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Tale Summary

There was once a wealthy woman who one night was carding and preparing wool while the rest of the house was asleep. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and someone calling themselves the Witch of one Horn demanded entry. The woman let her in, and the witch, who had one horn, sat by the fire and began to card wool. After she wondered aloud where the rest of her party was, there was another knock at the door, and the woman let in the Witch of two Horns, who immediately began spinning. This continued until there were twelve witches in the house, each with one more horn than the last so that the final witch had twelve. They all sat in silence for a long time working on their threads, and then one of them called to her in Irish and demanded the woman make a cake for them. The witches told her to take a sieve to the well to gather water to bake with, and the woman wept when she was unable to gather any. Then a voice came from the well and told her to take yellow clay and moss to plaster the sieve in order to gather water, which worked. The voice also told her to go to the north corner of the house and say:

“The mountain of the Fenian woman and the sky over it is all on fire”.

When she did this, the witches all fled back to their homeland of Slievenamon, and the spirit of the well told the woman to protect her house from their return. She sprinkled the water she used to wash her children’s feet with on the threshold. The witches had made a cake with the blood of the sleeping family, and the woman took this cake and put it in their mouths, and they were revived. She then took the cloth the witches wove and placed it half in and half out of the chest with the padlock. Lastly, she secured the door with a crossbeam. The witches returned and demanded entry, but the water, the cake, the cloth, and the door all denied them. They returned to their homeland, and the woman was left in peace, and a mantle that was left behind by one of the witches was hung and kept in the family for five hundred years.

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