The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes  by Padraic Colum

Part 1 of 2

e came out of the woods holding her by the legs and carrying her slung across his shoulder. Then with great stride he went up the side of a mountain. He crossed the top and went down the other side so fast that the life was nearly shaken out of her body. But now the Giant lifted Girl-go-with-the-Goats up on his shoulder and his gait was easier for her then.

He went through a gate and into a yard where she heard the yelping and howling of beasts and the rattling of chains. He pushed open the door of a house. He left her down on the ground and closed the door as a boy might leave down and shut in the kitten of a wild-cat he had taken.

The Giant shut her into the terrible house that was all in darkness. "Don't try to get away, for I'll hear every sound you make," he said to her. Then she heard him cast off his heavy hunting-boots and throw down on the ground a chain he carried. She heard him get into his bed. For a while he talked to himself and then she heard him snore in his sleep.

She stayed in a corner all the night listening to beasts' feet running, running in the dark before the house. The light came and she saw the house big and empty. She saw the Giant's bed and she saw the Giant lying in it, with his grisly beard nearly covering his red face. She saw the doors of the house, on at the back and one at the front with bolts on each of them. It was surely a terrible house.

The Giant wakened up. He put his feet under him in the bed and he looked at her. "Ho," said he, "this is the thirtieth maid I have caught. I'll take her to the fastness where I have the other nine and twenty."

He opened wide the front door and stood looking into his yard. She stole down and looked out too. A wolf, a wild-cat, a fox, a badger—all were running here and there with chains upon them and yelping and howling. The Giant took up the chain he had brought and shook it before the beasts, and they howled and yelped the more angrily.

And then Girl-go-with-the-Goats heard a little twittering in the window-opening above her. She looked up and there she saw her two starlings. "Oh, my birds," said she to them softly, "show me, show me some way of escaping from the Giant."

Then the two starlings flew down on the low bench that was by the wall and they shrugged their wings and twisted their heads and went through all the ways of washing themselves. And then they flew up to the window-opening, and there again they shrugged their wings and twisted their heads and went through all the ways of washing themselves. Girl-go-with-the-Goats thought she knew what the starlings would have her do: they would have her try to wash herself.