“I doubt I have a sickness on me will be the means of my death,” says M‘Carthy. “I had best be moving on from this place, the way I’ll not be rewarding your kindness with the botheration of a corpse.”
With that the master of the house began for to speak in praise of a doctor who was in those parts.
“I see I must be telling you what is in it,” says M‘Carthy. “Doctors have no relief for the sort of tribulation is destroying me.”
He brought out the statue, and he went over the whole story from start to finish. How he set off on his travels and was hopeful for a while; and how despair got hold of him again.
“Let you be rejoicing now,” says the Jew, “for it is near that lady you are this day. She comes down to a stream which is convenient to this place, and six waiting maids along with her, bringing a rod and line for to fish. And it is always at the one hour she is in it.”
Well, M‘Carthy was lepping wild with delight to hear tell of the lady.
“Let you do all I’m saying,” the Jew advises him. “I’ll provide you with the best of fishing tackle, and do you go down to the stream for to fish in it, too. Whatever comes to your line let you give to the lady. But say nothing which might scare her at all, and don’t follow after her if she turns to go home.”
The next day M‘Carthy went out for to fish; not a long time was he at the stream before the lady came down and the six waiting maids along with her. Sure enough she was the picture of the statue, and she had the loveliest golden hair ever seen.
M‘Carthy had the luck to catch a noble trout, and he took it off the hook, rolled it in leaves, and brought it to the lady, according to the advice of the Jew. She was pleased to accept the gift of it, but didn’t she turn home at once and the six waiting maids along with her. When she went into her own house she took the fish to her father.
“There was a noble person at the stream this day,” she says, “and he made me a present of the trout.”