So they were arguing and striving until the night came, and the beggarman got a bed of straw in the barn, and he began arguing again in the morning that he ought to go to the prince, and the wife and daughter were on one word with him; and they prevailed at last on the sick man, and he said that he would go, and the daughter said that she would go with him to take care of him, and the boccuch said that he would go with them to show them the road; “and I’ll be on the pinch of death, for ye, with anxiety,” said the wife, “until ye come back again.”
They harnessed the horse, and they put him under the cart, and they took a week’s provision with them—bread, and bacon, and eggs, and they went off. They could not go very far the first day, for the sick man was so weak, that he was not able to bear the shaking he was getting in the cart; but he was better the second day, and they all passed the night in a farmer’s house on the side of the road, and they went on again in the morning; but on the third day, in the evening, they came to the dwelling of the prince. He had a nice house, on the brink of the lake, with a straw roof, in among the trees.
They left the horse and the cart in a little village near the prince’s place, and they all walked together, until they came to the house. They went into the kitchen, and asked, “Couldn’t they see the prince?” The servant said that he was eating his meal, but that he would come, perhaps, when he was ready.
The prince himself came in at that moment, and asked what it was they wanted. The sick man rose up and told him, that it was looking for assistance from his honour he was, and he told him his whole story. “And now can your honour help me?” he said, when he had finished it.
“I hope I can,” said the prince; “anyhow, I’ll do my best for you, as you came so far to see me. I’d have a bad right not to do my best. Come up into the parlour with me. The thing that old man told you is true. You swallowed an alt-pluachra, or something else. Come up to the parlour with me.”
He brought him up to the parlour with him, and it happened that the meal he had that day was a big piece of salted beef. He cut a large slice off it, and put it on a plate, and gave it to the poor man to eat.
“Oro! what is your honour doing there?” says the poor man; “I didn’t swallow as much as the size of an egg of meat this quarter,[26] and I can’t eat anything.”
“Be silent, man,” says the prince; “eat that, when I tell you.”
The poor man eat as much as he was able, but when he left the knife and fork out of his hand, the prince made him take them up again, and begin out of the new (over again). He kept him there eating until he was ready to burst, and at last he was not able to swallow another bit, if he were to get a hundred pounds.