The rider of the black horse said, "How unjust was the fist a little
ago! The wind from your fist carried the two teeth to me."
He then took him into that big, handsome, and noble house, and into a
room that was full of gentlemen eating and drinking, and he seated him
at the head of the table, and gave him wine to drink, and said to him,
"Taste that wine to see if it is better than the wine that you are
giving to the King of Erin and his court to-night."
"This is better wine," said O'Cronicert.
"How unjust was the fist a little ago!" said the rider of the black
horse.
When all was over the rider of the black horse said, "Are you willing to
return home now?"
"Yes," said O'Cronicert, "very willing."
They then rose, and went to the stable: and the black horse was taken
out; and they leaped on its back, and went away. The rider of the black
horse said to O'Cronicert, after they had set off, "Do you know who I
am?"
"I do not," said O'Cronicert.
"I am a brother-in-law of yours," said the rider of the black horse;
"and though my sister is married to you there is not a king or knight in
Erin who is a match for her. Two of your vows are now broken; and if you
break the other vow you shall lose your wife and all that you possess."
They arrived at O'Cronicert's house; and O'Cronicert said, "I am ashamed
to go in, as they do not know where I have been since night came."
"Hoo!" said the rider, "they have not missed you at all. There is so
much conviviality among them, that they have not suspected that you have
been anywhere. Here are the two teeth that you knocked out of the front
of your wife's mouth. Put them in their place, and they will be as
strong as ever."
"Come in with me," said O'Cronicert to the rider of the black horse.
"I will not: I disdain to go in," said the rider of the black horse.
The rider of the black horse bade O'Cronicert good-bye, and went away.
O'Cronicert went in; and his wife met him as she was busy waiting on the
gentlemen. He asked her pardon, and put the two teeth in the front of
her mouth, and they were as strong as ever. She said, "Two of your vows
are now broken." No one took notice of him when he went in, or said
"Where have you been?" They spent the night in eating and drinking, and
the whole of the next day.
In the evening the king said, "I think that it is time for us to be
going"; and all said that it was. O'Cronicert said, "You will not go
to-night. I am going to get up a dance. You will go to-morrow."
"Let them go," said his wife.
"I will not," said he.
The dance was set a-going that night. They were playing away at dancing
and music till they became warm and hot with perspiration. They were
going out one after another to cool themselves at the side of the house.
They all went out except O'Cronicert and his wife, and a man called Kayn
Mac Loy. O'Cronicert himself went out, and left his wife and Kayn Mac
Loy in the house, and when she saw that he had broken his third vow she
gave a spring through a room, and became a big filly, and gave Kayn Mac
Loy a kick with her foot, and broke his thigh in two. She gave another
spring, and smashed the door and went away, and was seen no more. She
took with her the Tower of Castle Town as an armful on her shoulder and
a light burden on her back, and she left Kayn Mac Loy in the old
tumble-down black house in a pool of rain-drip on the floor.
At daybreak next day poor O'Cronicert could only see the old house that
he had before. Neither cattle nor sheep, nor any of the fine things that
he had was to be seen. One awoke in the morning beside a bush, another
beside a dyke, and another beside a ditch. The king only had the honour
of having O'Cronicert's little hut over his head. As they were leaving,
Murdoch Mac Brian remembered that he had left his own foster-brother
Kayn Mac Loy behind, and said there should be no separation in life
between them and that he would go back for him. He found Kayn in the old
tumble-down black house, in the middle of the floor, in a pool of
rain-water, with his leg broken; and he said the earth should make a
nest in his sole and the sky a nest in his head if he did not find a man
to cure Kayn's leg.
They told him that on the Isle of Innisturk was a herb that would heal
him.
So Kayn Mac Loy was then borne away, and sent to the island, and he was
supplied with as much food as would keep him for a month, and with two
crutches on which he would be going out and in as he might desire. At
last the food was spent, and he was destitute, and he had not found the
herb. He was in the habit of going down to the shore, and gathering
shell-fish, and eating it.
As he was one day on the shore, he saw a big, big man landing on the
island, and he could see the earth and the sky between his legs. He set
off with the crutches to try if he could get into the hut before the big
man would come upon him. Despite his efforts, the big man was between
him and the door, and said to him, "Unless you deceive me, you are Kayn
Mac Loy."