The lion and the fox and the army of Dublin went on then, trying to catch the tailor, and they kept going until they came to the place where the old white garraun was, and the old white garraun told them that the tailor and his wife were there in the morning, and "Loose me," said he; "I am swifter than you, and I'll overtake them." They released the old white garraun then, and the old white garraun, the fox, the lion, and the army of Dublin pursued the tailor and his wife, and it was not long before they came up with them.
When the tailor saw them coming, he got out of the coach with his wife, and he sat down on the ground.
When the old white garraun saw the tailor sitting on the ground, he said, "That's the position he was in when he made the hole for me, that I couldn't get out of, when I went down into it. I'll go no nearer to him."
"No!" said the fox, "but that's the way he was when he was making the thing for me, and I'll go no nearer to him."
"No!" says the lion, "but that's the very way he had, when he was making the plough that I was caught in. I'll go no nearer to him."
They all left him then and returned. The tailor and his wife came home to Galway.
HOW THE SEA BECAME SALT
This story was told long ago by our Northern forefathers who brought it with them in their dragon ships when they crossed the North Sea to settle in England. In those days men were apt to invent stories to account for things about them which seemed peculiar, and loving the sea as they did, it is not strange that they had remarked the peculiarity of the ocean water and had found a reason why it is so different from the water in the rivers and steams.
This is not the only story that has come down to tell us how people of old accounted for the sea being salt. There are many such stories, each different from the other, all showing that the same childlike spirit of inquiry was at work in different places, striving to find an answer to this riddle of nature.