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Main > Irish folktales > Fairy tale "The Time for Naggeneen's Plan"

The Time for Naggeneen's Plan

And then I had that fearful feeling that you have when you're near a horseshoe nail. There must have been one somewhere about. You couldn't mistake that feeling—as if needles of ice were going all through and through you. And so I was driven back and could get no nearer to the child."

The woman who had been sent to take the place of the child was standing near the King now, though she could scarcely stand at all, and her face was all wet with tears. "But they made me go nearer to the child than that," she cried. "These others pushed me close to her, so that I'ld take her place and give the child to them. And I felt burned up like a cinder, too, and then I felt the icy needles, and then worse than that. I felt as if I was all cut across and across and through and through with flaming swords, and torn with red-hot saws. Not the way it is when you divide yourself, so that you can be in two places at once. Anybody can do that, and it hurts no more than cutting a lock of hair, but this was—oh! there's only one thing could do this. There was a pair of open scissors lying close to the child, and I almost touched them!"

She could say no more, and there was no more to be said. "You couldn't get the child, then," said the King, "and there's the end of it. Nobody could, if they did all them things. I dunno how it is," the King went on, half to himself, "a child lies there with a pair of scissors open near by, and a horseshoe nail close to it—maybe hung around its neck—and a circle drawn around it with a coal of fire, and it never minds it at all. It sleeps and wakes and lies there as peaceful and happy and quiet as if there was nothing at all out of the common about it. I dunno how they can do it. They're queer people, these mortals. We can't get the girl. They was too clever for us. But we've got the boy, and we'll do the best we can with him."

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