him. "I will go," said she, "but you did an ill deed when you
condemned Eisirt to prison."

So they mounted, both of them, on the fairy steed, and in no long time
they reached Emania, and it was now past midnight. And they were
greatly afraid, and said Bebo, "Let us search for that porridge and
taste it, as we were bound, and make off again ere the folk awake."

They made their way into the palace of Fergus, and soon they found a
great porridge pot, but the rim was too high to be reached from the
ground. "Get thee up upon thy horse," said Bebo, "and from thence to
the rim of this cauldron." And thus he did, but having gained the rim
of the pot his arm was too short to reach the silver ladle that was
in it. In straining downward to do so, however, he slipped and in he
fell, and up to his middle in the thick porridge he stuck fast. And
when Bebo heard what a plight he was in, she wept, and said, "Rash and
hasty wert thou, Iubdan, to have got into this evil case, but surely
there is no man under the sun that can make thee hear reason." And he
said, "Rash indeed it was, but thou canst not help me, Bebo, now, and
it is but folly to stay; take the horse and flee away ere the day
break." "Say not so," replied Bebo, "for surely I will not go till I
see how things fall out with thee."


At last the folk in the palace began to be stirring, and ere long they
found Iubdan in the porridge pot.

So they picked him out with great laughter bore him off to Fergus.

"By my conscience," said Fergus, "but this is not the little fellow