"I would tell," said the cowboy, "but I'm in dread my mistress might kill or banish me."
"She will not, for I'll put you in the way she'll not harm you. You see my fishing-bag here? Now throw the pin, which I know you have, towards me, and hit the bag."
The cowboy did as he was told, and threw the pin into the fishing-bag, where it remained without harm to any one. The cowboy went back to his cattle, and the prince fished on as before. The three swans were out in the middle of the lake swimming around for themselves in the water, and the prince moved on, fishing, till he came to a bend in the shore. On one side of him a tongue of land ran out into the lake. The swans came to the shore, leaving the piece of land between themselves and the prince. Then they took off their swan-skins, were young women, and bathed in the lake.
After that they came out, put on the dress of young women, and went to where the king's son was fishing.
He spoke to them, and asked where were they from, in what place were they born, and why were they swans.
They said: "We are three sisters, daughters of the king of the East, and we have two brothers. Our mother died, and our father married again, and had two other daughters; and these two are not so good looking nor so well favored as we, and their mother was in dread they wouldn't get such fine husbands as we, so she enchanted us, and now we are going about the world from lake to lake in the form of swans."
Then the eldest of the three sisters said to the king's son: "What kind are you, and where were you born?"
"I was born in Erin," said he; "and when I was a little boy my mother died, my father married again and had a second son, and that son wasn't to the eye what I was, and my stepmother was for banishing me from my father's house because she thought her own son was not so good as I was, and I am fishing here every day by the lake to keep out of her sight."
"Well," said the eldest sister, "I thought you were a king's son, and so I came to you in my own form to know could we go on in the world together."
"I don't know yet what to do," said the king's son.