There was a man in Ireland, whose name was O’Cronicert, and his dwelling place was Corr-water, and he spent all he had on the great nobles of Ireland, bringing them for days’ entertainment and for nights’ entertainment, till he had nothing left but an old tumble-down black house, and an old wife, and an old lame white horse. The thought that came into his head was, to go to the King of Ireland for assistance, to see what he would give. He cut a cudgel of grey oak in the outskirt of the wood, and sat on the back of the old lame white horse, and set off at speed through wood, and through moss, and through rugged ground, till he reached the King’s house. The custom was, that a man should be a year and a day in the King’s house before being asked the object of his journey. After being there a year and a day, the King said, “O’Cronicert, it is not without a cause for your journey you have come here.” “It is not,” said O’Cronicert, “it is for assistance I have come here. You know it was for yourself and your great nobles I spent my property entirely.” “You will wait,” said the King, “till I bring in the children”; and they were there as men called them Murdoch Mac Brian, and Duncan Mac Brian, and Torgill Mac Brian, and Brian Borr Mac Cimi, and his sixteen foster brothers with every one of them. “I will give,” said Murdoch Mac Brian, “a hundred milch cows to him.” “I will give,” said Duncan Mac Brian, “a hundred farrow cows to him, in case they should be in calf all in one year.” “I will give him,” said Torgill Mac Brian, “a hundred brood mares.” “I will give him,” said Brian Borr Mac Cimi, “a hundred sheep.” After O’Cronicert got this, he was not going away. The King told him to go away, that it was difficult to keep his herd separate from the King’s own, and to take it away. He said to the King that he had one thing in view, and if he got it from the King, he would prefer it to all he had already got. “It is certain,” said the King, “it must be some bad thing or other; you had better tell it, that I may let you away.” “It is,” he said, “the lap-dog, that is out and in after the Queen, that I wish for”; and the King gave him permission to take it with him. He took the lap-dog, leapt on the back of the old lame white horse, and went off at speed, without one look at the herd, through wood, and through moss, and through rugged ground. After he had gone some distance through the wood, a roe-buck leapt out of the wood, and the lap-dog went after it, and in an instant they were out of sight. Close upon the evening, he saw the lap-dog coming, and a royal stag before it, and the deer started up as a woman behind O’Cronicert, the handsomest that eye had ever seen from the beginning of the universe till the end of eternity. O’Cronicert caught her, and she asked him to let her go, and he said there would be no separation in life between them.