"Then she turned on me again and there wasn't but the one hair left on my head from the desperate fighting, and she looked at me, and said:
"'I'll let you go this time but I'll give you a good payment before you leave.' She caught hold of me then in the grip of her one hand and with the other she took a sharp knife and stripped all the skin and flesh off my back, from my waist to my heels. Then, taking the skin of a rough shaggy goat, she clapped it on to me in place of my own skin and flesh, and told me to go my way.
"I left the old hag and the castle behind, but the skin grew to me and I wear it to this day." And here the Gruagach turned to Gilla na Grakin and showed him the goatskin growing on his body in place of his own skin and flesh.
"Well," said Gilla, when he saw the shaggy back of the Gruagach, "does that hare come here to insult you yet?"
"He does, indeed," said the Gruagach, "but I haven't taken a bite nor a sup off that table since his first visit." "Let us sit down there now," said Gilla na Grakin.
They sat down at the table, but they were not sitting long till the hare came, repeated the insult, and ran out.
Gilla na Grakin made after the hare, and the Gruagach after Gilla.
Gilla ran as fast as ever his legs could carry him, and he was often that near that he used to stretch his arm out after the hare, and almost catch him; but he never touched him till near night, when he was clearing the wall. Then Gilla caught him by the two hind legs, and, swinging him over his own shoulder, dashed him against the wall, tore the head from the body, and sent it bounding across the courtyard of the castle.
Out rushed an old hag that minute. She had but one tooth and that in her upper jaw, and she used this tooth for a crutch.
"Who has killed the pet of this castle!" shrieked she.