I think I didn’t tell you the story of Cailleac-na-Cearc, the Woman of
the Hens, says the old man with the new wife; and how she committed sin.
It was one day they rose up, herself and her twelve children, and there
was not bit or drop in the house, and the height of the door of frost
and snow was in it; and she sent the husband out to see could he get
firing with a little hatchet he had.
And when he went out he got directions to cut a certain tree. And there
came out of the tree to him as much as he could carry of lumber of the
best of stuff, and he brought it home to the wife.
Well, after a while she bade him go again to the tree and cut it. And
there came from it the same lumber of provisions and gold and money and
everything they wanted. And the third time she sent him to cut the tree,
and the tree spoke to him that time, and it said: ‘You may take what you
can this time, but let you never come near me again.’ And he brought
back more than would fill the corners of the house. And he said to the
wife, that was enough.
But she made him go the fourth time, for women is awful, and she wanted
to get all that she could; and only for her bidding he didn’t like to
draw back to the tree. And that time the tree spoke to him again, and it
said: ‘You have full and plenty, and you’ll see the way your missus is,
and you going back to the house.’ For she was covetous and had no
patience, and it was by the Almighty God’s will he made a hen of her,
and twelve chickens of her twelve children. And she went scraping in the
face of the dunghill, and she never left doing that till the day of
judgment, picking for her chickens that stopped small as they were
always.
When she had too much she wasn’t pleased till she got more, and so she
couldn’t keep it and had nothing at all left her in the heel of the
hunt.
I suppose it was God that made the provision within in the tree. For the
man was holy. Did he mind seeing his children turned into chickens? He
did not. He was a born saint, and it is likely it was a saint talked
with him abroad at the tree; and he had full and plenty while he lived;
and the day he died the gates of heaven were open, and it was as a white
pigeon that he went in through them. That now is a true story, and that
is a thing that surely happened.
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