“I’ll tell you how to settle the matter. All of you be here to-morrow,
and I’ll think over the matter to-night, and I engage you will have
nothing more to quarrel about when you come in the morning.”
So the boys promised to keep good friends till they met in the morning,
and went away.
When Towtas saw them clear off, he dug up the ring, the goblet, and the
harp, and now said he, “I’m all right, and they won’t have anything to
fight about in the morning.”
Off he set back again to the lord’s castle with the ring, the goblet,
and the harp; but he soon bethought himself of the powers of the
ring, and in two minutes he was in the great hall where all the lords
and ladies were just sitting down to dinner; and the harp played the
sweetest music, and they all listened in delight; and he drank out of
the goblet which was never empty, and then, when his head began to grow
a little light, “It is enough,” he said; and putting his arm round the
waist of the lord’s daughter, he took his harp and goblet in the other
hand, and murmuring—“I wish we were at the old fort by the side of the
wood”—in two minutes they were both at the desired spot. But his head
was heavy with the wine, and he laid down the harp beside him and fell
asleep. And when she saw him asleep she took the ring off his finger,
and the harp and the goblet from the ground and was back home in her
father’s castle before two minutes had passed by.
When Towtas awoke and found his prize gone, and all his treasures
beside, he was like one mad; and roamed about the country till he came
by an orchard, where he saw a tree covered with bright, rosy apples.
Being hungry and thirsty, he plucked one and ate it, but no sooner
had he done so than horns began to sprout from his forehead, and grew
larger and longer till he knew he looked like a goat, and all he could
do, they would not come off. Now, indeed, he was driven out of his
mind, and thought how all the neighbours would laugh at him; and as he
raged and roared with shame, he spied another tree with apples, still
brighter, of ruddy gold.
“If I were to have fifty pairs of horns I must have one of those,” he
said; and seizing one, he had no sooner tasted it than the horns fell
off, and he felt that he was looking stronger and handsomer than ever.
“Now, I have her at last,” he exclaimed. “I’ll put horns on them all,
and will never take them off until they give her to me as my bride
before the whole Court.”
Without further delay he set off to the lord’s palace, carrying with
him as many of the apples as he could bring off the two trees. And when
they saw the beauty of the fruit they longed for it; and he gave to
them all, so that at last there was not a head to be seen without horns
in the whole dining-hall. Then they cried out and prayed to have the
horns taken off, but Towtas said—
“No; there they shall be till I have the lord’s daughter given to me
for my bride, and my two rings, my goblet, and my harp all restored to
me.”
And this was done before the face of all the lords and ladies; and his
treasures were restored to him; and the lord placed his daughter’s hand
in the hand of Towtas, saying—
“Take her; she is your wife; only free me from the horns.”
Then Towtas brought forth the golden apples; and they all ate, and the
horns fell off; and he took his bride and his treasures, and carried
them off home, where he built the Castle of Ballytowtas, in the place
where stood his father’s hut, and enclosed the well within the walls.
And when he had filled his treasure-room with gold, so that no man
could count his riches, he buried his fairy treasures deep in the
ground, where no man knew, and no man has ever yet been able to find
them until this day.