Mor’s son followed the herder’s directions. He went toward Daingean in the night, for he knew the road very well. After midnight, he was at the cross-roads, waiting and hidden. Soon he saw the coffin coming out against him, and the four men carrying it on their shoulders.
The young man put his shoulder under the coffin; the four dropped it that minute, and disappeared. Mor’s son took the lid off the coffin; and what did he find lying inside but a beautiful woman, warm and ruddy, sleeping as if at home in her bed. He took out the young woman, knowing well that she was alive, and placing her on his back, left the coffin behind at the wayside.
The woman could neither walk nor speak, and he brought her home to his mother. Mor opened the door, and he put the young woman down in the corner.
“What’s this you brought me? What do I want with the like of her in the house?”
“Never mind, mother; it may be our luck that will come with her.”
They gave her every kind of drink and nourishing food, for she was very weak; when daylight came, she was growing stronger, and could speak. The first words she said were, “I am no good to you in the way that I am now; but if you are a brave man, you will meet with your luck to-morrow night. All the fairies will be gathered at a feast in the fort at Cnoc na Hown; there will be a horn of drink on the table. If you bring that horn, and I get three sips from it (if you have the heart of a brave man you will go to the fort, seize the horn, and bring it here), I shall be as well and strong as ever, and you will be as rich yourself as any king in Erin.”
“I have stood in great danger before from the like of them,” replied Mor’s son. “I will make a trial of this work, too.”
“Between one and two o’clock in the night you must go to the fort,” said the young woman, “and you must carry a stick of green rowan wood in your hand.”
The young man went to the fairy fort, keeping the stick carefully and firmly in his hand. At parting, the young woman warned him, saying, “They can do you no harm in the world while you have the stick, but without the stick there is no telling what they might do.”
When Mor’s son came to Cnoc na Hown, and went in through the gate of the fairy fort, he saw a house and saw many lights flashing in different places. In the kitchen was a great table with all sorts of food and drink, and around it a crowd of small men. When he was making toward the table, he heard one of the men say,—