he ground, and
when I raised my head what was it but the boat over in the middle of
the loch, and she never stopped till she reached the island. When I
went out of the boat the boat returned where she was before. I did not
know now what I should do. The place was without meat or clothing,
without the appearance of a house on it. I came out on the top of a
hill. Then I came to a glen; I saw in it, at the bottom of a hollow, a
woman with a child, and the child was naked on her knee, and she had a
knife in her hand. She tried to put the knife to the throat of the
babe, and the babe began to laugh in her face, and she began to cry,
and she threw the knife behind her. I thought to myself that I was near
my foe and far from my friends, and I called to the woman, 'What are
you doing here?' And she said to me, 'What brought you here?' I told
her myself word upon word how I came. 'Well then,' said she, 'it was so
I came also.' She showed me to the place where I should come in where
she was. I went in, and I said to her, 'What was the matter that you
were putting the knife on the neck of the child?' 'It is that he must
be cooked for the giant who is here, or else no more of my world will
be before me.' Just then we could be hearing the footsteps of the
giant, 'What shall I do? what shall I do?' cried the woman. I went to
the caldron, and by luck it was not hot, so in it I got just as the
brute came in. 'Hast thou boiled that youngster for me?' he cried.
'He's not done yet,' said she, and I cried out from the caldron,
'Mammy, mammy, it's boiling I am.' Then the giant laughed out HAI, HAW,
HOGARAICH, and heaped on wood under the caldron.

"And now I was sure I would scald before I could get out of that. As
fortune favoured me, the brute slept beside the caldron. There I was
scalded by the bottom of the caldron. When she perceived that he was
asleep, she set her mouth quietly to the hole that was in the lid, and
she said to me 'was I alive?' I said I was. I put up my head, and the
hole in the lid was so large, that my head went through easily.
Everything was coming easily with me till I began to bring up my hips.
I left the skin of my hips behind me, but I came out. When I got out of
the caldron I knew not what to do; and she said to me that there was no
weapon that would kill him but his own weapon. I began to draw his
spear and every breath that he drew I thought I would be down his
throat, and when his breath came out I was back