“Well, I’m sure I’m sorry for that,” says Donal, “and I’ll make certain that I’ll bury her decently enough this time.”
So Jack went with him to help him bury her this day again, and he saw Donal put a purse of fifty sovereigns under her head. “Now,” says Donal, says he, “she’ll surely not come back to bother me.”
But that night Jack went to the graveyard and raised the body again, and got the fifty pounds. And he took the body then with him on his shoulder off to Donal’s, and he went into the stables, and he put the body sitting on the finest big horse in Donal’s stable, and he tied it there, and he tied a sword into its hand. Now Donal was to have gone off next morning, riding on a little black mare that was a favorite of his, to the town to pay the accounts of the funeral; and Jack, he had known this, and when Donal came down in the very early morning, when it was still dark, he went into the stable, and he took out the little black mare.
The horse on which Jack had tied the old woman was a great companion of this little black mare, and both of them used to run on the grass together; so when the little black mare was taken out by Donal, the horse (which Jack had left loose) trotted out after.
When Donal saw the appearance of the horse coming out of the stable, and on its back the old mother-in-law with the sword lifted up in her hand, he gave a yell, and he jumped up on the mare, and off as fast as he could gallop.
Off after the little mare the big horse started, and the faster Donal went, the faster came the big horse trotting behind him; and every time he looked over his shoulder, there he saw his old mother-in-law with the sword lifted, ready, as he thought, to cut him down, and all that he could do, he couldn’t gain ground.
Jack, he was prepared for all this. He was concealed half a mile along the way, and when Donal came tearing up he came out of where he was concealed, and said to Donal: “What’s the matter?”
And Donal pointed back, and Jack he leaped and got hold of the big horse and stopped it, and led it back home, and took the old woman off its back.
When Donal ventured home again, he was in very low spirits entirely, and he said that if his mother-in-law was going to rise every time she was buried and haunt him all the days of his life, he might as well end his life at once.