“You are wanting to rid yourself of young Conn-eda, and it is for my advice you have come hither. But I am not one to give something for nothing. What reward will I have if I give you my advice?”
“What reward will you be wanting?” asked the Queen.
“It’s none so much and none so little. Give me enough wool to fill the hole between my arm and body when I set my hand on my hip with my elbow out, and give me enough red wheat to fill the hole I shall bore with my distaff, and my advice is yours for the asking.”
Well, the Queen could not help smiling at that, for it seemed but a small reward for any one to ask, and she gladly agreed to give it.
“Then have the wool and the wheat brought here to-morrow,” said the hen-wife. “Twenty cartloads of wool, and twenty cartloads of wheat will be none too much to fill the hollow between my arm and body and the hole I’ll make.”
The Queen thought that was a strange thing to say, and that the hen-wife must be dreaming, but all the same she was back at the hen-wife’s door the next day, and close after her came twenty cartloads of wool and twenty cartloads of wheat, with the horses pulling and the carters cracking their whips.
The hen-wife stood in the doorway with her hand on her hip and her elbow out, and the men took an armful of wool and put it in the hollow of her arm, but it fell through the hollow and inside the house. They stuffed another armful in between her arm and body, and the same thing happened to it. Not until the house was so full of wool that it could hold no more were they able to fill the hollow of the hen-wife’s arm as she stood in the doorway.
“And now for the wheat,” said the hen-wife.
Then she led them to her brother’s house which was close by, and climbed up on the roof. The roof was of peat, and she bored a hole down through the peat with her distaff, so that as fast as they poured the wheat into the hole, it ran down into the house, and not until the house was so full that it could hold no more could they fill the hole, too.
“Now I am satisfied,” said the hen-wife, but that was more than the Queen could say, for she was a mean woman. However, if the hen-wife could tell her how to rid herself of Prince Conn-eda, it was more to her than all the wheat and wool that ever were grown.