And she said to them to make a little hut for her in the wood, and they made the hut and went away and left her there. She was not long till she began to get material for the shirts, and she began to make them; and she was not long in the house when George nă Riell came to her, and he was with her till she had a child to him.
A young man was in the wood one day and a dog with him, and the dog took him to the place where the woman was; and the man saw the woman and the child there, and he went home and told the queen that there was a beautiful woman in the wood. And she went and took the dog with her, as if the dog was with George nă Riell. She went in and found the woman and the babe, and she killed the babe and caught some of the blood, and mixed the blood and ashes up together and made a cake, and she sought to put a piece of the bread into the woman’s mouth. And the woman dropped one tear from her eye; but the other went away home to her wedded husband, and she said to him that great was the shame for him to have children by that woman, and that she had had to kill her own child and eat it.
“It is not possible,” said he, “that she has killed my babe.”
“She killed and she ate.”
He went to her and found the child dead; but she did not speak a word to him. He said then he would burn her at twelve o’clock on the next day, and that he would put a tree of one foot and hang her on it. He commanded that every one should come in the morning with sods of turf and sheets of paper and everything to make a fire. And he put the tree standing, and she was brought and put up on the top of the tree; and she was sewing during this time. When it was twelve o’clock, sign was given she should be hung, and an old man in the crowd asked them to give her another hour by the clock; and when the hour was passed he asked again that they should give her a half-hour; the woman in it (he said) was under gassa. “You see that it is not her life that is troubling her, but that she is always sewing.”
It was not long till they saw a black cloud coming through the air, and they saw three things in the cloud coming.
“Well,” said the old man, “there are three angels from heaven, or three devils from hell, coming for her soul.”
There were three black ravens coming, and their mouths open, and as it were fire out of their mouths, till the three black ravens came and lay in their sister’s bosom, and she on the top of the tree, and she put the three shirts on them, and said,—
“Finn, Inn, and Brown Glegil, show that I am your sister, for in pain am I to-day.”