------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE THREE SONS I’ll tell you a story, says the old man who was bringing fish from the sea; and after that I’ll be going on to Ballinrobe, to one that has a shop there and that was reared by my grandmother. It is likely he’ll give me a tasty suit of clothes. Working all my life I am; working with the flail in the barn, working with the spade at the potato tilling and the potato digging, breaking stones on the road. And four years ago the wife died, and it’s lonesome to be housekeeping alone. There was a King long ago of Ireland, and he had three sons, and one of them was something silly. There came a sickness on the King, and he called his three sons, and he said to them that he had knowledge the only thing would cure him was the apples from Burnett’s orchard, and he bade them to go look for them, for that orchard was in some far-away place, and no one could tell where it was. The three sons went then, and they tackled their horses, and put on their bridles, and they set out, and went on till they came to three cross-roads. There they stopped, and they settled among themselves that each one of them would take one of the roads and go searching for the apples, and they would meet at the same place at the end of a year and a day. The youngest son, that was a bit silly, took the crossest of the roads, and he went on till he came to a cottage by the roadside. He went in, and there was a withered old man in the house, and he said: ‘There is a great welcome before the King of Ireland’s son!’ The son was astonished at that, because he thought no one could know him. He got good treatment there, and in the course of the night he asked the old man did he know where was Burnett’s garden. ‘I have a hundred years on me,’ said the old man, ‘and I never heard of such a place. But I have a brother,’ he said, ‘that has a hundred years more than myself, and it may be he would know,’ he said. So in the morning he gave a canoe to the King’s son, and it went on of itself without him turning or guiding it, till it brought him to the old man’s brother, and he got a welcome there and good treatment; and in the course of the night he asked that old man did he know where was Burnett’s orchard. ‘I do not,’ said he; ‘though I have two hundred years upon me I never heard of it. But go on,’ he said, ‘to a brother I have that has a hundred years more than myself.’