THE BALL OF THREAD
There was a young lady one time, and a young boy came to her to ask her to marry him. He gave her a pound ball of thread, and bade her to leave it on the ground, and to take the end of the thread in her hand, and when the end of it would be run out, to stamp her foot on the ground and she would come to him.
So she bought a shilling’s worth of bread and a shilling’s worth of apples, and she took the ball of thread as he told her. And when she stamped her foot a door opened in the ground before her, and she went in, and all she saw in the room was a dog and a cat.
So she divided the bread and the apples between them, and she gave them halves, and they were more than proud to eat that much of Ireland’s bread, which they didn’t get the taste of for two hundred years before.
They showed her then a store of a room where there were fifty of her sort that were after being beheaded, and gold rings on their hands. For the man was an enchanted man, and he had brought them away the same as he did herself. The cat and the dog said as she proved so well, they would hide her before she’d be in danger, for she accommodated them so well with everything. They rose up the flag that was in the fireplace, and they hid her there under it, and when the man came in the man asked did such a one come in, and they said, ‘No.’
When he went to rest himself they opened the door and let her out, and he awoke and told the cat to ask who came in at the door. The cat made him an answer, she said: ‘No one but the dog, that struck against it.’
So the young lady went home, and after a while he came to her again the same way, and he said he would bring her away with him. So when he was coming she invited a great quality dinner, and before he came there she told them all that had happened, and asked what should be done to him. Then some said he should be hung. But a big lord that was there said to do nothing at all to him, only to put him into a barrel of pitch and tar and to burn him altogether. But when they thought to do that and to take him they hadn’t but his shadow, and he flew away out through the top of the house, and they hadn’t a trace of him, and he had brought away the young lady along with him.
Her three brothers went looking for her then with the pound ball of thread he had left. And when they stamped their foot the door opened before them, but there was no one in the house but the cat. They told him their sister was gone, and they were in dread she was killed. But he said: ‘She is not killed, and she is here hid where she was before.’ So they took up the flag of the hearth, and there she was safe and well, and having four gold rings on her hands that belonged to four of her first cousins that were beheaded in the room. The cat told them to go home, and they would meet the man easy enough. So after a while he came looking for the young lady again, and he had changed his clothes, but if he had they knew him. But the first time they fired a shot at him it did him no harm, he being but a shadow. But whatever they did, or whatever shot they put in their gun or their revolver, they shot him dead after that, and there was no more about him.