“What shall I do with the three of them, to put them to death?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the hen-wife, “if you will do what I advise you.”
“I will do it,” said she.
“Promise a dowry to your eldest daughter if she will follow the (other) daughter out when she is going with food to her brothers.”
And she sent her daughter after the one who was going with food; but she looked behind her and saw the other coming, and she made a bog and a lake between them, so big that she went astray. She came to her mother, and told her she was wandering all the night, and the mother went to the hen-wife again and told her that her daughter had not made her way to the men; and the hen-wife said to her, “Promise a dowry to your second daughter.”
And she did this, and the second daughter followed as the first did, and fared in the same way, and she came and told her mother. And the mother went again to the hen-wife, and told her, and asked what she ought to do, and the hen-wife said, “Promise the dowry to your third daughter.”
And the third daughter followed Gilla of the Enchantments when she was going with the food; and she did not look behind her till she came to the house; and she put a pot of water down, and cut off the heads of her three brothers, and washed them, and put them on their shoulders again. And the half-sister was at the window looking on at everything she did, and she went home through the sea, before the sea returned together; and when they ate their supper, her sister came home.
The mother went in the morning to the hen-wife and told her the third woman had succeeded, and had learned everything. And she asked her what she should do.
“Say, now, that your daughter is going to be married, and ask Gilla for the loan of the coat. She will not know that the power of the coat will be gone if she gives it away. So long as she keeps the coat herself she can do everything; there are spells on the coat that the sea must open before it, without closing after it; but she does not know that the spell of the coat will be lost.”
She gave the loan of the coat to her half-sister, but instead of going to be married this is what she did. When night came she put the coat on and went to the house of her half-brothers, knocked at the door, and asked them to open it. And one of the brothers said, “That is not my sister.” But another looked out of the window and saw the coat and recognised it, and he opened the door and let her in. She cut the three heads off, and took them three quarters of a mile and put them into a hole in the ground, and went back to her mother and told her she had killed the three. She gave the coat back to Gilla of the Enchantments, and Gilla went in the evening to her brothers with food, and whatever sort of fastening the other one put on the door she could not open it, but had to go in by the window, and she found her three brothers dead.