THE GOATS
There was a girl had a sweetheart that was called Shawn Shamus. And through the crying of the Banrighean-na-breena he was brought away into a forth. The girl went to the forth looking for him, and outside of it she saw the Banrighean, the Queen, sitting and she combing her hair, and having a blue dress on her like those flowers that grow in the fields. ‘Will you give me back Shawn Shamus?’ says the girl. ‘I will not,’ says the Queen. And she went on talking for a while, the girl asking and the Queen refusing. And at the last the Queen said: ‘I will give him to you if you will bring me a hundred barrels of six-penny money, a hundred fillies all of the one colour, a hundred spotted cows, a hundred ganders and a fleet of geese; a hundred slips and a hundred pigs, a hundred goats that are without damage or roguery.’ So the girl went looking for all those, and she brought every one of them to the Queen of the forth except the goats, for she could not get one that was honest, they are all full of roguery. Everything else but the goats she brought. So the Queen gave up Shawn Shamus, and they married and lived happy.