Flann struck a heavier blow with the knocking-stone and the door broke in. He stepped into the smoke-filled house.
“No welcome to you, whoever you are,” said one of the three Hags who were seated around the fire.
“I am the lad who was called Gilly of the Goatskin, and whom you reared up here,” said he, “and I have come back to you.”
The three Hags turned from the fire then and screamed at him.
“And what brought you back to us, humpy fellow?” said the first Hag.
“I came back to make you tell me what Queen and King were my mother and father.”
“Why should you think a King and Queen were your father and mother?” they said to him.
“Because I have on my breast the stars of a son of a King,” said Flann, “and,” said he, “I have in my hand a sword that will make you tell me.”
He came towards them and they were afraid. Then the first Hag bent her knee to him, and, said she, “Loosen the hearthstone with your sword and you will find a token that will let you know who your father was.”
Flann put his sword under the hearthstone and pried it up. But if it were a token, what was under the hearthstone was an evil thing—a cockatrice. It had been hatched out of a serpent’s egg by a black cock of nine years. It had the head and crest of a cock and the body of a black serpent. The cockatrice lifted itself up on its tail and looked at him with red eyes. The sight of that head made Flann dizzy and he fell down on the floor. Then it went down and the Hags put the hearthstone above it.