“My wife made me show her where the rods were. She cut one of them when I went away. That evening she came behind me and struck me with a rod. ‘Go out now and roam as a wolf,’ she said, and there and then I was changed into a wolf. ‘Is that not true?’” said he to the woman. “It is true,” she said.
“And being changed into a wolf, I went through the woods seeking wolf’s meat. And now you must ask my wife to tell you more of the story.” The King of Ireland’s Son turned to the woman who sat on the seat next the Enchanter, and asked her to tell him more of the story. And thereupon she began
Before all that happened I was known as the Maid of the Green Mantle. One day a King rode up a mountain with five score followers and a mist came on them as they rode. The King saw his followers no more. He called out after a while and four score answered him. And he called out again after another while and two score answered him. And after another while he called out again and only a score answered him through the mist, and when he called out again no one answered him at all.
“The King went up the mountain until he came to the place where I lived with the Druids who reared me. He stayed long in that place. The King loved me for a while and I loved the King, and when he went away I followed him.
“Because he would not come back to me I enchanted him so that there were times when he was left between life and death. Once when he was seemingly dead a girl watched by him, and she followed his spirit into many terrible places and so broke my enchantment.”
“Sheen was the girl’s name,” said the King of Ireland’s Son.
“Sheen was her name,” said the woman. “He brought her to his Kingdom, and made her his queen. After that I married the man who is here now—the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands, the Son of the Druid of the Gray Rock. Ask him now to tell you the rest of the story.”
When she changed me into a gray wolf,” said the Enchanter, “I went through the woods searching for what a wolf might eat, but could find nothing to stay my hunger. Then I came back and stood outside my house and the woman who had been called the Maid of the Green Mantle came to me. ‘I will give you back your human form,’ she said, ‘if you do as I bid you.’
“I promised her I would do as she bade.
“She bade me go to a King’s house where a child had been born. She bade me steal the child away. I went to the King’s house. I went into the chamber and I stole the child from the mother’s side. Then I ran through the woods. But in the end I fell into a trap that the Giant Crom Duv had set for the wolves that chased his stray cattle.