‘Pearls and gold galore lie in the lake but the devil a one has iver seen them for the dragon won’t iver let a body near them, who has not the rightful blud of the owner in him.
Shure it’s been seen twice in recent years, once by oul’ O’Rourke who wus mowing wid he’s back till the lake, when he heared a hiss ‘tween a screech an’ a whis’le that nearly caused him till fall head over heels in the water. He saw the face of it as it sunk in the middle of the lake an’ his very hair stood on en’. It gave him such a fright he niver went back, an’ the water wus that disturbed, the very wee water-hens, they up and away too.
An’ he wid them an’ glad till go.
But he wus not the last till see it, for shure ye know there’s a passage from it till the King’s Stables beyant. An’ one day over in Tray – ye know the place – it’s always full from the bottom wid water, and there the Kings of Ulster in the oul’ days watered their horses an’ washed their chariots like. Well, me boul’ O’Toole thought he wud drain the water away. An’ in he started till cut the bank an’ it so lovely an’ round it wus a pity till destroy the shape. But bedad, it’s little digging he did for up popped the dragon so big that the water cud hardly be seen for it. An’ it spittin’ something awful an’ its eyeballs wicked wid fire.
But shure that’s all he knows about it, except that he’s not the same man since.
Ay, an’ for many a long day after, he tuk till his bed.’