the new king of spain came to avenge his father's death, and the mother sent her son again; the queen made the same claim about her older son and put some chicken blood into her mouth, claiming it was her heart's blood and she needed water from tubber tintye to recover. the son went for it with her two sons. they met a woman washing her hair in a golden basin. she called the son her sister-son and told him it was too hard. they stayed the night, and the next morning the older of the queen's sons claimed to be ill and unable to go on. they went on to another aunt of the son's. at this house, she told him that the people of tubber tintye slept for seven years and woke for seven years, and learned from an eagle they had just gone to sleep. the younger of the queen's son claimed to be ill and unable to go on. the aunt gave her nephew a bridle and told him to shake it before the stables and take whatever horse came out. he took the dirty, lean, shaggy little horse that came. it called him the son of the king of erin and the queen of the lonesome island, which was the first the son had heard of his father. the horse leapt over the river of fire, and the son jumped from its back into the window at the castle. he found many monsters and then a chamber with the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. he went on through twelve more chambers, each with a sleeping woman more beautiful than the last, until at last he came to the golden room, where the queen slept, with the well at her feet. he decided to stay there, and did for six days and nights. a table there had a loaf of bread and a leg of meat, and if every man in erin had eaten from that table from a year, there would have been as much food on it at the end. he left a letter so that the queen might know that he was the one who had been there, and took the bread and the meat. he sprang from the window back onto the back of the horse.