Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/201

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Folk-lore Gleanings from County Leitrim.
193

Climbing up the glass mountains,
And my bonny bull of oranges (sic),
Will you turn to me?'

I never slept a wink for the last two nights but listening to it."

The gentleman said, "My wife gave me a drink for the last two nights, it made me sick" (i.e., ill).

The other gentleman said to him, "Do not take that drink to-night, but try and stop awake until you see would you find it."

The woman took out the egg and broke it, and there came a coach and four horses out of it. She said she would give it to her if she would let her sleep the third night with her husband. She said she would. When her husband went to bed she brought him a drink with sleeping-drops on it. He said he would not drink it until she would bring him a cut of bread. She went for the bread, and he threw the drink in the grate, and he let on he was fast asleep. She let the woman go to bed to him. She said again:

"Three babes I bore for three,
Three basin-full of tears
I shed for thee.
Seven long years I spent
Climbing up the glass mountains,
And my bonny bull of oranges (sic),
Will you turn to me?"

The gentleman did not speak for a long time; at last he turned to her and asked her was she his first wife, and she said "Yes". He told her that they were her three children that were in the three little houses; and that it was the one tear that she dropped that blinded the little girl's eye. He told her when she would rise in the morning, and take breakfast, to go away to the foot of the Glass Mountains, and that he would be there as soon as her, and so he was. They two crossed the Glass Mountains, and brought their