Dall Glic:_ It is said by himself and the heavens
that in a year from this day the King's daughter will
be brought away and devoured by a scaly Green
Dragon that will come from the North of the
World.

_Queen:_ A Dragon! I thought you were talking
of some danger. I wouldn't give in to dragons.
I never saw one. I'm not in dread of beasts unless
it might be a mouse in the night-time!

_King:_ Put it out of mind. It is likely anyway
that the world will soon be ended the way
it is.

_Queen: I_ will send and search out this astrologer
and will question him.

_Dall Glic_: You have not far to search. He
is outside at the kitchen door at this minute, and
as if questioning after something, and it a half-score
and seven years since I knew him to come
out of his cave.

_King_: Do not! He might waken up the Dragon
and put him in mind of the girl, for to make his
own foretelling come true.

_Nurse_: Ah, such a thing cannot be! The
poor innocent child! _(Weeps.)_

_Queen_: Where's the use of crying and roaring?
The thing must be stopped and put an end to.
I don't say I give in to your story, but that would
be an unnatural death. I would be scandalised
being stepmother to a girl that would be swallowed
by a sea-serpent!

_Nurse_: Ochone! Don't be talking of it at
all!

_Queen_: At the King of Alban's Court, one
of the royal family to die over, it will be naturally
on a pillow, and the dead-bells ringing, and a
burying with white candles, and crape on the
knocker of the door, and a flagstone put over the
grave. What way could we put a stone or so
much as a rose-bush over Nuala and she in the
inside of a water-worm might be ploughing its way
down to the north of the world?

_Nurse_: Och! that is what is killing me entirely!
O save her, save her.

_King_: I tell you, it being to be, it will be.

_Queen_: You may be right, so, when you would
not go to the expense of paying her charges at the
Royal school. But wait, now, there is a plan
coming into my mind.

_Nurse_: There must surely be some way!

_Queen_: It is likely a king's daughter the beast--if
there is a beast--will come questing after, and
not after a king's wife.

_Dall Glic_: That is according to custom.

_Queen_: That's what I am saying. What we
have to do is to join Nuala with a man of a husband,
and she will be safe from the danger ahead of her.
In all the inventions made by poets, for to put
terror on children or to knock laughter out of f