The giantess, having no household to think about, grew, as most unemployed women do, peevish and troublesome. The giant, having little or no work to occupy himself with, grew fat and lazy. Quiet and good-tempered as he was, he was dreadfully tormented by his wife. She called him a lazy, useless old loon; and said he was too fat, and didn't take exercise enow. When he had nothing else to employ himself about, in peaceful[132] times, she told him that he should log the rock, for a few hours every day, to stretch his sinews and make his blood circulate brisker, instead of dozing away all day and night in his chair, which may still be seen. "Go thee way'st," said she; "swim over to the Dollar Rocks, it's only two miles or so; dive round them and catch me a few good big congers; I want their fat to make a cake. And the pollock and cod that feed among the ore-weed thereabouts are excellent eating." The dissatisfied woman's advice was sometimes taken. He would swim away, and, in an hour or two, bring her home a string of fish of a furlong's length. Then he would log Men Amber for a bit. This he could easily do with the tip of his finger, when standing on the grass below it; for the rock is only 30 feet or so from the grass, and Treen giant stood at least 40 feet high, without his boots. He was stout in proportion, and his strength of arm was prodigious. Sometimes, with his staff, he kept the sacred stone in motion when seated in his chair, just opposite it. But often it happened, when getting through his exercise by the latter mode, that he fell asleep, long ere the sand was down in his wife's hour-glass. And then she, the faggot, would pelt her quiet husband with rocks, heaps of which may still be seen, lying loose, just as they flew from her hand and dropped at no great distance from the poor giant's chair. He would wake up, with a sore head, to hear her say, in a voice like a bellowing bull, "Stop thy snoring, thou confounded old fool, and work away, west ah? or I'll pommel thy noddle to browse." "What the deuce shall I do to stop her tongue and cure her temper? Can 'e tell me, my good people?" He would often say to Treen folks and others, who visited him of a summer's evening; "she's the most troublesome woman I ever heard of!" All kinds of employment were suggested. In those days everybody thought he could manage a discontented wife, were he her husband; but actually to do it was difficult. "Why should she fret and fume for lack of children," he used to say to his Treen neighbours, "and what need have you either, in those peaceful times, to care whether we have descendants or no?" Potent reasons were given both by giantess and people why they desired that their chief's race should be continued. Charms and other means were used in order to obtain the desired result.