She struck her staff on the hearthstone, and up sprang nine other hags as old and as ugly as herself. She struck the staff again upon the hearthstone, and then they were the nine most beautiful damsels Ciad had ever seen. The hag said: “If you stay with me, you can have your choice of these nine beautiful damsels for your wife.”
But Ciad remembered Dark Eye of France, and also remembered his geasa, and he said to the hag, he would have none of them.
Then she struck her staff upon the ground angrily, and they all disappeared.
He asked for supper and a bed for the night, and the old hag gave him the toes and the tongue of a rabbit for supper. She gave him a heather bed that scored and cut him, and an old black cat for a bedfellow.
In the morning he told the hag that he was looking for the queen of this island.
She said : “I am the queen.”
“If that is so,” he said, “I demand the bottle of loca and the Riches of the World.”
“That,” she said, “I am glad you cannot have.”
“If I cannot have it,” he said, “I will take your staff and break your old bones.”
“It’s like a hero to do that,” she said scoffingly; “but even if you made meal of my old bones, you would not be nearer the bottle of loca and the Riches of the World.”