THE WOMAN THAT WAS A GREAT FOOL
There was a woman was a great fool. She had meal to sift one day, and the hens were bothering her, coming in over the door. And it was outside in the field she went sifting it, that it was brought away with a blast of wind that rose, till there wasn’t one grain left on the top of another, but it was brought away with the wind into the fields and over the grass. And when the husband came back in the evening he asked where was it, and it was all spent. ‘Sure you have money in the bag to buy more,’ says she. ‘I have not,’ says he; ‘for what is in the bag I have to keep for the Grey Scrape of the Spring.’
Well, the next day an old beggarman came asking for money, and when the woman looked at him and saw that he was grey: ‘That should be the Grey Scrape of the Spring,’ she said. And she gave him all the money was in the bag.
When the husband heard that, he didn’t say much, for he was a quiet man. But he went and he killed the cow that was all he had left, and he cut it up and put it in a barrel, and salt on it. ‘That will be enough to grease the cabbage anyway,’ says he.
So the next day the wife brought out every bit of the beef, and she put a bit of it on the top of every head of cabbage was in the garden. Well, when the night came and they were in bed, there came a thousand dogs fighting for the meat was in the garden, and barking, and calling, and roaring. And when the husband went out they had it brought away, and all the cabbage destroyed and broken.
So he said then it was as good for them to go wandering, and he went out of the house, and the woman following him. ‘Let you draw the door after you,’ says he—that is, that she should close it. But what she did was to rise it off the hinges, and to draw it after her along the road till they came to a wood. And they went up into the branches of a tree to pass the night, and she bringing the board with her.
It happened there came some robbers under the tree, dividing a great deal of gold and silver they were after robbing from a castle. And when the man and the woman saw that, they dropped the door down on them with a great noise, and the robbers were affrighted and ran away, leaving all they had robbed after them. And the man and the woman got it for themselves, and they were rich from that day.