When Jack lifted up the animals and put them in his pocket, everything stopped, and the mother laughed for a good while. But after a while, when she came to herself, and saw what Jack had done and how they were now without either money, or food, or a cow, she got very, very angry at Jack, and scolded him hard, and then sat down and began to cry.
Poor Jack, when he looked at himself, confessed that he was a stupid fool entirely. “And what,” says he, “shall I now do for my poor mother?” He went out along the road, thinking and thinking, and he met a wee woman who said, “Good-morrow to you. Jack,” says she, “how is it you are not trying for the King’s daughter of Ireland?”
“What do you mean ?” says Jack.
Says she: “Didn’t you hear what the whole world has heard, that the King of Ireland has a daughter who hasn’t laughed for seven years, and he has promised to give her in marriage, and to give the kingdom along with her, to any man who will take three laughs out of her.” “If that is so,” says Jack, says he, “it is not here I should be.”
Back to the house he went, and gathers together the bee, the harp, the mouse, and the bum-clock, and putting them into his pocket, he bade his mother good-by, and told her it wouldn’t be long till she got good news from him, and off he hurries.
When he reached the castle, there was a ring of spikes all round the castle and men’s heads on nearly every spike there.
“What heads are these?” Jack asked one of the King’s soldiers.
“Any man that comes here trying to win the King’s daughter, and fails to make her laugh three times, loses his head and has it stuck on a spike. These are the heads of the men that failed,” says he.
“A mighty big crowd,” says Jack, says he. Then Jack sent word to tell the King’s daughter and the King that there was a new man who had come to win her.
In a very little time the King and the King’s daughter and the King’s court all came out and sat themselves down on gold and silver chairs in front of the castles and ordered Jack to be brought in until he should have his trial. Jack, before he went, took out of his pocket the bee, the harp, the mouse, and the bum-clock, and he gave the harp to the bee, and he tied a string to one and the other, and took the end of the string himself, and marched into the castle yard before all the court, with his animals coming on a string behind him.
When the Queen and the King and the court and the princes saw poor ragged Jack with his bee, and mouse, and bum-clock hopping behind him on a string, they set up one roar of laughter that was long and loud enough, and when the King’s daughter herself lifted her head and looked to see what they were laughing at, and saw Jack and his paraphernalia, she opened her mouth and she let out of her such a laugh as was never heard before.
Then Jack dropped a low courtesy, and said, “Thank you, my lady; I have one of the three parts of you won.”
Then he drew up his animals in a circle, and began to whistle, and the minute he did, the bee began to play the harp, and the mouse and the bum-clock stood up on their hind legs, got hold of each other, and began to dance, and the King and the King’s court and Jack himself began to dance and jig, and everything about the King’s castle, pots and pans, wheels and reels and the castle itself began to dance also. And the King’s daughter, when she saw this, opened her mouth again, and let out of her a laugh twice louder than she let before, and Jack, in the middle of his jigging, drops another courtesy, and says, “Thank you, my lady; that is two of the three parts of you won.”
Jack and his menagerie went on playing and dancing, but Jack could not get the third laugh out of the King’s daughter, and the poor fellow saw his big head in danger of going on the spike. Then the brave mouse came to Jack’s help and wheeled round upon its heel, and as it did so its tail swiped into the bum-clock’s mouth, and the bum-clock began to cough and cough and cough. And when the King’s daughter saw this she opened her mouth again, and she let the loudest and hardest and merriest laugh that was ever heard before or since; and, “Thank you, my lady,” says Jack, dropping another courtesy; “I have all of you won.”
Then when Jack stopped his menagerie, the King took himself and the menagerie within the castle. He was washed and combed, and dressed in a suit of silk and satin, with all kinds. of gold and silver ornaments, and then was led before the King’s daughter. And true enough she confessed that a handsomer and finer fellow than Jack she had never seen, and she was very willing to be his wife.
Jack sent for his poor old mother and brought her to the wedding, which lasted nine days and nine nights, every night better than the other. All the lords and ladies and gentry of Ireland were at the wedding. I was at it, too, and got brogues, broth and slippers of bread and came jigging home on my head.
The Old Hag’s Long Leather Bag
ONCE on a time, long, long ago, there was a widow woman who had three daughters. When their father died, their mother thought they never would want, for he had left her a long leather bag filled with gold and silver. But he was not long dead, when an old Hag came begging to the house one day and stole the long leather bag filled with gold and silver, and went away out of the country with it, no one knew where.
So from that day, the widow woman and her three daughters were poor, and she had a hard struggle to live and to bring up her three daughters.
But when they were grown up, the eldest said one day: “Mother, I’m a young woman now, and it’s a shame for me to be here doing nothing to help you or myself. Bake me a bannock and cut me a callop, till I go away to push my fortune.”
The mother baked her a whole bannock, and asked her if she would have half of it with her blessing or the whole of it without. She said to give her the whole bannock without.
So she took it and went away. She told them if she was not back in a year and a day from that, then they would know she was doing well, and making her fortune.
She traveled away and away before her, far further than I could tell you, and twice as far as you could tell me, until she came into a strange country, and going up to a little house, she found an old Hag living in it. The Hag asked her where she was going. She said she was going to push her fortune.
Said the Hag: “How would you like to stay here with me, for I want a maid?”
“What will I have to do?” said she.
“You will have to wash me and dress me, and sweep the hearth clean; but on the peril of your life, never look up the chimney,” said the Hag.
“All right,” she agreed to this.
The next day, when the Hag arose, she washed her and dressed her, and when the Hag went out, she swept the hearth clean, and she thought it would be no harm to have one wee look up the chimney. And there what did she see but her own mother’s long leather bag of gold and silver? So she took it down at once, and getting it on her back, started away for home as fast as she could run.
But she had not gone far when she met a horse grazing in a field, and when he saw her, he said: “Rub me! Rub me! for I haven’t been rubbed these seven years.”
But she only struck him with a stick she had in her hand, and drove him out of her way.
She had not gone much further when she met a sheep, who said: “O, shear me! Shear me I for I haven’t been shorn these seven years.”