Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

Household Stories, 69
newly-killed sheep to the market, and bring itself and the
price of it home again." When they were leaving next
morning, the Goban said to his son, " Maybe one of
these girls may be your wife some day."
As they were going along, they met a poor, man
striving to put a flat roof over a mud-walled round cabin,
but he had only three joists, and each of them was only
three-quarters of the breadth
across. Well, the Goban
put two nicks near one end
of every joist, on opposite
sides ; and when these were
fitted into one another, there
was a three-cornered figure
formed in the middle, and
the other ends rested on
the mud wall, and the floor
they made was as strong as
anything. The poor man
blessed the two men, and
they went on. That night
they stopped at a house where the master sat by the fire,
and hardly opened his mouth all the evening. If he
didn't talk, a meddlesome neighbour did, and interfered
about everything. There was another chance lodger
besides the Goban and his son, and when the evening
was half over, the Goban said he thought he would go
farther on his journey as it was a fine night. " You may
come along with us, if you like," says he to the other
man ; but he said he was too tired. The two men slept
in a farmer's house half a mile farther on ; and the next
morning the first news they heard, when they were
setting out, was, that the man of the house they left the
evening before was found murdered in his bed, and
the lodger taken up on suspicion. Says he to his
son, " Never sleep a night where the woman is everything,
and the man nothing." He stopped a day or
two, however, and by cross-examining and calling wit-