‘Oh, yes,’ she says, ‘that’s his life.’ He took steady aim and fired, and got him. But he let him too much over the boat, and and he falling,12 he fell on the boat, and cracked the boat, and the boat started leaking. ‘We’re done!’ she says, ‘we’ll never get back. The boat is leaking too hard. But he is finished,’ she says. ‘Well, if I’m the best Tinker,’ he says, ‘that ever cotch an iron, we’ll be safe.’ He put the iron in the fire in the boat, and soldered up the boat again, as quick as usual, again. ‘Sail on!’ says he. ‘Everything is right.’ Sailed on and drew from the island, brought the lady up home. An advertisement went out, big, little and small, for a big dance and a nobility for the lady being brought back after seven year. Those four brothers brought her back, safe. Now, of course, she was to marry whichever of the four that she’d think was the best man that saved her. ‘Well, now, daughter,’ says he [the father], ‘which of those men,’ says he, ‘would you rather have?’ ‘Well, father,’ says she, ‘I likes the four of them. The four of them,’ says she, ‘played their selves,’ says she. ‘The marksman,’ she says, ‘we’d have been all drownded,’ she says, ‘they’d be drownded,’ she says, ‘only for 12 ‘and when he was falling’. The use of ‘and’ in the sense of ‘when’ reflects Irish language usage.
the marksman. I’d be brought back again,’ says she, ‘safe, and a hundred men,’ says she, ‘wouldn’t clear me, wouldn’t get me out of it.’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘marry the marksman!’ ‘Well, what about,’ says she, ‘the fortune-teller?’ says she. ‘There’s no-one would ever know where I was,’ says she, ‘only for the fortune-teller.’ ‘No-one!’ he [the father] says. ‘He’s the best man. Marry him!’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘what about the robber,’ says she, ‘that leaped in,’ says she, ‘and cut the sheets from under me and over me, and I asleep?’ she says. ‘And leaped out over the gate,’ says she, ‘again, and me in his arms. And there were joy-bells on the gate,’ says she, ‘that’d be heard,’ says she, ‘for seven mile, and he never tipped them. Nor I never woke,’ says she, ‘till I was halfways on the channel.’ ‘That’s the best man,’ he says. ‘Marry him!’ ‘No, father,’ she says. ‘We were all drownded,’ she says, ‘only for the Tinker. When he [the marksman] fired at the giant,’ says she, ‘and shot him, he fell on the boat,’ she says, ‘and cracked it, and the boat was leaking so hard,’ says she, ‘we’d have never reached home. She was sinking. The Tinker,’ she says, ‘put the iron in the fire and he soldered up the boat,’ says she, ‘as good as usual again, and brought us home safe. I’ll marry the Tinker!’ she says.