what he wanted yet, to which he
replied that he would neither eat nor drink until he knew who she was,
or where she came from, or who had put her there.

'I shall tell you that,' said she. 'I am an enchanted Princess, and my
father has promised that the man who releases me from the spell shall
have the third of his kingdom while he is alive, and the whole of it
after he is dead, and marry me as well. If ever I saw a man who looked
likely to do this, you are the one. I have been here for sixteen years
now, and no one who ever came to the castle has asked me who I was,
except yourself. Every other man that has come, so long as I have been
here, lies asleep in the big room down there.'

'Tell me, then,' said the Irishman, 'what is the spell that has been
laid on you, and how you can be freed from it.'

'There is a little room there,' said the Princess, 'and if I could get a
man to stay in it from ten o'clock till midnight for three nights on end
I should be freed from the spell.'

'I am the man for you, then,' said he; 'I will take on hand to do it.'

Thereupon she brought him a pipe and tobacco, and he went into the room;
but before long he heard a hammering and knocking on the outside of the
door, and was told to open it.

'I won't,' he said.

The next moment the door came flying in, and those outside along with
it. They knocked him down, and kicked him, and knelt on his body till it
came to midnight; but as soon as the cock crew they all disappeared. The
Irishman was little more than alive by this time. As soon as daylight
appeared the Princess came, and found him lying full length on the
floor, unable to speak a word. She took a bottle, rubbed him from head
to foot with something from it, and thereupon he was as sound as ever;
but after what he had got that night he was very unwilling to try it a
second time. The Princess, however, entreated him to stay, saying
that the next night would not be so bad, and in the end he gave in and
stayed.

When it was getting near midnight he heard them ordering him to open the
door, and there were three of them for every one that there had been the
previous evening. He did not make the slightest movement to go out to
them or to open the door, but before long they broke it up, and were in
on top of him. They laid hold of him, and kept throwing him between them
up to the ceiling, or jumping above him, until the cock crew, when they
all disappeared. When day came the Princess w