"What is the reward that you would like, and what would be pleasing to you from me?"
"We want neither gold nor silver," said the Gruagach; "all the reward we ask of you is the ring that I lost on a time, and which is now on your daughter's finger." "If my daughter has the ring that you lost, it shall be given to you," said the king.
Now the ring spoke to the king's daughter and said: "Don't part with me for anything till you send your trusted man for three gallons of strong spirits and a gallon of wheat; put the spirits and the wheat together in an open barrel before the fire. When your father says you must give up the ring, do you answer back that you have never left the summer-house, that you have nothing on your hand but what is your own and paid for. Your father will say then that you must part with me, and give me up to the stranger. When he forces you in this way, and you can keep me no longer, then throw me into the fire; and you'll see great sport and strange things."
The king's daughter sent for the spirits and the wheat, had them mixed together, and put in an open barrel before the fire.
The king called the daughter in, and asked: "Have you the ring which this stranger lost?"
"I have a ring," said she, "but it's my own, and I'll not part with it. I'll not give it to him nor to any man."
"You must," said the king, "for my word is pledged, and you must part with the ring!"
When she heard this, she slipped the ring from her finger and threw it into the fire.
That moment the eleven brothers made eleven pairs of tongs of themselves; their father, the old Gruagach, was the twelfth pair.
The twelve jumped into the fire to know in what spark of it would they find the old fisherman's son; and they were a long time working and searching through the fire, when out flew a spark, and into the barrel. The twelve made themselves men, turned over the barrel, and spilled the wheat on the floor. Then in a twinkling they were twelve cocks strutting around.