aid was to give Tom a fife that nobody could help dancing when he was
playing it. _Begonies_, he made the big faggot dance home, with himself
sitting on it. Well, if you were to count all the steps from this to
Dublin, dickens a bit you'd ever arrive there. The next giant was a
beautiful boy with three heads on him. He had neither prayers nor
catechism no more _nor_ the others; and so he gave Tom a bottle of green
ointment that wouldn't let you be burned, nor scalded, nor wounded. "And
now," says he, "there's no more of us. You may come and gather sticks
here till little _Lunacy Day_ in harvest without giant or fairy man to
disturb you."

Well, now, Tom was prouder nor ten paycocks, and used to take a walk
down street in the heel of the evening; but some of the little boys had
no more manners nor if they were Dublin jackeens, and put out their
tongues at Tom's club and Tom's goat-skin. He didn't like that at all,
and it would be mean to give one of them a clout. At last, what should
come through the town but a kind of bellman, only it's a big bugle he
had, and a huntsman's cap on his head, and a kind of painted shirt. So
this--he wasn't a bellman, and I don't know what to call him--bugleman,
maybe--proclaimed that the King of Dublin's daughter was so melancholy
that she didn't give a laugh for seven years, and that her father would
grant her in marriage to whoever would make her laugh three times.
"That's the very thing for me to try," says Tom; and so, without burning
any more daylight, he kissed his mother, curled his club at the little
boys, and he set off along the yalla highroad to the town of Dublin.

At last Tom came to one of the city gates, and the guards laughed and
cursed at him instead of letting him through. Tom stood it all for a
little time, but at last one of them--out of fun, as he said--drove his
_bagnet_ half an inch or so into his side. Tom did nothing but take the
fellow by the scruff of his neck and the waistband of his corduroys and
fling him into the canal. Some ran to pull the fellow out, and others to
let manners into the vulgarian with their swords and daggers; but a tap
from his club sent them headlong into the moat or down on the stones,
and they were soon begging him to stay his hands.

So at last one of them was glad enough to show Tom the way to the palace
yard; and there was the King and the Queen, and the princess in a
gallery, looking at all sorts of wrestling and sword-playing, and