the marvellous bird of that carl of a giant.’