I took them with me, and I said to her, “Tell me where you got them.”
“Oh, my son brought them with him, and they are all the offspring of the one king.”
I was well satisfied, and I had no liking for delay to get myself free from the hag, and I took them on board the ship, and the child I had myself. I thought the king might leave me the child I nursed myself; but when I came to land, and all those young people with me, the king and queen were out walking. The king was very aged, and the queen aged likewise. When I came to converse with them, and the twelve with me, the king and queen began to cry. I asked, “Why are you crying?”
“Oh, it is for good cause I am crying. As many children as these I should have, and now I am withered, grey, at the end of my life, and I have not one at all.”
“Oh, belike you will yet have plenty.”
I told him all I went through, and I gave him the child in his hand, and “These are your other children who were stolen from you, whom I am giving to you safe. They are gently reared.”
When the king heard who they were he smothered them with kisses and drowned them with tears, and dried them with fine cloths silken and the hair of his own head, and so also did their mother, and great was his welcome for me, as it was I who found them all. And the king said to me, “I will give you your own child, as it is you who have earned him best; but you must come to my court every year, and the child with you, and I will share with you my possessions.”
“Oh, I have enough of my own, and after my death I will leave it to the child.”
I spent a time, till my visit was over, and I told the king all the troubles I went through, only I said nothing about my wife. And now you have the story.
[The remainder is from P. McGrale’s Achill version.]