"Why will you try to deceive
yourselves? You've no soul and I've no soul, and there's no way that
we can have them. If there'd been any way, I'ld have had one long ago.
But we'll never have them, and mortals will always outwit us, if they
half know how. Shall I tell you how one of them outwitted me--a big,
lazy, stupid gommoch, with not enough brains to keep his neck safe?"
The fairies were far past caring whether they heard a story or not,
but they listened as Naggeneen went on. "I'm after tellin' you," he
said, "that if there was any way that one of us could be gettin' a
soul, I'ld have had one long ago. This was the way I tried it, and a
silly mortal outwitted me. Guleesh na Guss Dhu was the name that was
on him. I had heard--and I believed it--that if I could get a mortal
woman married to me--a woman with a soul--that I would get a soul,
too, that way. Well, I was never over-modest in my tastes, you know,
and I thought that the daughter of the King of France was about right
for me. A beautiful girl she was, with the rose and the lily fighting
in her cheeks, and she was eighteen years old.
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