d blue lips, eyes looking
crossways and eyebrows like a furze bush. He had a bag before him filled
with boiled pigs' feet. Now when he rode up to the house, he had a
pig's foot to his mouth and was eating. He got down off the bob-tailed,
big-headed, spavined and spotted horse, and came in.

"I heard there was a young fellow at your house and I want him to take
service with me," said he to the Spae-Woman.

"If the bargain is a good one I'll take service with you," said Gilly.

"All right, my lad," said the Churl. "Here is the bargain, and it's as
fair as fair can be. I'll give you a guinea, a groat and a tester for
your three months' work with me."

"I believe it's good wages," said Gilly.

"It is. Howsoever, if you ever say you are sorry you made the bargain
you will lose your wages, and besides that you will lose a strip of your
skin an inch wide from your neck to your heel. I have to put that in
or I'd never get work done for me at all. The serving boys are always
saying 'I can't do that,' and 'I'm sorry I made the bargain with you.'"

"And if you say you're sorry you made the bargain?"

"Oh, then I'll have to lose a strip of my skin an inch wide from my neck
to my heel, and besides that I'll have to give you full wages no matter
how short a time you served me."

"Well, if that suits you it will suit me," said Gilly of the Goatskin.

"Then walk beside my horse and we'll get back to the Townland of
Mischance to-night," said the Churl. Then he swished his ash-plant
towards Gilly and ordered him to get ready. The Spae-Woman wiped the
tears from her face with her apron, gave Gilly a cake with her blessing,
and he started off with the Churl for the Townland of Mischance.

XII

What did Gilly of the Goatskin do in the Townland of Mischance? He got
up early and went to bed late; he was kept digging, delving and ditching
until he was so tired that he could go to sleep in a furze bush; he ate
a breakfast that left him hungry five hours before dinner-time, and he
ate a dinner that made it seem long until supper-time. If he complained
the Churl would say, "Well, then you are sorry for your bargain," and
Gilly would say "No," rather than lose the wages he had earned and a
strip of his skin into the bargain.

One day the Churl said to him, "Go into the town for salt for my supper,
take the short way across the pasture-field, and be sure not to let the
grass grow under your feet." "All right, master," said Gill