d set them on the
floor and began to whistle, and the Bee began to play the Harp and the
Mouse and the Bum-clock stood up on their hind legs and began to dance, and
Jack's mother laughed very hearty, and everything in the house, the wheels
and the reels, and the pots and pans, went jigging and hopping over the
floor, and the house itself went jigging and hopping about likewise.

When Jack lifted up the animals and put them in his pocket, everything
stopped, and the mother laughed for a good while. But after a while, when
she came to herself, and saw what Jack had done and how they were now
without either money, or food, or a cow, she got very, very angry at Jack,
and scolded him hard, and then sat down and began to cry.

Poor Jack, when he looked at himself, confessed that he was a stupid fool
entirely. "And what," says he, "shall I now do for my poor mother?" He went
out along the road, thinking and thinking, and he met a wee woman who said,
"Good-morrow to you, Jack," says she, "how is it you are not trying for the
king's daughter of Ireland?"

"What do you mean?" says Jack.

Says she: "Didn't you hear what the whole world has heard, that the King of
Ireland has a daughter who hasn't laughed for seven years, and he has
promised to give her in marriage, and to give the kingdom along with her
to any man who will take three laughs out of her."

"If that is so," says Jack, says he, "it is not here I should be."

Back to the house he went, and gathers together the Bee, the Harp, the
Mouse, and the Bum-clock, and putting them into his pocket, he bade his
mother good-bye, and told her it wouldn't be long till she got news from
him, and off he hurries.

When he reached the castle, there was a ring of spikes all round the castle
and men's heads on nearly every spike there.

"What heads are these?" Jack asked one of the king's soldiers.

"Any man that comes here trying to win the king's daughter and fails to
make her laugh three times, loses his head and has it stuck on a spike.
These are the heads of the men that failed," says he.

"A mighty big crowd," says Jack, says he. Then Jack sent word to tell the
king's daughter and the king that there was a new man who had come to win
her.

In a very little time the king and the king's daughter and the king's
court all came out and sat themselves down on gold and silver chairs in
front of the castle, and ordered Jack to be brought in until he should have
his trial. Jack, b