There was a strong farmer one time and he had nine beautiful cows grazing on the best of land. Surely that was a great prosperity, and you’d be thinking him the richest man in all the countryside. But it was little milk he was getting from his nine lovely cows, and no butter from the milk. They’d be churning in that house for three hours or maybe for five hours of a morning, and at the end of all a few wee grains of butter, the dead spit of spiders’ eggs, would be floating on the top of the milk. Evenly that much did not remain to it, for when herself ran the strainer in under them they melted from the churn.

There were great confabulations held about the loss of the yield, but the strength [84]of the spoken word was powerless to restore what was gone. Herself allowed that her man be to have the evil eye, and it was overlooking his own cattle he was by walking through them and he fasting at the dawn of day. The notion didn’t please him too well, indeed he was horrid vexed at her for saying the like, but he went no more among the cows until after his breakfast time. Sure that done no good at all—it was less and less milk came in each day. And butter going a lovely price in the market, to leave it a worse annoyance to have none for to sell.

The man of the house kept a tongue hound that was odious wise. The two walked the cattle together, and it happened one day that they came on a hare was running with the nine cows through the field. The hound gave tongue and away with him after the hare, she making a great offer to escape.

“Maybe there is something in it,” says the man to himself. “I have heard my old grandfather tell that hares be’s enchanted people; let it be true or no, I doubt they’re not right things in any case.”

With that he set out for to follow his [85]tongue hound, and the hunt went over the ditches and through the quick hedges and down by the lake.

“Begob it’s odious weighty I am to be diverting myself like a little gosoon,” says the man. And indeed he was a big, hearty farmer was leaving powerful gaps behind him where he burst through the hedges.

There was a small, wee house up an old laneway, and that was where the hunt headed for. The hare came in on the street not a yard in front of the tongue hound, and she made a lep for to get into the cabin by a............