She took off the skin, and was a woman again. She told him then how the king, her father, made three seals of her brothers and a white mare of herself, to be in those forms till a hero should come who could clear out the island. “You cleared the island,” said she; “and we are all free again.”
The king gave the island to his son-in-law, and as many apples from the orchard as he wished. The first thing that Shawn did was to take an apple to the old man who gave him lodgings when he came to the White Nation. At the first bite he swallowed, the old man was twenty-one years of age, young and hearty, and so happy that it would do any man good to have one look at him.
Shawn and his young wife lived another day and a year with her father, and then they went to visit his father in Brandon. From pretending to be sick, Breogan’s wife became sick in earnest, and died. Breogan himself was now old and dissatisfied.
“The least I can do,” thought Shawn, “is to give him an apple.” He gave him the apple. Breogan ate it, was twenty-one years of age; and if ever a man was glad in Erin, ’twas he was.
Shawn left the father young and happy at Brandon, and went back himself with his wife to the island.
THE COTTER’S SON AND THE HALF SLIM CHAMPION.
Once upon a time there was a poor cotter in Erin, and he had three sons. Whether it was well or ill that he reared them, he reared them, and then died. When their father was dead and buried, the three sons lived with their mother for a day and a year; and at the end of that time the eldest brother said, “I will go to seek my fortune in the world.”
He took his mother’s blessing with him, and went away on the following morning.