A messenger was sent at once to France, to invite the King to come to his daughter’s marriage, and to bring his sons and his great lords with him. And another messenger brought to the King of Ireland’s Druid his magic net and a third of the Riches of the World, and invited the King of Ireland and all his court to come to the marriage also. One hundred kings sat down to the wedding feast. The wedding lasted ninety-nine days and ninety-nine nights, and the last night was better than the first.
Ciad and Dark Eye lived a long life and a happy one, and may you and I do the same.
The Bee, the Harp, the Mouse, and the Bum-Clock
ONCE there was a widow, and she had one son, called Jack. Jack and his mother owned just three cows. They lived well and happy for a long time; but at last hard times came down on them, and the crops failed, and poverty looked in at the door, and things got so sore against the poor widow that for want of money and for want of necessities she had to make up her mind to sell one of the cows. “Jack,” she said one night, “go over in the morning to the fair to sell the branny cow.”
Well and good: in the morning my brave Jack was up early, and took a stick in his fist and turned out the cow, and off to the fair he went with her; and when Jack came into the fair, he saw a great crowd gathered in a ring in the street. He went into the crowd to see what they were looking at, and there in the middle of them he saw a man with a wee, wee harp, a mouse, and a bum-clock [cockroach], and a bee to play the harp. And when the man put them down on the ground and whistled, the bee began to play the harp, and the mouse and the bum-clock stood up on their hind legs and got hold of each other and began to waltz. And as soon as the harp began to play and the mouse and the bum-clock to dance, there wasn’t a man or woman, or a thing in the fair, that didn’t begin to dance also; and the pots and pans, and the wheels and reels jumped and jigged, all over the town, and Jack himself and the branny cow were as bad as the next.
There was never a town in such a state before or since, and after a while the man picked up the bee, the harp, and the mouse, and the bum-clock and put them into his pocket, and the men and women, Jack and the cow, the pots and pans, wheels and reels, that had hopped and jigged, now stopped, and every one began to laugh as if to break its heart. Then the man turned to Jack.
“Jack,” says he, “how would you like to be master of all these animals ?”
“Why,” says Jack, “I should like it fine.”
“Well, then,” says the man, “how will you and me make a bargain about them?”