There will be no eating in the other world, says the red-haired man
sitting at the door. ‘But there is a tree in it with twelve sorts of
fruit, and what would that be for if we were not to eat it?’ Well, the
first man that went eating fruit made a bad hand of it. He bethought of
himself and it going down, and it stopped in his throat and gave us that
lump in it ever since. Isn’t that a terrible thing for a man to have?
But as to the woman, what she ate stopped down, and so it would if she
ate another along with it. Women are terrible for eating things. Women
are curious, and that is what led her to it. And besides that it was
nice-looking, and women like to have nice things. A woman to see a lady,
she would want all she would be wearing for herself—red stockings and
shoes and dresses, and even to umbrellas.
There was an old couple were past working and they went travelling the
roads, and they met a King that had a palace he had no use for, and he
said they could have the use of it. So he brought them in and put them
into a big room, and there was a big table with every sort of food on
it, and he bade them use what they could of what was there. But there
was a board of the table he bade them not to touch, and the reason was
he had put a mouse under it that would tell him every word they would
say.
Well, when they had ate all they could, the woman began to say she would
look what was under that board. ‘Do not,’ says the man, ‘and the King
after telling you not to touch it.’ ‘Sorra fear he to know of it,’ says
she. But he wouldn’t let her do it that night or the next night, but the
third night she put out her hand and rose up the board, and out ran the
mouse. And they tried to catch it, but you may believe they were not
able to come up with it. And so when the King saw they had the board
shifted, he turned them out of the palace and they were as poor as
before.
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