"There is no person living," says Bride, "might have power on the soul of another. If my sins don't deliver me into your hand the word of my da is no use."
"Then I'll be taking himself," says the devil, making ready to go.
"You may wait till he's dead," cries the woman of the house. "He made you no offer of his bones and his flesh."
"The tongues of three women would argue the devil to death," says he, and away with him in a grey puff of smoke. The man and woman of the house began for to pray. But says Bride to the servant:
"Let you slip off to Shan Alec and bid him come up--for it's maybe an honourable reception is waiting him here."
There was a man in these parts, and he thought it hard to see a square inch of ground go to loss. He had a small wee farm on the top of a windy hill, and there was a fort on the sweetest of the fields. He couldn't pass by but he'd think of how much potatoes might be grown within in the circle. Well with the dint of consideration didn't he finally decide for to plant it.
He never let on to his wife, but away out with the loy, and he made great work before the fall of night. When he came in he carried a lengthy thorn root in his hand.
"An old thorn I hoked out of the ground," says he. "I brought it in for the fire."
"Is it making gaps in the quick hedges you are?" she asks.
"Not at all," says he. "I have the circle beyond rooted up for to set potatoes in it."
When she heard what he was after doing she began for to roar and to cry.
"It is destroyed we are in this ill hour," she lamented. "The Good People will be following us surely with the black wrath of vengeance and spite. Never before did I hear of a man setting spuds in a fort."
"Many and many's the time I have seen them, they riding down by the hill; their fiddles and fifes I have heard, their shouts and their laughs. But I had no cause for a dread till it come on me now," she replies.
With that herself took the thorn from the fire, where he was after casting it down; she left it out on the door of the house.
"Let their branch stop beyond on the street," says she, "the way they will not be entering here and they seeking for to bring it away."
In the black darkness of midnight there came the awfullest cry on the street, on past the house and into the byre. Then a great lamentation came from the cows and the ass.