And first, to break their spells, she sprinkled the water in which she had washed her child's feet (the feet-water) outside the door on the threshold; secondly, she took the cake which the witches had made in her absence, of meal mixed with the blood drawn from the sleeping family, and she broke the cake in bits, and placed a bit in the mouth of each sleeper, and they were restored; and she took the cloth they had woven, and placed it half in and half out of the chest with the padlock; and, lastly, she secured the door with a great crossbeam fastened in the jambs, so that they could not enter, and having done these things she waited. Not long were the witches in coming, and they raged and called for vengeance. "Open! Open!" they screamed. "Open, feet-water!" "I cannot," said the feet-water; "I am scattered on the ground, and my path is down to the Lough." "Open, open, wood and trees and beam!" they cried to the door. "I cannot," said the door, "for the beam is fixed in the jambs, and I have no power to move." "Open, open, cake that we have made and mingled with blood!" they cried again. "I cannot," said the cake, "for I am broken and bruised, and my blood is on the lips of the sleeping children." Then the witches rushed through the air with great cries, and fled back to Slievenamon, uttering strange curses on the Spirit of the Well, who had wished their ruin. But the woman and the house were left in peace, and a mantle dropped by one of the witches was kept hung up by the mistress as a sign of the night's awful contest; and this mantle was in possession of the same family from generation to generation for five hundred years after. 189 The story of "King O'Toole and His Goose" is from Samuel Lover's _Stories and Legends of the Irish Peasantry_, as reprinted in slightly abridged form in William Butler Yeats's _Irish Fairy Tales_. The extreme form of the dialect is kept as in the original, since the humor is largely dependent on the language of the peasant who tells the story. It will serve as a good illustration for practice work for the amateur story-teller. Probably most teachers would find it necessary to "reduce" this dialect or to eliminate it altogether. Mr. Jacobs, who includes this story in his _Celtic Fairy Tales_, reduces the dialect very materially, keeping just enough to remind one that it is Irish. He also says the final word as to the moral of the story: "This is a moral apologue on the benefits of keeping your word. Yet it is told with such humor and vigor, that the moral glides insensibly into the heart." KING O'TOOLE AND HIS GOOSE