The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red HanrahanYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 5 (of 8): The Celtic Twilight and Stories of Red Hanrahan
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
And at the end of that time, one morning there came a deer outside the
window, with bells on it, and they ringing. And it called out, ‘Here
is the hunt, where is the huntsman and the hound?’ So when Jack heard
that he got up and took his horse and his hound and went hunting the
deer. When it was in the hollow he was on the hill, and when it was on
the hill he was in the hollow, and that went on all through the day,
and when night fell it went into a wood. And Jack went into the wood
after it, and all he could see was a mud-wall cabin, and he went in,
and there he saw an old woman, about two hundred years old, and she
sitting over the fire. ‘Did you see a deer pass this way?’ says Jack.
‘I did not,’ says she, ‘but it’s too late now for you to be following a
deer, let you stop the night here.’ ‘What will I do with my horse and
my hound?’ said Jack. ‘Here are two ribs of hair,’ says she, ‘and let
you tie them up with them.’ So Jack went out and tied up the horse and
the hound, and when he came in again the old woman said, ‘You killed
my three sons, and I’m going to kill you now,’ and she put on a pair
of boxing-gloves, each one of them nine stone weight, and the nails
in them fifteen inches long. Then they began to fight, and Jack was
getting the worst of it. ‘Help, hound!’ he cried out, then ‘Squeeze,
hair,’ cried out the old woman, and the rib of hair that was about the
hound’s neck squeezed him to death. ‘Help, horse!’ Jack called out,
then ‘Squeeze, hair,’ called out the old woman, and the rib of hair
that was about the horse’s neck began to tighten and squeeze him to
death. Then the old woman made an end of Jack and threw him outside the
door.
To go back now to Bill. He was out in the garden one day, and he took
a look at the well, and what did he see but the water at the top was
blood, and what was underneath was honey. So he went into the house
again, and he said to his mother, ‘I will never eat a second meal at
the same table, or sleep a second night in the same bed, till I know
what is happening to Jack.’
So he took the other horse and hound then, and set off, over hills
where cock never crows and horn never sounds, and the Devil never blows
his bugle. And at last he came to the weaver’s house, and when he
went in, the weaver says, ‘You are welcome, and I can give you better
treatment than I did the last time you came in to me,’ for she thought
it was Jack who was there, they were so much like one another. ‘That is
good,’ said Bill to himself, ‘my brother has been here.’ And he gave
the weaver the full of a basin of gold in the morning before he left.
Then he went on till he came to the king’s house, and when he was at
the door the princess came running down the stairs, and said, ‘Welcome
to you back again.’ And all the people said, ‘It is a wonder you have
gone hunting three days after your marriage, and to stop so long away.’
So he stopped that night with the princess, and she thought it was her
own husband all the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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