"Is there any fear of me from the Tinker?" said he.
"Did not the blessed friar tell you that there is not," said the Black Donkey. "I will protect you. Put your hand in my left ear, and you will get there a purse which will never be empty during your life. Be good to poor people and to widows and to orphans, and you will have a long life and a happy death, and heaven at the end."
The Buideach went home and went to sleep, and the mother never had had a notion that the other Buideach was not her own son.
At the end of a week after this the Buideach said to his mother, "Is not this a fair day in Castlebar?"
"Well then, you ought to go there and buy a cow," says he.
"Don't be humbugging your mother or you'll have no luck," says she.
"Upon my word I am not humbugging," said he. "God sent a purse my way, and there is more than the price of a cow in it."
"Perhaps you did not get it honestly; tell me where did you find it?"
"I'll tell you nothing about it, except that I found it honestly, and if you have any doubt about my word, let the thing be."
Women are nearly always given to covetousness, and she was not free from it.
He handed her twenty pieces of gold. "You'll get a good cow for all that money," said he.
"I will," said she, "but I'd like to have the price of a pig."
"Do not be greedy, mother," said he; "you won't get any more this time."
The mother went to the fair and she bought a milch cow, and some clothes for the Buideach, and when he got her gone he went to the parish priest and said that he would like to make confession. He told the priest then everything that happened to him from the time he met the Tinker and the Black Donkey.
"Indeed, you are a good boy," said the priest, "give me some of the gold."
The Buideach gave him twenty pieces, but he was not satisfied with that, and he asked for the price of a horse.
"I did not think that a priest would be covetous," said he, "but I see now that they are as covetous as women. Here are twenty more pieces for you; are you satisfied now?"
"I am, and I am not," said the priest. "Since you have a purse which will never be empty as long as you live, you should be able to give me as much as would set up a fine church in place of the miserable one which we have in the parish now."