J. F. Campbell Collection > Fireside stories of Ireland

I 8 THE FIRESIDE STORIES OF IRELAND.
take two hours to tell you the devilment of the old queen,
the confusion, and fright, and grief of young king and queen,
the bad opinion he began to feel of his wife, and the struggle
she had to keep down her bitter sorrow, and not give way
to it by speaking or lamenting. The young king would
not allow any one to be called, and ordered his step-mother
to give out that the child fell from the mother's arms at
the window, and that a wild beast ran oif with it. The
wicked woman pretended to do so, but she told under-
hand to everybody she spoke to, what the king and herself
saw in the bedchamber.
The young queen was the most unhappy woman in the
three kingdoms for a long time, between sorrow for her
child, and her husband's bad opinion ; still she neither sjjoke
nor cried, and she gathered bog-down and went on with
the shirts. Often the twelve wild geese would be seen
lighting on the trees in the park or on the smooth sod, and
looking in at her windows. So she worked on to get the
shirts finished, but another year was at an end, and she had
the twelfth shirt finished except one arm, when she was
obliged to take to her bed, and a beautiful girl was born.
!Now the king was on his guard, and he would not let
the mother and child be left alone for a minute ; but the
wicked woman bribed some of the attendants, set others
asleep, gave the sleepy posset to the queen, and had a per-
son watching to snatch the child away, and kill it. But
what should she see but the same wolf in the garden look-
ing up, and licking his chops again ? Out went the child,
and away with it flew the wolf, and she smeared the sleep-
ing mother's mouth and face with blood, and then roared,
and bawled, and cried out to the king and to everybody she
met, and the room was filled, and every one was sure the
young queen had just devoured her own babe.
The poor mother thought now her life would leave her.
She was in such a state she could neither think nor pray,
but she sat like a stone, and worked away at the arm of the
twelfth shirt.
The king was for taking her to the house in the Avood
where he found her, but the stepmother, and the lords of
the court, and the judges would not hear of it, and she was