So King Solomon agreed to that, and she married him, and she had a child. And after a while he tired of her, and said she might go home. ‘I will go,’ says she, ‘but I’ll bring away the three things you offered to give me.’ So the first thing she brought away was the child, and the second thing was a bag of gold. She came then to King Solomon. ‘Now,’ says she, ‘since you said I could bring away three things, it is you yourself is the third. And come with me now,’ she says. So when King Solomon heard that, he was afraid she would bring him with her, and that she would have power over him. So he asked her to stop with him, and so she did. He began well and he ended badly; and Samson did the same, killing a lion that was going to eat him in the beginning, and killing himself in the end. It was through a woman that he lost his eyesight. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE ROBINEEN I have a new wife now, says the old man who had come back from Ballinrobe; to keep my victuals ready and the door open before me. She’s a quiet woman at some times, but she has a queer way in her mind at the time of the full moon, but it will pass away after. And here is a story now, and I’ll word it easy to you. There was a woman one time and she had three sons. Well, one day one of them said the quarter was too small for the three of them to be in it. ‘And I’ll go,’ says he, ‘and I’ll try to do for myself. And let you turn and make a cake for me to bring with me,’ says he to the mother. The mother went at night and she baked two cakes, a big one and a small one. And when he was going to start in the morning: ‘Which would you sooner have now,’ says she, ‘to have the big one and my curse, or the small one and my blessing?’ ‘I’ll take the big one and your curse,’ says he; ‘the other one is too small and the road being long before me.’ Well, he tripped on till he got hungry, and sat down on the brink of a lake, and he spread out a cloth for the dinner the way he would lose none of the crumbs, and he broke up a piece of the cake then and commenced eating it. The Robineen Redbreast was coming around him and he was hooshing him away. ‘Every crumb that will fall,’ says the Robineen, ‘it will be for me.’ ‘Every crumb that will fall,’ says he, ‘it is little enough for myself.’ So he hooshed away the Robineen. When he had part of it ate, then he got dry, and he went to the lake to take a drink; and the Robineen walked to the lake before him and commenced washing herself and shaking out her wings in the lake, and she turned it all into blood instead of water. He took a drink of it, and he fell dead after taking the drink. The Robineen got people to bury him under a big stone was in it; for the Robineen was enchanted, and they say the birds of the air had talk at that time.