Well, they all went to the Churl’s house and there they stayed until he opened his stone chest and took out his money-box and paid to the mummers the dues of all the people with sixpence over, and paid Gilly his wages in full, one guinea, one groat and a tester, and handed him double wages to give to each of the servant-boys he had injured. Gilly took the money and left the house of the Churl of the Townland of Mischance, and the people and the mummers went to the road with him, and cheered him as he went on his way.
So, without hap or mishap, Gilly came again to the house of the Spae-Woman. She was sitting at her door-step grinding corn with a quern when he came before her. She cried over him, not believing that he had come safe from the Townland of Mischance. And as long as he was with her she spoke to him of his “poor back.”
He stayed with her for two seasons. He mended her fences and he cleaned her spring-well; he ground her corn and he brought back her swarm of bees; he trained a dog to chase the crows out of her field; he had the ass shod, the sheep washed and the goat spancelled. The Spae-Woman was much beholden to him for all he did for her, and one day she said to him, “Gilly of the Goat-skin you are called, but another name is due to you now.” “And who will give me another name?” said Gilly of the Goatskin. “Who’ll give it to you? Who but the Old Woman of Beare,” said the Spae-Woman.
The next day she said to him, “I had a dream last night, and I know now what you are to do. You must go now to the Old Woman of Beare for the name that is due to you. And before she gives it to you, you must tell her and whoever else is in her house as much as you know of the Unique Tale.”
“But I know nothing at all of the Unique Tale,” said Gilly of the Goatskin.
“There is always a blank before a beginning,” said the Spae-Woman. “This evening, when I am grinding the corn at the quern I shall tell you the Unique Tale.”
That evening when she sat at the door-step of her house and when the sun was setting behind the elder-bushes the Spae-Woman told Gilly the third part of the Unique Tale. Then she baked a cake and killed a cock for him and told him to start on the morrow’s morning for the house of the Old Woman of Beare.