“Why,” says Nancy, “there’s my Shamus has little or nothing to do, an’ why don’t you make him build you a castle?”
“Ah,” says the prince, laughing, “sure, Shamus couldn’t build me a castle.”
Says Nancy: “You don’t know Shamus, for there’s not a thing in the wide world he couldn’t do if he likes to; but he’s that lazy, that if you don’t break every bone in his body to make him do it, he won’t do it.”
“Is that so?” says Prince Connal.
“That’s so,” says Nancy. “So if you order Shamus to build you a castle an’ have it up in three weeks, or that you’ll take his life if he doesn’t, you’ll soon have a grand castle to live in,” says she.
“Well, if that’s so,” says Prince Connal, “I’ll not be long wanting a castle.”
So on the very next morning, over he steps to Shamus’s, calls Shamus out, and takes him with him to the place he had marked out for the site of his castle, and shows it to Shamus, and tells him he wants him to have a grand castle built and finished on that spot in three weeks’ time.
“But,” says Shamus, says he, “I never built a castle in my life. I know nothing about it, an’ I couldn’t have you a castle there in thirty- three years, let alone three weeks.”
“O!” says the prince, says he, “I’m toul’ there’s no man in Ireland can build a castle better nor faster than you, if you only like to; and if you haven’t that castle built on that ground in three weeks,” says he, “I’ll have your life. So now choose for yourself.” And he walked away, and left Shamus standing there.
When Shamus heard this, he was a down-hearted man, for he knew that Prince Connal was a man of his word and would not stop at taking any man’s life any more than he would from putting the breath out of a beetle. So down he sits and begins to cry; and while Shamus was crying there, up to him comes a Wee Red Man, and says to Shamus: “What are you crying about?”