Dragon.A king had a son who was called Dragon. He was as debauched as it is possible to be. All the money that he had he had spent, and still more; not having enough, he demanded his portion from his father. The father gives it him immediately, and he goes off, taking with him a companion who had been a soldier, and who was very like himself.32Very quickly they spent all their money. While they were travelling in a forest they see a beautiful castle. They enter and find there a table ready set out, and a magnificent supper prepared. They sit down to table and sup. Nobody appears as yet, and they go up-stairs to see the house, and they find the beds all ready, and they go to bed. They pass a very good night. The next morning Dragon gets up and opens the shutters, and sees a dazzling garden.He goes down into the garden, still without seeing anybody; but in passing under a fig tree, a voice says to him:“Ay! ay! ay! what pain you have put me to, and what suffering you are causing me!”He turns on all sides and finds nothing. He says:“Who are you? You! I do not understand it. Appear!”The voice says to him, “I cannot to-day; but perhapsto-morrow you will see me. But in order to do that you will have to suffer severely.”He promises to suffer no matter what for her. The voice says to him:“To-morrow night they will make you suffer every kind of torture, but you must not say anything; and if you do that, you will see me to-morrow.”They had spoken all this before the soldier friend, but he had heard nothing of it.They go to the house and find the dinner quite ready. Dragon would have wished that night had already come, to know what it was he was to see. He goes off to bed then, and after eleven o’clock he feels that something is coming, and his whole body is pricked all over. He keeps quite silent, because he wished to see the voice. And when the cock crew “Kukuruku!” he was released (from his torture). He lies waiting for daybreak to go to the fig tree. Day did not appear as soon as he would have wished it, and he goes running to the garden and sees under the fig tree, coming out of the ground as high as her shoulders, a young girl, and she says to him:“Last night you have suffered in silence, but the next night they will make you suffer much more. I do not know if you can bear it without speaking.”He promises her that he will suffer still more in order to save her.As usual, they find the table ready for dinner and for supper. He goes off to bed. There happens to him the same thing as in the preceding night, but they do him still more harm. Happily he lies still without speaking. The cock crows “Kukuruku!” and they leave him quiet. As soon as daylight has come he goes off to the garden, and he sees the young lady visible as far as the knees. Dragon is delighted to save this beautiful girl, but she says sadly to him:“You have seen nothing up to this time. They will make you suffer twice as much.”He says that he has courage to endure anything, becausehe wishes to get her out of that state. When night comes, he perceives that two are coming instead of one. One of them was lame, and he says to him (and you know lame people and cripples are the most cruel).33He says then to the other:“What! You have not been able to make this wretched boy speak! I will make him speak, I will.”He cuts off his arms and then his legs, and our Dragon does not say anything. They make him suffer a great deal, but happily the cock crows “Kukuruku!” and he is delivered. He was much afraid what would become of him without hands and without feet; but on touching himself he feels with pleasure that all that is made right again. While he is in bed he hears a great noise. He lies without saying anything, being frightened, and not knowing what might happen to him, when all of a sudden this young lady appears and says to him:“You have saved me; I am very well pleased with you. But this is not enough; we must be off from here immediately.”All the three go off together, and travel far, far, far away, and they arrive in a city. The young lady did not think it proper to lodge in the same hotel with them. Next morning the young lady gets up very early, and goes in search of the landlord of the hotel, and says to him:“A gentleman will come here to ask for me. You will tell him that I have gone out, and if he wishes to see me he must come to the fountain at the Four Cantons34—but fasting—and he is to wait for me there.”The next morning the young gentleman goes to the hotel, and they tell him what the young lady has said. On that very day he goes to the fountain, taking his comrade with him, and fasting; but as the young lady had not yet arrived, forgetting himself, he put his hand in his pocket, and finding there a small nut, he eats it. As soon as he has eaten it hefalls asleep.35The young lady arrives. She sees that he is asleep. She says to his companion:“He has eaten something. Tell him that I will return, but tell, tell him, I beg you, to eat nothing.”She leaves him a beautiful handkerchief. Dragon wakes up as soon as the young lady is gone. His comrade tells him that she had come, and that she had told him not to eat anything. And he shows Dragon the handkerchief. He was very vexed at having eaten, and would have wished that it was already the next day. He starts then very, very early, and waits for the young lady, and, as was fated to happen, finding a walnut in his pocket, he eats it. He immediately falls asleep. The young lady appears and finds him sleeping. She says that she will return again the next day, but that he must not eat anything. She leaves him another handkerchief. Dragon awakes as soon as she has gone. Judge with what vexation. His friend tells him that she said that she would return the next day, but that he must do his best not to eat anything. He goes then the third day without eating anything, but, as was to happen, despairing of seeing the young lady, who was late, arrive, he takes an apple from an apple tree and eats it. He falls asleep immediately. The young lady comes and finds him asleep. She gives his comrade a ring to give to Dragon, telling him that if Dragon wishes to see her he will find her in the City of the Four Quarters. Dragon is very vexed, and he says to his friend:“The good God knows when I shall find this city, and it is better for you to go in one direction (and I in another).”Thereupon they separate. Dragon goes off, far, far, far away. He comes to a mountain; there he sees a man, who had before his door holy water, and whoever made use of it was well received. He goes in, therefore, and asks him ifhe knows where is the City of the Four Quarters. He tells him—“No; but there are the animals of the earth and of the air, and that the latter might perhaps guide him there.”He whistles to them. They come from all quarters, and he asks them if they know where is the City of the Four Quarters? They tell him “No.” Then the man says to him—“I have a brother on such a mountain, who has many more animals than I have; he has them all under his power, that man has.”Dragon goes off then, and arrives there; he asks of that man if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is? He tells him “No,” but that he has animals which will know it, if anyone ought to know it. He whistles to them. He sees the animals, small and great, coming from all quarters. Dragon was trembling with fright. He asks them one by one if they know where the City of the Four Quarters is. They tell him “No;” but the man sees that one animal is wanting, and that is the eagle. He whistles, and he comes. He asks him, too, if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is. He says to him—“I am just come from there.”The man says to him,“You must, then, guide this young gentleman there.”The eagle says to him, “Willingly, if he will give me a morsel of flesh each time that I open my mouth.”Dragon replies, “Yes, willingly.”He then buys an ox. The eagle tells him to get upon his back. The man climbs up there with his ox, and when he opens his mouth he gives him a morsel of the ox, which kept gradually diminishing.They were obliged to cross over the sea, and there was no bridge to it there. The ox was finished when they were in the middle of the sea, and there was a great rock there. The eagle opens his mouth again, and, as there was no more beef, what does he do? As he was afraid of being leftupon that rock, he cuts a morsel from the back of his own thighs, and puts it in his mouth.36They arrive on the other side of the sea. The eagle leaves him there, saying to him,“You are in the City of the Four Quarters. Do your own business here. I am going off to my own home.”This young gentleman asks what is the news in this city. They tell him that the king’s daughter is going to be married to-day. In this city it was permitted only to the wedding party to enter the church, but Dragon had bribed one of the keepers with money, (saying) that he would stop quiet in a corner of the church. It was also the custom in this city to publish the banns at the moment of marriage. When the priest began to publish them, Dragon came out of his corner, and said—“I make an objection.”He goes to the young lady, who recognises him; and he shows her the ring and the kerchiefs, and asks her in marriage. She says—“This shall be my husband; he has well deserved it.”He was still lame, as a piece of his flesh was still wanting. They were married then. The other bridegroom went back home quite ashamed. The others lived very happily, because both had suffered much. Then I was there, now I am here.Louise Lanusse,St. Jean Pied de Port.Ezkabi-Fidel.As there are many in the world, and as we are many of us, there was a mother who had a son. They were very poor. The son wished to go off somewhere, in order tobetter himself, (he said); that it was not living to live like that. The mother was sorry; but what could she do? In order that her son may be better off, she lets him go. He goes then, travelling on, and on, and on. In a forest he meets with a gentleman, who asks him where he is going. He tells him that, wishing to better himself, he had gone away from home to do something. This gentleman asks him if he is willing to be his servant. He replies, “Yes.” They go off then together, and come to a beautiful place. After having entered, the gentleman gives him all the keys of the house, saying that he has a journey he must make, and that he must see the whole house—that he will find in it everything he wants to eat, and to take care of the horses in the stable. The gentleman goes away as soon as he had seen all the house and the stable. There were a lot of horses there, and in the midst of them all a white mare,37who said to him,“Ay! ay! Fidel, save me, I pray you, from here, and get me outside. You will not be sorry for it.”Fidel stops at the place whence this voice came. A moment after, the white mare says to him,“Come near the white mare; it is she who is speaking to you.”Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, hecould hide it.38The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.39The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”They go on again, and the mare says again—“Look back again, if you see anything.”Fidel says to her, “Yes, I see again this terrible thing; it is coming after us quickly, and is going to catch us.”The mare at the same time says again to the earth, in striking it with her foot,“Let it hail stones, and hail there where he is as much as can possibly fall.”They go on. The mare says again,“Look back, if you see anything.”He says to her again, “He is here, this terrible monster. It is all up with us now—we cannot escape him; he is quite near, and he comes with speed.”The mare strikes the earth with her foot, and says to it—“Form before him a river, and let him drown himself there for evermore.”He sees him drown himself there. The mare says to him,“Now you shall go to such a spot. The king lives there. You will ask if they want a gardener, and they will tell you ‘Yes.’ You will stay there without doing anything, and the work will do itself by itself, without your doing anything. Every day three beautiful flowers will come up in this garden. You will carry them to the three daughters of the king, but you will always give the finest to the youngest.”40It was the custom to carry the dinner to the gardener, but it was the youngest of the daughters who carried it to him. From the first day the gardener pleased the young lady, and she said to him one day that he must marry her. The lad said to her that that cannot be, that she ought not to think of marrying with a person of low birth and who has nothing, and that she must not dream any such dreams. This young lady falls ill. The father sends for the doctor, who says, after having touched her pulse, that she is ill of love; and the doctor goes to tell it to the king. The father goes to the young lady and tells her what the physician has said to him—that she is not so very ill. The daughter says to him:“In order to cure me you must send and fetch the gardener. Let him give me some broth and I shall be cured.”The father sends to fetch him directly, has him washed and properly dressed, and makes him carry the broth. There was among the court an old, old nurse; she was awitch, and as she knew what the physician had said, she goes and hides herself in the young lady’s bedroom before the gardener came there, in order to know what the young lady would say to him. The young lady said to him:“Yes, and you shall marry me; I will not marry anybody else but you, whatever you may say.”The lad said to her: “No, no, I will not hear that mentioned.”The nurse had heard all that had passed, and she goes and tells it immediately to the king. The young lady was cured, and goes to carry the dinner to Fidel. Fidel had a habit of always giving the first spoonful of the soup to the dog. He gives it him that day too, and as soon as the dog has eaten it he falls stark dead. When the young lady saw that she goes and tells it to her father. The father sends for a big dog, and gives him some of the soup, and as soon as he has eaten it he falls dead. Judge of the anger of that young lady. She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that hemustmarry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:“If youwillmarry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.”That was all the same to this young lady, (and they are married), and go off there. As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily.One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? Let him stop at home.”His daughter says to him: “At least he is your son-in-law!”The father then says to her: “He may come on such a day.”Fidel goes as they had told him. He asks the king for a horse and a sword. The king gives him a horse blind and lame. Fidel was not pleased with it. He begins his march, wishing to get on as quickly as possible, but when he had gone a little distance, the horse sticks in the mud, and cannot in any way get out of it. While he is there, the white mare comes to him. She gives him a beautiful horse, and a lance and a sword, and tells him that he will see his brothers-in-law encamped round a city, but not to stop there with them, but to ride straight to the city; that the gates will be shut, but as soon as he shall have touched them with his lance they will be broken to pieces, and that they will make peace with him. He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousandfêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. They go back again. He stops at the place where he had left his old horse in the mud. He sends away his beautiful horse with all his things, and Fidel stops there, not being able to drag his old horse out of the mud. When his brothers-in-lawpass, they mock at him (and ask him) if it is there that he has passed all his time. He tells them, “Yes.” The others go on ahead, and at length he also arrives at the king’s house. He leaves his old horse there and goes off home. He does not tell his wife what has happened, and they live in their hole.The king was getting old, and he had entirely lost his sight. Somebody gave him to understand that there was a water which made people young again, and another which restored sight. He told his sons-in-law that they must go (and look for it)—that he could not live long like that. And both of them start off. Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on.He meets an old woman, who says to him, “Where are you going to?” He tells her how he wants a water which gives sight to the blind and makes the old young,43and that he would not go back home without finding it. This old woman says to him:“You will see two animals fighting close to you, and you will gather the herb which makes the dead to live; you will have it boiled, and you will keep this water for yourself.”This lad goes on a little farther, and he sees two lizards fighting so fiercely that one kills the other. The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44Fidel gathers this grass, and goesoff to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water.Fidel goes into the city, and as soon as he has entered, he cries:“Who wishes to buy the water that gives sight to the blind, and the water which makes old men young?”His two brothers-in-law appear, and say that they must have some of this water, and ask what it costs. And he tells them that he does not sell it, but only gives it in exchange for golden apples. These gentlemen willingly make the exchange. But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too; that they would help, one in cutting the wood, and the other in serving at table. She did not wish to go there at all. She told her husband that she would a hundred times sooner stop at home; but her husband sends her off by force, (saying) that they ought to be there on that day. She goes, then, the poor woman, against her wish. She asks her father if he does not want some one to help on the feast day. The father says, “No!”—they have servants enough. An old general who was sitting by his side said to him:“Why do you not let them come?”Then the king said, “Come then on such a day.”Fidel and his wife go. While they are at breakfast theold general asks Fidel if he also does not know something to relate? He replies “Yes,” that he knows some (stories), but more than one would not be pleased with what he would tell. Then the king says, placing his sword upon the table:“The point of my sword shall know news of the heart of him who shall speak.”Fidel begins then, how he went to the war with an old horse, blind and lame, but that in spite of that he had carried off the keys of the treasure and the papers. The king says to him that he has not seen them yet—that he is still expecting them. Fidel takes out the papers and gives them to the king. He gives also the keys of the treasury. The king assures himself that they are the real ones. He then narrates how he has sold in exchange for two golden apples that precious water. At this instant his wife rises and says to him:“Where have you these golden apples—you?”As it is she who has spoken the first words, Fidel takes up the king’s sword and strikes his wife dead.45The king was grieved to see that, but Fidel says to him:“Do not disturb yourself for that; as I have taken away her life I will give it her again.”He takes out his water which rekindles dead men, and rubs some on her temple, and she suddenly returns to life. Everyone is astounded at this great deed, and at all that he has already done. The king tells him that he has already gained the crown, but that he must be cured of this terrible scab46first. His wife rises, takes off his kerchief which he had upon his head, and shows the shining head of her husband, saying:“See, this is the scab of my husband!”The king says that the crown will shine much better on his head. He goes to fetch it, and places it upon this precious head. He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine.We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. He goes as gardener, and the king’s daughter falls in love with him, from catching a sight of his golden hair from her window; for the rest the stories are identical, except that this is a shorter form than the above.The Lady Pigeon and her Comb.47Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away, (saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far, far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:“Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?”He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better himself.The Tartaro says to him, “As you have told the truth I spare your life, ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the pigeon’s skin which is in the middle.48The two young ladies will come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her before she shall promise to help you always.”The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that he shall go to-morrow to her father’s house, that he will take him as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, “Yes,” but that there is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father) takes him into the forest and says to him:“You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another, and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death.”49The lad says to him, “I will try.”He goes then to the forest and sits down pensive. It was already eleven o’clock when the young lady appears to him. She says to him:“Why are you like that, so sad? Have not I promised that I would help you? Shut your eyes, but all the worse for you if you shall open them.”She throws a comb into the air,50and says:“Comb, with thy power tear up these oaks with their roots, cut them into lengths, put the trunks together, and the branches, and the roots too by themselves.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says to it:“Comb, with thy power turn up this ground, harrow it, and sow the wheat.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).51Nothing will be finished for us.”He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad,and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”52The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.When he arrived at the bank of the river he sat there weeping, not knowing what to do. The young lady comes to him, and says:“What! You are weeping! Did not I tell you that I would always help you?”It was eleven o’clock. The young lady says to him:“You must cut me in pieces with this sabre, and throw all the pieces into the water.”The lad will not do it by any means. He says to her:“I prefer to die here on the spot than to make you suffer.”The lady says to him, “It is nothing at all what I shall suffer, and you must do it directly—the favourable moment is passing by like this, like this.”The lad, trembling all over, begins with his sabre. He throws all the pieces into the river; but, lo! a part of the lady’s little finger sticks to a nail in his shoe. The young lady comes out of the water and says to him:“You have not thrown everything into the water. My little finger is wanting.”53After having looked for it, he sees that he has it under his foot, hooked on to a nail. The young lady gives him the ring. She tells him to go without losing a moment; for he must give it to the king at noon. He arrives happily (in time). The young lady, as she goes into the house, bangs the door with all her might and begins to cry out:“Ay! ay! ay! I have crushed my little finger.”And she makes believe that she has done it there. The king was pleased. He tells him that on the morrow he must tame a horse and three young fillies.54The lad says to him:“I will try.”The master gives him a terrible club. The young lady says to him in the evening:“The horse which my father has spoken to you about will be himself. You will strike him with all your might with your terrible club on the nose, and he will yield and be conquered. The first filly will be my eldest sister. You will strike her on the chest with all your force, and she also will yield and will be conquered. I shall come the last. You will make a show of beating me too, and you will hit the ground with your stick, and I too will yield, and I shall be conquered.”The next day the lad does as the young lady has told him. The horse comes. He was very high-spirited, but our lad strikes him on the nose, he yields, and is conquered. He does the same thing with the fillies. He beats them with his terrible club, they yield, and are conquered; and when the third comes he makes a show of hitting her, and strikes the earth. She yields, and all go off.The next day he sees the master with his lips swollen, and with all his face as black as soot. The young ladies had also pain in the chest. The youngest also gets up very late indeed in order to do as the others.The master says to him that he sees he is a valuable servant, and very clever, and that he will give him one of his daughters for wife, but that he must choose her with his eyes shut. And the young lady says to him:“You will choose the one that will give you her hand twice, and in any way you will recognise me, because you will find that my little finger is wanting. I will always put that in front.”The next day the master said to him:“We are here now; you shall now choose the one you wish for, always keeping your eyes shut.”He shuts them then; and the eldest daughter approaches, and gives him her hand. He says to the king:“It is very heavy, (this hand); too heavy for me. I will not have this one.”The second one approaches, she gives him her hand, and he immediately recognises that the little finger is wanting. He says to the king:“This is the one I must have.”They are married immediately.55They pass some days like that. His wife says to him:“It is better for us to be off from here, and to flee, otherwise my father will kill us.”They set off, then, that evening at ten o’clock, and the young lady spits before the door of her room, saying:“Spittle, with thy power, you shall speak in my place.”56And they go off a long way. At midnight, the father goes to the door of the lad and his wife, and knocks at the door; they do not answer. He knocks harder, and then the spittle says to him:“Just now nobody can come into this room.”The father says, “It is I. I must come in.”“It is impossible,” says the spittle again.The father grows more and more angry; the spittle makes him stop an hour like that at the door. At last, not being able to do anything else, he smashes the door, and goes inside. What is his terrible rage when he sees the room empty. He goes off to his wife, and says to her:“You were not mistaken; they were well acquainted, and they were really in league with one another, and they have both escaped together; but I will not leave them like that. I will go off after them, and I shall find them sooner or later.”He starts off. Our gentleman and lady had gone very far, but the young lady was still afraid. She said to her husband:“He might overtake us even now. I—I cannot turn my head; but (look) if you can see something.”The husband says to her: “Yes, something terrible is coming after us; I have never seen a monster like this.”The young lady throws up a comb, and says:57“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed before my father hedges and thorns, and before me a good road.”It is done as she wished. They go a good way, and she says again:“Look, I beg you, if you see anything again.”The husband looks back, and sees nothing; but in the clouds he sees something terrible, and tells so to his wife. And his wife says, taking her comb:“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed where he is a fog, and hail, and a terrific storm.”It happens as they wish. They go a little way farther, and his wife says to him:“Look behind you, then, if you see anything.”The husband says to her: “Now it is all over with us. We have him here after us; he is on us. Use all your power.”She throws again a comb immediately, and says:“Comb, with thy power, form between my father and me a terrible river, and let him be drowned there for ever.”As soon as she has said that, they see a mighty water, and there their father and enemy drowns himself.58The young lady says, “Now we have no more fear of him, we shall live in peace.”They go a good distance, and arrive at a country into which the young lady could not enter. She says to her husband:“I can go no farther. It is the land of the Christians there; I cannot enter into it. You must go there the first. You must fetch a priest. He must baptize me, and afterwards I will come with you; but you must take great care that nobody kisses you. If so, you will forget me altogether. Mind and pay great attention to it; and you, too, do not you kiss anyone.”He promises his wife that he will not. He goes, then, on, and on, and on. He arrives in his own country, and as he is entering it an old aunt recognises him, and comes behind him, and gives him two kisses.59It is all over with him. He forgets his wife, as if he had never seen her, and he stays there amusing himself, and taking his pleasure.The young lady, seeing that her husband never returned, that something had happened to him, and that she could no longer count upon him, she takes a little stick, and striking the earth, she says:“I will that here, in this very spot, is built a beautiful hotel, with all that is necessary, servants, and all the rest.”There was a beautiful garden, too, in front, and she had put over the door:“Here they give to eat without payment.”One day the young man goes out hunting with two comrades, and while they were in the forest they said one to the other:“We never knew of this hotel here before. We must go there too. One can eat without payment.”They go off then. The young lady recognises her husband very well, but he does not recognise her at all. She receives them very well. These gentlemen are so pleased with her, that one of them asks her if she will not let him pass the night with her.60The young lady says to him, “Yes.” The other asks also, “I, too, was wishing it.” The young lady says to him:“To-morrow then, you, if you wish it, certainly.”And her husband says to her: “And I after to-morrow then.”The young lady says to him, “Yes.” One of the young men remains then. He passes the evening in great delight, and when the hour comes for going to bed, the young lady says to him:“When you were small you were a choir-boy, and they used to powder you; this smell displeases me in bed. Before coming there you must comb yourself. Here is a comb, and when you have got all the powder out, you may come to bed.”Our lad begins then to comb his hair, but never could he get all the powder out, such quantities came out, and were still coming out of his head; and he was still at it when the young lady rose. The lad said to her:“What! you are getting up before I come.”“And do you not see that it is day? I cannot stop there any longer. People will come.”Our young man goes off home without saying a word more. He meets his comrade who was to pass the night with this young lady. He says to him:“You are satisfied? You amused yourself well?”“Yes, certainly, very well. If the time flies as fast with you as it did with me you will amuse yourself well.”He goes off then to this house. The young lady says to him, after he had had a good supper:“Before going to bed you must wash your feet. The water will be here in this big copper; when you have them quite clean you may come to bed.”Accordingly he washes one, and when he has finished washing the other, the first washed is still black and dirty. He washes it again, and finds the foot that he has just well washed very dirty again. He kept doing like that for such a long time. When the young lady gets up, the gentleman says to her:“What! You are getting up already, without me coming?”“Why did you not then come before day? I cannot stay any longer in bed. It is daylight, and the people will begin (to come).”Our young man withdraws as the other had done. Now it is the turn of her husband. She serves him still better than the others; nothing was wanting at his supper. When the hour for going to bed arrives, they go to the young lady’s room; when they are ready to get into bed, the young lady says to him:“Put out the light.”He puts it out, and it lights again directly. He puts it out again, and it lights again as soon as it is put out. He passes all the night like that in his shirt, never being able to put out that light. When daylight is come, the young lady says to him:“You do not know me then? You do not remember how you left your wife to go and fetch a priest?”As soon as she had said that he strikes his head, and says to her:“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am;but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine Kopena.
Dragon.A king had a son who was called Dragon. He was as debauched as it is possible to be. All the money that he had he had spent, and still more; not having enough, he demanded his portion from his father. The father gives it him immediately, and he goes off, taking with him a companion who had been a soldier, and who was very like himself.32Very quickly they spent all their money. While they were travelling in a forest they see a beautiful castle. They enter and find there a table ready set out, and a magnificent supper prepared. They sit down to table and sup. Nobody appears as yet, and they go up-stairs to see the house, and they find the beds all ready, and they go to bed. They pass a very good night. The next morning Dragon gets up and opens the shutters, and sees a dazzling garden.He goes down into the garden, still without seeing anybody; but in passing under a fig tree, a voice says to him:“Ay! ay! ay! what pain you have put me to, and what suffering you are causing me!”He turns on all sides and finds nothing. He says:“Who are you? You! I do not understand it. Appear!”The voice says to him, “I cannot to-day; but perhapsto-morrow you will see me. But in order to do that you will have to suffer severely.”He promises to suffer no matter what for her. The voice says to him:“To-morrow night they will make you suffer every kind of torture, but you must not say anything; and if you do that, you will see me to-morrow.”They had spoken all this before the soldier friend, but he had heard nothing of it.They go to the house and find the dinner quite ready. Dragon would have wished that night had already come, to know what it was he was to see. He goes off to bed then, and after eleven o’clock he feels that something is coming, and his whole body is pricked all over. He keeps quite silent, because he wished to see the voice. And when the cock crew “Kukuruku!” he was released (from his torture). He lies waiting for daybreak to go to the fig tree. Day did not appear as soon as he would have wished it, and he goes running to the garden and sees under the fig tree, coming out of the ground as high as her shoulders, a young girl, and she says to him:“Last night you have suffered in silence, but the next night they will make you suffer much more. I do not know if you can bear it without speaking.”He promises her that he will suffer still more in order to save her.As usual, they find the table ready for dinner and for supper. He goes off to bed. There happens to him the same thing as in the preceding night, but they do him still more harm. Happily he lies still without speaking. The cock crows “Kukuruku!” and they leave him quiet. As soon as daylight has come he goes off to the garden, and he sees the young lady visible as far as the knees. Dragon is delighted to save this beautiful girl, but she says sadly to him:“You have seen nothing up to this time. They will make you suffer twice as much.”He says that he has courage to endure anything, becausehe wishes to get her out of that state. When night comes, he perceives that two are coming instead of one. One of them was lame, and he says to him (and you know lame people and cripples are the most cruel).33He says then to the other:“What! You have not been able to make this wretched boy speak! I will make him speak, I will.”He cuts off his arms and then his legs, and our Dragon does not say anything. They make him suffer a great deal, but happily the cock crows “Kukuruku!” and he is delivered. He was much afraid what would become of him without hands and without feet; but on touching himself he feels with pleasure that all that is made right again. While he is in bed he hears a great noise. He lies without saying anything, being frightened, and not knowing what might happen to him, when all of a sudden this young lady appears and says to him:“You have saved me; I am very well pleased with you. But this is not enough; we must be off from here immediately.”All the three go off together, and travel far, far, far away, and they arrive in a city. The young lady did not think it proper to lodge in the same hotel with them. Next morning the young lady gets up very early, and goes in search of the landlord of the hotel, and says to him:“A gentleman will come here to ask for me. You will tell him that I have gone out, and if he wishes to see me he must come to the fountain at the Four Cantons34—but fasting—and he is to wait for me there.”The next morning the young gentleman goes to the hotel, and they tell him what the young lady has said. On that very day he goes to the fountain, taking his comrade with him, and fasting; but as the young lady had not yet arrived, forgetting himself, he put his hand in his pocket, and finding there a small nut, he eats it. As soon as he has eaten it hefalls asleep.35The young lady arrives. She sees that he is asleep. She says to his companion:“He has eaten something. Tell him that I will return, but tell, tell him, I beg you, to eat nothing.”She leaves him a beautiful handkerchief. Dragon wakes up as soon as the young lady is gone. His comrade tells him that she had come, and that she had told him not to eat anything. And he shows Dragon the handkerchief. He was very vexed at having eaten, and would have wished that it was already the next day. He starts then very, very early, and waits for the young lady, and, as was fated to happen, finding a walnut in his pocket, he eats it. He immediately falls asleep. The young lady appears and finds him sleeping. She says that she will return again the next day, but that he must not eat anything. She leaves him another handkerchief. Dragon awakes as soon as she has gone. Judge with what vexation. His friend tells him that she said that she would return the next day, but that he must do his best not to eat anything. He goes then the third day without eating anything, but, as was to happen, despairing of seeing the young lady, who was late, arrive, he takes an apple from an apple tree and eats it. He falls asleep immediately. The young lady comes and finds him asleep. She gives his comrade a ring to give to Dragon, telling him that if Dragon wishes to see her he will find her in the City of the Four Quarters. Dragon is very vexed, and he says to his friend:“The good God knows when I shall find this city, and it is better for you to go in one direction (and I in another).”Thereupon they separate. Dragon goes off, far, far, far away. He comes to a mountain; there he sees a man, who had before his door holy water, and whoever made use of it was well received. He goes in, therefore, and asks him ifhe knows where is the City of the Four Quarters. He tells him—“No; but there are the animals of the earth and of the air, and that the latter might perhaps guide him there.”He whistles to them. They come from all quarters, and he asks them if they know where is the City of the Four Quarters? They tell him “No.” Then the man says to him—“I have a brother on such a mountain, who has many more animals than I have; he has them all under his power, that man has.”Dragon goes off then, and arrives there; he asks of that man if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is? He tells him “No,” but that he has animals which will know it, if anyone ought to know it. He whistles to them. He sees the animals, small and great, coming from all quarters. Dragon was trembling with fright. He asks them one by one if they know where the City of the Four Quarters is. They tell him “No;” but the man sees that one animal is wanting, and that is the eagle. He whistles, and he comes. He asks him, too, if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is. He says to him—“I am just come from there.”The man says to him,“You must, then, guide this young gentleman there.”The eagle says to him, “Willingly, if he will give me a morsel of flesh each time that I open my mouth.”Dragon replies, “Yes, willingly.”He then buys an ox. The eagle tells him to get upon his back. The man climbs up there with his ox, and when he opens his mouth he gives him a morsel of the ox, which kept gradually diminishing.They were obliged to cross over the sea, and there was no bridge to it there. The ox was finished when they were in the middle of the sea, and there was a great rock there. The eagle opens his mouth again, and, as there was no more beef, what does he do? As he was afraid of being leftupon that rock, he cuts a morsel from the back of his own thighs, and puts it in his mouth.36They arrive on the other side of the sea. The eagle leaves him there, saying to him,“You are in the City of the Four Quarters. Do your own business here. I am going off to my own home.”This young gentleman asks what is the news in this city. They tell him that the king’s daughter is going to be married to-day. In this city it was permitted only to the wedding party to enter the church, but Dragon had bribed one of the keepers with money, (saying) that he would stop quiet in a corner of the church. It was also the custom in this city to publish the banns at the moment of marriage. When the priest began to publish them, Dragon came out of his corner, and said—“I make an objection.”He goes to the young lady, who recognises him; and he shows her the ring and the kerchiefs, and asks her in marriage. She says—“This shall be my husband; he has well deserved it.”He was still lame, as a piece of his flesh was still wanting. They were married then. The other bridegroom went back home quite ashamed. The others lived very happily, because both had suffered much. Then I was there, now I am here.Louise Lanusse,St. Jean Pied de Port.Ezkabi-Fidel.As there are many in the world, and as we are many of us, there was a mother who had a son. They were very poor. The son wished to go off somewhere, in order tobetter himself, (he said); that it was not living to live like that. The mother was sorry; but what could she do? In order that her son may be better off, she lets him go. He goes then, travelling on, and on, and on. In a forest he meets with a gentleman, who asks him where he is going. He tells him that, wishing to better himself, he had gone away from home to do something. This gentleman asks him if he is willing to be his servant. He replies, “Yes.” They go off then together, and come to a beautiful place. After having entered, the gentleman gives him all the keys of the house, saying that he has a journey he must make, and that he must see the whole house—that he will find in it everything he wants to eat, and to take care of the horses in the stable. The gentleman goes away as soon as he had seen all the house and the stable. There were a lot of horses there, and in the midst of them all a white mare,37who said to him,“Ay! ay! Fidel, save me, I pray you, from here, and get me outside. You will not be sorry for it.”Fidel stops at the place whence this voice came. A moment after, the white mare says to him,“Come near the white mare; it is she who is speaking to you.”Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, hecould hide it.38The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.39The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”They go on again, and the mare says again—“Look back again, if you see anything.”Fidel says to her, “Yes, I see again this terrible thing; it is coming after us quickly, and is going to catch us.”The mare at the same time says again to the earth, in striking it with her foot,“Let it hail stones, and hail there where he is as much as can possibly fall.”They go on. The mare says again,“Look back, if you see anything.”He says to her again, “He is here, this terrible monster. It is all up with us now—we cannot escape him; he is quite near, and he comes with speed.”The mare strikes the earth with her foot, and says to it—“Form before him a river, and let him drown himself there for evermore.”He sees him drown himself there. The mare says to him,“Now you shall go to such a spot. The king lives there. You will ask if they want a gardener, and they will tell you ‘Yes.’ You will stay there without doing anything, and the work will do itself by itself, without your doing anything. Every day three beautiful flowers will come up in this garden. You will carry them to the three daughters of the king, but you will always give the finest to the youngest.”40It was the custom to carry the dinner to the gardener, but it was the youngest of the daughters who carried it to him. From the first day the gardener pleased the young lady, and she said to him one day that he must marry her. The lad said to her that that cannot be, that she ought not to think of marrying with a person of low birth and who has nothing, and that she must not dream any such dreams. This young lady falls ill. The father sends for the doctor, who says, after having touched her pulse, that she is ill of love; and the doctor goes to tell it to the king. The father goes to the young lady and tells her what the physician has said to him—that she is not so very ill. The daughter says to him:“In order to cure me you must send and fetch the gardener. Let him give me some broth and I shall be cured.”The father sends to fetch him directly, has him washed and properly dressed, and makes him carry the broth. There was among the court an old, old nurse; she was awitch, and as she knew what the physician had said, she goes and hides herself in the young lady’s bedroom before the gardener came there, in order to know what the young lady would say to him. The young lady said to him:“Yes, and you shall marry me; I will not marry anybody else but you, whatever you may say.”The lad said to her: “No, no, I will not hear that mentioned.”The nurse had heard all that had passed, and she goes and tells it immediately to the king. The young lady was cured, and goes to carry the dinner to Fidel. Fidel had a habit of always giving the first spoonful of the soup to the dog. He gives it him that day too, and as soon as the dog has eaten it he falls stark dead. When the young lady saw that she goes and tells it to her father. The father sends for a big dog, and gives him some of the soup, and as soon as he has eaten it he falls dead. Judge of the anger of that young lady. She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that hemustmarry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:“If youwillmarry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.”That was all the same to this young lady, (and they are married), and go off there. As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily.One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? Let him stop at home.”His daughter says to him: “At least he is your son-in-law!”The father then says to her: “He may come on such a day.”Fidel goes as they had told him. He asks the king for a horse and a sword. The king gives him a horse blind and lame. Fidel was not pleased with it. He begins his march, wishing to get on as quickly as possible, but when he had gone a little distance, the horse sticks in the mud, and cannot in any way get out of it. While he is there, the white mare comes to him. She gives him a beautiful horse, and a lance and a sword, and tells him that he will see his brothers-in-law encamped round a city, but not to stop there with them, but to ride straight to the city; that the gates will be shut, but as soon as he shall have touched them with his lance they will be broken to pieces, and that they will make peace with him. He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousandfêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. They go back again. He stops at the place where he had left his old horse in the mud. He sends away his beautiful horse with all his things, and Fidel stops there, not being able to drag his old horse out of the mud. When his brothers-in-lawpass, they mock at him (and ask him) if it is there that he has passed all his time. He tells them, “Yes.” The others go on ahead, and at length he also arrives at the king’s house. He leaves his old horse there and goes off home. He does not tell his wife what has happened, and they live in their hole.The king was getting old, and he had entirely lost his sight. Somebody gave him to understand that there was a water which made people young again, and another which restored sight. He told his sons-in-law that they must go (and look for it)—that he could not live long like that. And both of them start off. Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on.He meets an old woman, who says to him, “Where are you going to?” He tells her how he wants a water which gives sight to the blind and makes the old young,43and that he would not go back home without finding it. This old woman says to him:“You will see two animals fighting close to you, and you will gather the herb which makes the dead to live; you will have it boiled, and you will keep this water for yourself.”This lad goes on a little farther, and he sees two lizards fighting so fiercely that one kills the other. The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44Fidel gathers this grass, and goesoff to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water.Fidel goes into the city, and as soon as he has entered, he cries:“Who wishes to buy the water that gives sight to the blind, and the water which makes old men young?”His two brothers-in-law appear, and say that they must have some of this water, and ask what it costs. And he tells them that he does not sell it, but only gives it in exchange for golden apples. These gentlemen willingly make the exchange. But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too; that they would help, one in cutting the wood, and the other in serving at table. She did not wish to go there at all. She told her husband that she would a hundred times sooner stop at home; but her husband sends her off by force, (saying) that they ought to be there on that day. She goes, then, the poor woman, against her wish. She asks her father if he does not want some one to help on the feast day. The father says, “No!”—they have servants enough. An old general who was sitting by his side said to him:“Why do you not let them come?”Then the king said, “Come then on such a day.”Fidel and his wife go. While they are at breakfast theold general asks Fidel if he also does not know something to relate? He replies “Yes,” that he knows some (stories), but more than one would not be pleased with what he would tell. Then the king says, placing his sword upon the table:“The point of my sword shall know news of the heart of him who shall speak.”Fidel begins then, how he went to the war with an old horse, blind and lame, but that in spite of that he had carried off the keys of the treasure and the papers. The king says to him that he has not seen them yet—that he is still expecting them. Fidel takes out the papers and gives them to the king. He gives also the keys of the treasury. The king assures himself that they are the real ones. He then narrates how he has sold in exchange for two golden apples that precious water. At this instant his wife rises and says to him:“Where have you these golden apples—you?”As it is she who has spoken the first words, Fidel takes up the king’s sword and strikes his wife dead.45The king was grieved to see that, but Fidel says to him:“Do not disturb yourself for that; as I have taken away her life I will give it her again.”He takes out his water which rekindles dead men, and rubs some on her temple, and she suddenly returns to life. Everyone is astounded at this great deed, and at all that he has already done. The king tells him that he has already gained the crown, but that he must be cured of this terrible scab46first. His wife rises, takes off his kerchief which he had upon his head, and shows the shining head of her husband, saying:“See, this is the scab of my husband!”The king says that the crown will shine much better on his head. He goes to fetch it, and places it upon this precious head. He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine.We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. He goes as gardener, and the king’s daughter falls in love with him, from catching a sight of his golden hair from her window; for the rest the stories are identical, except that this is a shorter form than the above.The Lady Pigeon and her Comb.47Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away, (saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far, far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:“Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?”He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better himself.The Tartaro says to him, “As you have told the truth I spare your life, ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the pigeon’s skin which is in the middle.48The two young ladies will come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her before she shall promise to help you always.”The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that he shall go to-morrow to her father’s house, that he will take him as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, “Yes,” but that there is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father) takes him into the forest and says to him:“You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another, and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death.”49The lad says to him, “I will try.”He goes then to the forest and sits down pensive. It was already eleven o’clock when the young lady appears to him. She says to him:“Why are you like that, so sad? Have not I promised that I would help you? Shut your eyes, but all the worse for you if you shall open them.”She throws a comb into the air,50and says:“Comb, with thy power tear up these oaks with their roots, cut them into lengths, put the trunks together, and the branches, and the roots too by themselves.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says to it:“Comb, with thy power turn up this ground, harrow it, and sow the wheat.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).51Nothing will be finished for us.”He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad,and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”52The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.When he arrived at the bank of the river he sat there weeping, not knowing what to do. The young lady comes to him, and says:“What! You are weeping! Did not I tell you that I would always help you?”It was eleven o’clock. The young lady says to him:“You must cut me in pieces with this sabre, and throw all the pieces into the water.”The lad will not do it by any means. He says to her:“I prefer to die here on the spot than to make you suffer.”The lady says to him, “It is nothing at all what I shall suffer, and you must do it directly—the favourable moment is passing by like this, like this.”The lad, trembling all over, begins with his sabre. He throws all the pieces into the river; but, lo! a part of the lady’s little finger sticks to a nail in his shoe. The young lady comes out of the water and says to him:“You have not thrown everything into the water. My little finger is wanting.”53After having looked for it, he sees that he has it under his foot, hooked on to a nail. The young lady gives him the ring. She tells him to go without losing a moment; for he must give it to the king at noon. He arrives happily (in time). The young lady, as she goes into the house, bangs the door with all her might and begins to cry out:“Ay! ay! ay! I have crushed my little finger.”And she makes believe that she has done it there. The king was pleased. He tells him that on the morrow he must tame a horse and three young fillies.54The lad says to him:“I will try.”The master gives him a terrible club. The young lady says to him in the evening:“The horse which my father has spoken to you about will be himself. You will strike him with all your might with your terrible club on the nose, and he will yield and be conquered. The first filly will be my eldest sister. You will strike her on the chest with all your force, and she also will yield and will be conquered. I shall come the last. You will make a show of beating me too, and you will hit the ground with your stick, and I too will yield, and I shall be conquered.”The next day the lad does as the young lady has told him. The horse comes. He was very high-spirited, but our lad strikes him on the nose, he yields, and is conquered. He does the same thing with the fillies. He beats them with his terrible club, they yield, and are conquered; and when the third comes he makes a show of hitting her, and strikes the earth. She yields, and all go off.The next day he sees the master with his lips swollen, and with all his face as black as soot. The young ladies had also pain in the chest. The youngest also gets up very late indeed in order to do as the others.The master says to him that he sees he is a valuable servant, and very clever, and that he will give him one of his daughters for wife, but that he must choose her with his eyes shut. And the young lady says to him:“You will choose the one that will give you her hand twice, and in any way you will recognise me, because you will find that my little finger is wanting. I will always put that in front.”The next day the master said to him:“We are here now; you shall now choose the one you wish for, always keeping your eyes shut.”He shuts them then; and the eldest daughter approaches, and gives him her hand. He says to the king:“It is very heavy, (this hand); too heavy for me. I will not have this one.”The second one approaches, she gives him her hand, and he immediately recognises that the little finger is wanting. He says to the king:“This is the one I must have.”They are married immediately.55They pass some days like that. His wife says to him:“It is better for us to be off from here, and to flee, otherwise my father will kill us.”They set off, then, that evening at ten o’clock, and the young lady spits before the door of her room, saying:“Spittle, with thy power, you shall speak in my place.”56And they go off a long way. At midnight, the father goes to the door of the lad and his wife, and knocks at the door; they do not answer. He knocks harder, and then the spittle says to him:“Just now nobody can come into this room.”The father says, “It is I. I must come in.”“It is impossible,” says the spittle again.The father grows more and more angry; the spittle makes him stop an hour like that at the door. At last, not being able to do anything else, he smashes the door, and goes inside. What is his terrible rage when he sees the room empty. He goes off to his wife, and says to her:“You were not mistaken; they were well acquainted, and they were really in league with one another, and they have both escaped together; but I will not leave them like that. I will go off after them, and I shall find them sooner or later.”He starts off. Our gentleman and lady had gone very far, but the young lady was still afraid. She said to her husband:“He might overtake us even now. I—I cannot turn my head; but (look) if you can see something.”The husband says to her: “Yes, something terrible is coming after us; I have never seen a monster like this.”The young lady throws up a comb, and says:57“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed before my father hedges and thorns, and before me a good road.”It is done as she wished. They go a good way, and she says again:“Look, I beg you, if you see anything again.”The husband looks back, and sees nothing; but in the clouds he sees something terrible, and tells so to his wife. And his wife says, taking her comb:“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed where he is a fog, and hail, and a terrific storm.”It happens as they wish. They go a little way farther, and his wife says to him:“Look behind you, then, if you see anything.”The husband says to her: “Now it is all over with us. We have him here after us; he is on us. Use all your power.”She throws again a comb immediately, and says:“Comb, with thy power, form between my father and me a terrible river, and let him be drowned there for ever.”As soon as she has said that, they see a mighty water, and there their father and enemy drowns himself.58The young lady says, “Now we have no more fear of him, we shall live in peace.”They go a good distance, and arrive at a country into which the young lady could not enter. She says to her husband:“I can go no farther. It is the land of the Christians there; I cannot enter into it. You must go there the first. You must fetch a priest. He must baptize me, and afterwards I will come with you; but you must take great care that nobody kisses you. If so, you will forget me altogether. Mind and pay great attention to it; and you, too, do not you kiss anyone.”He promises his wife that he will not. He goes, then, on, and on, and on. He arrives in his own country, and as he is entering it an old aunt recognises him, and comes behind him, and gives him two kisses.59It is all over with him. He forgets his wife, as if he had never seen her, and he stays there amusing himself, and taking his pleasure.The young lady, seeing that her husband never returned, that something had happened to him, and that she could no longer count upon him, she takes a little stick, and striking the earth, she says:“I will that here, in this very spot, is built a beautiful hotel, with all that is necessary, servants, and all the rest.”There was a beautiful garden, too, in front, and she had put over the door:“Here they give to eat without payment.”One day the young man goes out hunting with two comrades, and while they were in the forest they said one to the other:“We never knew of this hotel here before. We must go there too. One can eat without payment.”They go off then. The young lady recognises her husband very well, but he does not recognise her at all. She receives them very well. These gentlemen are so pleased with her, that one of them asks her if she will not let him pass the night with her.60The young lady says to him, “Yes.” The other asks also, “I, too, was wishing it.” The young lady says to him:“To-morrow then, you, if you wish it, certainly.”And her husband says to her: “And I after to-morrow then.”The young lady says to him, “Yes.” One of the young men remains then. He passes the evening in great delight, and when the hour comes for going to bed, the young lady says to him:“When you were small you were a choir-boy, and they used to powder you; this smell displeases me in bed. Before coming there you must comb yourself. Here is a comb, and when you have got all the powder out, you may come to bed.”Our lad begins then to comb his hair, but never could he get all the powder out, such quantities came out, and were still coming out of his head; and he was still at it when the young lady rose. The lad said to her:“What! you are getting up before I come.”“And do you not see that it is day? I cannot stop there any longer. People will come.”Our young man goes off home without saying a word more. He meets his comrade who was to pass the night with this young lady. He says to him:“You are satisfied? You amused yourself well?”“Yes, certainly, very well. If the time flies as fast with you as it did with me you will amuse yourself well.”He goes off then to this house. The young lady says to him, after he had had a good supper:“Before going to bed you must wash your feet. The water will be here in this big copper; when you have them quite clean you may come to bed.”Accordingly he washes one, and when he has finished washing the other, the first washed is still black and dirty. He washes it again, and finds the foot that he has just well washed very dirty again. He kept doing like that for such a long time. When the young lady gets up, the gentleman says to her:“What! You are getting up already, without me coming?”“Why did you not then come before day? I cannot stay any longer in bed. It is daylight, and the people will begin (to come).”Our young man withdraws as the other had done. Now it is the turn of her husband. She serves him still better than the others; nothing was wanting at his supper. When the hour for going to bed arrives, they go to the young lady’s room; when they are ready to get into bed, the young lady says to him:“Put out the light.”He puts it out, and it lights again directly. He puts it out again, and it lights again as soon as it is put out. He passes all the night like that in his shirt, never being able to put out that light. When daylight is come, the young lady says to him:“You do not know me then? You do not remember how you left your wife to go and fetch a priest?”As soon as she had said that he strikes his head, and says to her:“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am;but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine Kopena.
Dragon.A king had a son who was called Dragon. He was as debauched as it is possible to be. All the money that he had he had spent, and still more; not having enough, he demanded his portion from his father. The father gives it him immediately, and he goes off, taking with him a companion who had been a soldier, and who was very like himself.32Very quickly they spent all their money. While they were travelling in a forest they see a beautiful castle. They enter and find there a table ready set out, and a magnificent supper prepared. They sit down to table and sup. Nobody appears as yet, and they go up-stairs to see the house, and they find the beds all ready, and they go to bed. They pass a very good night. The next morning Dragon gets up and opens the shutters, and sees a dazzling garden.He goes down into the garden, still without seeing anybody; but in passing under a fig tree, a voice says to him:“Ay! ay! ay! what pain you have put me to, and what suffering you are causing me!”He turns on all sides and finds nothing. He says:“Who are you? You! I do not understand it. Appear!”The voice says to him, “I cannot to-day; but perhapsto-morrow you will see me. But in order to do that you will have to suffer severely.”He promises to suffer no matter what for her. The voice says to him:“To-morrow night they will make you suffer every kind of torture, but you must not say anything; and if you do that, you will see me to-morrow.”They had spoken all this before the soldier friend, but he had heard nothing of it.They go to the house and find the dinner quite ready. Dragon would have wished that night had already come, to know what it was he was to see. He goes off to bed then, and after eleven o’clock he feels that something is coming, and his whole body is pricked all over. He keeps quite silent, because he wished to see the voice. And when the cock crew “Kukuruku!” he was released (from his torture). He lies waiting for daybreak to go to the fig tree. Day did not appear as soon as he would have wished it, and he goes running to the garden and sees under the fig tree, coming out of the ground as high as her shoulders, a young girl, and she says to him:“Last night you have suffered in silence, but the next night they will make you suffer much more. I do not know if you can bear it without speaking.”He promises her that he will suffer still more in order to save her.As usual, they find the table ready for dinner and for supper. He goes off to bed. There happens to him the same thing as in the preceding night, but they do him still more harm. Happily he lies still without speaking. The cock crows “Kukuruku!” and they leave him quiet. As soon as daylight has come he goes off to the garden, and he sees the young lady visible as far as the knees. Dragon is delighted to save this beautiful girl, but she says sadly to him:“You have seen nothing up to this time. They will make you suffer twice as much.”He says that he has courage to endure anything, becausehe wishes to get her out of that state. When night comes, he perceives that two are coming instead of one. One of them was lame, and he says to him (and you know lame people and cripples are the most cruel).33He says then to the other:“What! You have not been able to make this wretched boy speak! I will make him speak, I will.”He cuts off his arms and then his legs, and our Dragon does not say anything. They make him suffer a great deal, but happily the cock crows “Kukuruku!” and he is delivered. He was much afraid what would become of him without hands and without feet; but on touching himself he feels with pleasure that all that is made right again. While he is in bed he hears a great noise. He lies without saying anything, being frightened, and not knowing what might happen to him, when all of a sudden this young lady appears and says to him:“You have saved me; I am very well pleased with you. But this is not enough; we must be off from here immediately.”All the three go off together, and travel far, far, far away, and they arrive in a city. The young lady did not think it proper to lodge in the same hotel with them. Next morning the young lady gets up very early, and goes in search of the landlord of the hotel, and says to him:“A gentleman will come here to ask for me. You will tell him that I have gone out, and if he wishes to see me he must come to the fountain at the Four Cantons34—but fasting—and he is to wait for me there.”The next morning the young gentleman goes to the hotel, and they tell him what the young lady has said. On that very day he goes to the fountain, taking his comrade with him, and fasting; but as the young lady had not yet arrived, forgetting himself, he put his hand in his pocket, and finding there a small nut, he eats it. As soon as he has eaten it hefalls asleep.35The young lady arrives. She sees that he is asleep. She says to his companion:“He has eaten something. Tell him that I will return, but tell, tell him, I beg you, to eat nothing.”She leaves him a beautiful handkerchief. Dragon wakes up as soon as the young lady is gone. His comrade tells him that she had come, and that she had told him not to eat anything. And he shows Dragon the handkerchief. He was very vexed at having eaten, and would have wished that it was already the next day. He starts then very, very early, and waits for the young lady, and, as was fated to happen, finding a walnut in his pocket, he eats it. He immediately falls asleep. The young lady appears and finds him sleeping. She says that she will return again the next day, but that he must not eat anything. She leaves him another handkerchief. Dragon awakes as soon as she has gone. Judge with what vexation. His friend tells him that she said that she would return the next day, but that he must do his best not to eat anything. He goes then the third day without eating anything, but, as was to happen, despairing of seeing the young lady, who was late, arrive, he takes an apple from an apple tree and eats it. He falls asleep immediately. The young lady comes and finds him asleep. She gives his comrade a ring to give to Dragon, telling him that if Dragon wishes to see her he will find her in the City of the Four Quarters. Dragon is very vexed, and he says to his friend:“The good God knows when I shall find this city, and it is better for you to go in one direction (and I in another).”Thereupon they separate. Dragon goes off, far, far, far away. He comes to a mountain; there he sees a man, who had before his door holy water, and whoever made use of it was well received. He goes in, therefore, and asks him ifhe knows where is the City of the Four Quarters. He tells him—“No; but there are the animals of the earth and of the air, and that the latter might perhaps guide him there.”He whistles to them. They come from all quarters, and he asks them if they know where is the City of the Four Quarters? They tell him “No.” Then the man says to him—“I have a brother on such a mountain, who has many more animals than I have; he has them all under his power, that man has.”Dragon goes off then, and arrives there; he asks of that man if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is? He tells him “No,” but that he has animals which will know it, if anyone ought to know it. He whistles to them. He sees the animals, small and great, coming from all quarters. Dragon was trembling with fright. He asks them one by one if they know where the City of the Four Quarters is. They tell him “No;” but the man sees that one animal is wanting, and that is the eagle. He whistles, and he comes. He asks him, too, if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is. He says to him—“I am just come from there.”The man says to him,“You must, then, guide this young gentleman there.”The eagle says to him, “Willingly, if he will give me a morsel of flesh each time that I open my mouth.”Dragon replies, “Yes, willingly.”He then buys an ox. The eagle tells him to get upon his back. The man climbs up there with his ox, and when he opens his mouth he gives him a morsel of the ox, which kept gradually diminishing.They were obliged to cross over the sea, and there was no bridge to it there. The ox was finished when they were in the middle of the sea, and there was a great rock there. The eagle opens his mouth again, and, as there was no more beef, what does he do? As he was afraid of being leftupon that rock, he cuts a morsel from the back of his own thighs, and puts it in his mouth.36They arrive on the other side of the sea. The eagle leaves him there, saying to him,“You are in the City of the Four Quarters. Do your own business here. I am going off to my own home.”This young gentleman asks what is the news in this city. They tell him that the king’s daughter is going to be married to-day. In this city it was permitted only to the wedding party to enter the church, but Dragon had bribed one of the keepers with money, (saying) that he would stop quiet in a corner of the church. It was also the custom in this city to publish the banns at the moment of marriage. When the priest began to publish them, Dragon came out of his corner, and said—“I make an objection.”He goes to the young lady, who recognises him; and he shows her the ring and the kerchiefs, and asks her in marriage. She says—“This shall be my husband; he has well deserved it.”He was still lame, as a piece of his flesh was still wanting. They were married then. The other bridegroom went back home quite ashamed. The others lived very happily, because both had suffered much. Then I was there, now I am here.Louise Lanusse,St. Jean Pied de Port.Ezkabi-Fidel.As there are many in the world, and as we are many of us, there was a mother who had a son. They were very poor. The son wished to go off somewhere, in order tobetter himself, (he said); that it was not living to live like that. The mother was sorry; but what could she do? In order that her son may be better off, she lets him go. He goes then, travelling on, and on, and on. In a forest he meets with a gentleman, who asks him where he is going. He tells him that, wishing to better himself, he had gone away from home to do something. This gentleman asks him if he is willing to be his servant. He replies, “Yes.” They go off then together, and come to a beautiful place. After having entered, the gentleman gives him all the keys of the house, saying that he has a journey he must make, and that he must see the whole house—that he will find in it everything he wants to eat, and to take care of the horses in the stable. The gentleman goes away as soon as he had seen all the house and the stable. There were a lot of horses there, and in the midst of them all a white mare,37who said to him,“Ay! ay! Fidel, save me, I pray you, from here, and get me outside. You will not be sorry for it.”Fidel stops at the place whence this voice came. A moment after, the white mare says to him,“Come near the white mare; it is she who is speaking to you.”Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, hecould hide it.38The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.39The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”They go on again, and the mare says again—“Look back again, if you see anything.”Fidel says to her, “Yes, I see again this terrible thing; it is coming after us quickly, and is going to catch us.”The mare at the same time says again to the earth, in striking it with her foot,“Let it hail stones, and hail there where he is as much as can possibly fall.”They go on. The mare says again,“Look back, if you see anything.”He says to her again, “He is here, this terrible monster. It is all up with us now—we cannot escape him; he is quite near, and he comes with speed.”The mare strikes the earth with her foot, and says to it—“Form before him a river, and let him drown himself there for evermore.”He sees him drown himself there. The mare says to him,“Now you shall go to such a spot. The king lives there. You will ask if they want a gardener, and they will tell you ‘Yes.’ You will stay there without doing anything, and the work will do itself by itself, without your doing anything. Every day three beautiful flowers will come up in this garden. You will carry them to the three daughters of the king, but you will always give the finest to the youngest.”40It was the custom to carry the dinner to the gardener, but it was the youngest of the daughters who carried it to him. From the first day the gardener pleased the young lady, and she said to him one day that he must marry her. The lad said to her that that cannot be, that she ought not to think of marrying with a person of low birth and who has nothing, and that she must not dream any such dreams. This young lady falls ill. The father sends for the doctor, who says, after having touched her pulse, that she is ill of love; and the doctor goes to tell it to the king. The father goes to the young lady and tells her what the physician has said to him—that she is not so very ill. The daughter says to him:“In order to cure me you must send and fetch the gardener. Let him give me some broth and I shall be cured.”The father sends to fetch him directly, has him washed and properly dressed, and makes him carry the broth. There was among the court an old, old nurse; she was awitch, and as she knew what the physician had said, she goes and hides herself in the young lady’s bedroom before the gardener came there, in order to know what the young lady would say to him. The young lady said to him:“Yes, and you shall marry me; I will not marry anybody else but you, whatever you may say.”The lad said to her: “No, no, I will not hear that mentioned.”The nurse had heard all that had passed, and she goes and tells it immediately to the king. The young lady was cured, and goes to carry the dinner to Fidel. Fidel had a habit of always giving the first spoonful of the soup to the dog. He gives it him that day too, and as soon as the dog has eaten it he falls stark dead. When the young lady saw that she goes and tells it to her father. The father sends for a big dog, and gives him some of the soup, and as soon as he has eaten it he falls dead. Judge of the anger of that young lady. She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that hemustmarry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:“If youwillmarry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.”That was all the same to this young lady, (and they are married), and go off there. As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily.One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? Let him stop at home.”His daughter says to him: “At least he is your son-in-law!”The father then says to her: “He may come on such a day.”Fidel goes as they had told him. He asks the king for a horse and a sword. The king gives him a horse blind and lame. Fidel was not pleased with it. He begins his march, wishing to get on as quickly as possible, but when he had gone a little distance, the horse sticks in the mud, and cannot in any way get out of it. While he is there, the white mare comes to him. She gives him a beautiful horse, and a lance and a sword, and tells him that he will see his brothers-in-law encamped round a city, but not to stop there with them, but to ride straight to the city; that the gates will be shut, but as soon as he shall have touched them with his lance they will be broken to pieces, and that they will make peace with him. He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousandfêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. They go back again. He stops at the place where he had left his old horse in the mud. He sends away his beautiful horse with all his things, and Fidel stops there, not being able to drag his old horse out of the mud. When his brothers-in-lawpass, they mock at him (and ask him) if it is there that he has passed all his time. He tells them, “Yes.” The others go on ahead, and at length he also arrives at the king’s house. He leaves his old horse there and goes off home. He does not tell his wife what has happened, and they live in their hole.The king was getting old, and he had entirely lost his sight. Somebody gave him to understand that there was a water which made people young again, and another which restored sight. He told his sons-in-law that they must go (and look for it)—that he could not live long like that. And both of them start off. Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on.He meets an old woman, who says to him, “Where are you going to?” He tells her how he wants a water which gives sight to the blind and makes the old young,43and that he would not go back home without finding it. This old woman says to him:“You will see two animals fighting close to you, and you will gather the herb which makes the dead to live; you will have it boiled, and you will keep this water for yourself.”This lad goes on a little farther, and he sees two lizards fighting so fiercely that one kills the other. The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44Fidel gathers this grass, and goesoff to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water.Fidel goes into the city, and as soon as he has entered, he cries:“Who wishes to buy the water that gives sight to the blind, and the water which makes old men young?”His two brothers-in-law appear, and say that they must have some of this water, and ask what it costs. And he tells them that he does not sell it, but only gives it in exchange for golden apples. These gentlemen willingly make the exchange. But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too; that they would help, one in cutting the wood, and the other in serving at table. She did not wish to go there at all. She told her husband that she would a hundred times sooner stop at home; but her husband sends her off by force, (saying) that they ought to be there on that day. She goes, then, the poor woman, against her wish. She asks her father if he does not want some one to help on the feast day. The father says, “No!”—they have servants enough. An old general who was sitting by his side said to him:“Why do you not let them come?”Then the king said, “Come then on such a day.”Fidel and his wife go. While they are at breakfast theold general asks Fidel if he also does not know something to relate? He replies “Yes,” that he knows some (stories), but more than one would not be pleased with what he would tell. Then the king says, placing his sword upon the table:“The point of my sword shall know news of the heart of him who shall speak.”Fidel begins then, how he went to the war with an old horse, blind and lame, but that in spite of that he had carried off the keys of the treasure and the papers. The king says to him that he has not seen them yet—that he is still expecting them. Fidel takes out the papers and gives them to the king. He gives also the keys of the treasury. The king assures himself that they are the real ones. He then narrates how he has sold in exchange for two golden apples that precious water. At this instant his wife rises and says to him:“Where have you these golden apples—you?”As it is she who has spoken the first words, Fidel takes up the king’s sword and strikes his wife dead.45The king was grieved to see that, but Fidel says to him:“Do not disturb yourself for that; as I have taken away her life I will give it her again.”He takes out his water which rekindles dead men, and rubs some on her temple, and she suddenly returns to life. Everyone is astounded at this great deed, and at all that he has already done. The king tells him that he has already gained the crown, but that he must be cured of this terrible scab46first. His wife rises, takes off his kerchief which he had upon his head, and shows the shining head of her husband, saying:“See, this is the scab of my husband!”The king says that the crown will shine much better on his head. He goes to fetch it, and places it upon this precious head. He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine.We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. He goes as gardener, and the king’s daughter falls in love with him, from catching a sight of his golden hair from her window; for the rest the stories are identical, except that this is a shorter form than the above.The Lady Pigeon and her Comb.47Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away, (saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far, far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:“Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?”He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better himself.The Tartaro says to him, “As you have told the truth I spare your life, ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the pigeon’s skin which is in the middle.48The two young ladies will come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her before she shall promise to help you always.”The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that he shall go to-morrow to her father’s house, that he will take him as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, “Yes,” but that there is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father) takes him into the forest and says to him:“You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another, and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death.”49The lad says to him, “I will try.”He goes then to the forest and sits down pensive. It was already eleven o’clock when the young lady appears to him. She says to him:“Why are you like that, so sad? Have not I promised that I would help you? Shut your eyes, but all the worse for you if you shall open them.”She throws a comb into the air,50and says:“Comb, with thy power tear up these oaks with their roots, cut them into lengths, put the trunks together, and the branches, and the roots too by themselves.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says to it:“Comb, with thy power turn up this ground, harrow it, and sow the wheat.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).51Nothing will be finished for us.”He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad,and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”52The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.When he arrived at the bank of the river he sat there weeping, not knowing what to do. The young lady comes to him, and says:“What! You are weeping! Did not I tell you that I would always help you?”It was eleven o’clock. The young lady says to him:“You must cut me in pieces with this sabre, and throw all the pieces into the water.”The lad will not do it by any means. He says to her:“I prefer to die here on the spot than to make you suffer.”The lady says to him, “It is nothing at all what I shall suffer, and you must do it directly—the favourable moment is passing by like this, like this.”The lad, trembling all over, begins with his sabre. He throws all the pieces into the river; but, lo! a part of the lady’s little finger sticks to a nail in his shoe. The young lady comes out of the water and says to him:“You have not thrown everything into the water. My little finger is wanting.”53After having looked for it, he sees that he has it under his foot, hooked on to a nail. The young lady gives him the ring. She tells him to go without losing a moment; for he must give it to the king at noon. He arrives happily (in time). The young lady, as she goes into the house, bangs the door with all her might and begins to cry out:“Ay! ay! ay! I have crushed my little finger.”And she makes believe that she has done it there. The king was pleased. He tells him that on the morrow he must tame a horse and three young fillies.54The lad says to him:“I will try.”The master gives him a terrible club. The young lady says to him in the evening:“The horse which my father has spoken to you about will be himself. You will strike him with all your might with your terrible club on the nose, and he will yield and be conquered. The first filly will be my eldest sister. You will strike her on the chest with all your force, and she also will yield and will be conquered. I shall come the last. You will make a show of beating me too, and you will hit the ground with your stick, and I too will yield, and I shall be conquered.”The next day the lad does as the young lady has told him. The horse comes. He was very high-spirited, but our lad strikes him on the nose, he yields, and is conquered. He does the same thing with the fillies. He beats them with his terrible club, they yield, and are conquered; and when the third comes he makes a show of hitting her, and strikes the earth. She yields, and all go off.The next day he sees the master with his lips swollen, and with all his face as black as soot. The young ladies had also pain in the chest. The youngest also gets up very late indeed in order to do as the others.The master says to him that he sees he is a valuable servant, and very clever, and that he will give him one of his daughters for wife, but that he must choose her with his eyes shut. And the young lady says to him:“You will choose the one that will give you her hand twice, and in any way you will recognise me, because you will find that my little finger is wanting. I will always put that in front.”The next day the master said to him:“We are here now; you shall now choose the one you wish for, always keeping your eyes shut.”He shuts them then; and the eldest daughter approaches, and gives him her hand. He says to the king:“It is very heavy, (this hand); too heavy for me. I will not have this one.”The second one approaches, she gives him her hand, and he immediately recognises that the little finger is wanting. He says to the king:“This is the one I must have.”They are married immediately.55They pass some days like that. His wife says to him:“It is better for us to be off from here, and to flee, otherwise my father will kill us.”They set off, then, that evening at ten o’clock, and the young lady spits before the door of her room, saying:“Spittle, with thy power, you shall speak in my place.”56And they go off a long way. At midnight, the father goes to the door of the lad and his wife, and knocks at the door; they do not answer. He knocks harder, and then the spittle says to him:“Just now nobody can come into this room.”The father says, “It is I. I must come in.”“It is impossible,” says the spittle again.The father grows more and more angry; the spittle makes him stop an hour like that at the door. At last, not being able to do anything else, he smashes the door, and goes inside. What is his terrible rage when he sees the room empty. He goes off to his wife, and says to her:“You were not mistaken; they were well acquainted, and they were really in league with one another, and they have both escaped together; but I will not leave them like that. I will go off after them, and I shall find them sooner or later.”He starts off. Our gentleman and lady had gone very far, but the young lady was still afraid. She said to her husband:“He might overtake us even now. I—I cannot turn my head; but (look) if you can see something.”The husband says to her: “Yes, something terrible is coming after us; I have never seen a monster like this.”The young lady throws up a comb, and says:57“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed before my father hedges and thorns, and before me a good road.”It is done as she wished. They go a good way, and she says again:“Look, I beg you, if you see anything again.”The husband looks back, and sees nothing; but in the clouds he sees something terrible, and tells so to his wife. And his wife says, taking her comb:“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed where he is a fog, and hail, and a terrific storm.”It happens as they wish. They go a little way farther, and his wife says to him:“Look behind you, then, if you see anything.”The husband says to her: “Now it is all over with us. We have him here after us; he is on us. Use all your power.”She throws again a comb immediately, and says:“Comb, with thy power, form between my father and me a terrible river, and let him be drowned there for ever.”As soon as she has said that, they see a mighty water, and there their father and enemy drowns himself.58The young lady says, “Now we have no more fear of him, we shall live in peace.”They go a good distance, and arrive at a country into which the young lady could not enter. She says to her husband:“I can go no farther. It is the land of the Christians there; I cannot enter into it. You must go there the first. You must fetch a priest. He must baptize me, and afterwards I will come with you; but you must take great care that nobody kisses you. If so, you will forget me altogether. Mind and pay great attention to it; and you, too, do not you kiss anyone.”He promises his wife that he will not. He goes, then, on, and on, and on. He arrives in his own country, and as he is entering it an old aunt recognises him, and comes behind him, and gives him two kisses.59It is all over with him. He forgets his wife, as if he had never seen her, and he stays there amusing himself, and taking his pleasure.The young lady, seeing that her husband never returned, that something had happened to him, and that she could no longer count upon him, she takes a little stick, and striking the earth, she says:“I will that here, in this very spot, is built a beautiful hotel, with all that is necessary, servants, and all the rest.”There was a beautiful garden, too, in front, and she had put over the door:“Here they give to eat without payment.”One day the young man goes out hunting with two comrades, and while they were in the forest they said one to the other:“We never knew of this hotel here before. We must go there too. One can eat without payment.”They go off then. The young lady recognises her husband very well, but he does not recognise her at all. She receives them very well. These gentlemen are so pleased with her, that one of them asks her if she will not let him pass the night with her.60The young lady says to him, “Yes.” The other asks also, “I, too, was wishing it.” The young lady says to him:“To-morrow then, you, if you wish it, certainly.”And her husband says to her: “And I after to-morrow then.”The young lady says to him, “Yes.” One of the young men remains then. He passes the evening in great delight, and when the hour comes for going to bed, the young lady says to him:“When you were small you were a choir-boy, and they used to powder you; this smell displeases me in bed. Before coming there you must comb yourself. Here is a comb, and when you have got all the powder out, you may come to bed.”Our lad begins then to comb his hair, but never could he get all the powder out, such quantities came out, and were still coming out of his head; and he was still at it when the young lady rose. The lad said to her:“What! you are getting up before I come.”“And do you not see that it is day? I cannot stop there any longer. People will come.”Our young man goes off home without saying a word more. He meets his comrade who was to pass the night with this young lady. He says to him:“You are satisfied? You amused yourself well?”“Yes, certainly, very well. If the time flies as fast with you as it did with me you will amuse yourself well.”He goes off then to this house. The young lady says to him, after he had had a good supper:“Before going to bed you must wash your feet. The water will be here in this big copper; when you have them quite clean you may come to bed.”Accordingly he washes one, and when he has finished washing the other, the first washed is still black and dirty. He washes it again, and finds the foot that he has just well washed very dirty again. He kept doing like that for such a long time. When the young lady gets up, the gentleman says to her:“What! You are getting up already, without me coming?”“Why did you not then come before day? I cannot stay any longer in bed. It is daylight, and the people will begin (to come).”Our young man withdraws as the other had done. Now it is the turn of her husband. She serves him still better than the others; nothing was wanting at his supper. When the hour for going to bed arrives, they go to the young lady’s room; when they are ready to get into bed, the young lady says to him:“Put out the light.”He puts it out, and it lights again directly. He puts it out again, and it lights again as soon as it is put out. He passes all the night like that in his shirt, never being able to put out that light. When daylight is come, the young lady says to him:“You do not know me then? You do not remember how you left your wife to go and fetch a priest?”As soon as she had said that he strikes his head, and says to her:“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am;but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine Kopena.
Dragon.A king had a son who was called Dragon. He was as debauched as it is possible to be. All the money that he had he had spent, and still more; not having enough, he demanded his portion from his father. The father gives it him immediately, and he goes off, taking with him a companion who had been a soldier, and who was very like himself.32Very quickly they spent all their money. While they were travelling in a forest they see a beautiful castle. They enter and find there a table ready set out, and a magnificent supper prepared. They sit down to table and sup. Nobody appears as yet, and they go up-stairs to see the house, and they find the beds all ready, and they go to bed. They pass a very good night. The next morning Dragon gets up and opens the shutters, and sees a dazzling garden.He goes down into the garden, still without seeing anybody; but in passing under a fig tree, a voice says to him:“Ay! ay! ay! what pain you have put me to, and what suffering you are causing me!”He turns on all sides and finds nothing. He says:“Who are you? You! I do not understand it. Appear!”The voice says to him, “I cannot to-day; but perhapsto-morrow you will see me. But in order to do that you will have to suffer severely.”He promises to suffer no matter what for her. The voice says to him:“To-morrow night they will make you suffer every kind of torture, but you must not say anything; and if you do that, you will see me to-morrow.”They had spoken all this before the soldier friend, but he had heard nothing of it.They go to the house and find the dinner quite ready. Dragon would have wished that night had already come, to know what it was he was to see. He goes off to bed then, and after eleven o’clock he feels that something is coming, and his whole body is pricked all over. He keeps quite silent, because he wished to see the voice. And when the cock crew “Kukuruku!” he was released (from his torture). He lies waiting for daybreak to go to the fig tree. Day did not appear as soon as he would have wished it, and he goes running to the garden and sees under the fig tree, coming out of the ground as high as her shoulders, a young girl, and she says to him:“Last night you have suffered in silence, but the next night they will make you suffer much more. I do not know if you can bear it without speaking.”He promises her that he will suffer still more in order to save her.As usual, they find the table ready for dinner and for supper. He goes off to bed. There happens to him the same thing as in the preceding night, but they do him still more harm. Happily he lies still without speaking. The cock crows “Kukuruku!” and they leave him quiet. As soon as daylight has come he goes off to the garden, and he sees the young lady visible as far as the knees. Dragon is delighted to save this beautiful girl, but she says sadly to him:“You have seen nothing up to this time. They will make you suffer twice as much.”He says that he has courage to endure anything, becausehe wishes to get her out of that state. When night comes, he perceives that two are coming instead of one. One of them was lame, and he says to him (and you know lame people and cripples are the most cruel).33He says then to the other:“What! You have not been able to make this wretched boy speak! I will make him speak, I will.”He cuts off his arms and then his legs, and our Dragon does not say anything. They make him suffer a great deal, but happily the cock crows “Kukuruku!” and he is delivered. He was much afraid what would become of him without hands and without feet; but on touching himself he feels with pleasure that all that is made right again. While he is in bed he hears a great noise. He lies without saying anything, being frightened, and not knowing what might happen to him, when all of a sudden this young lady appears and says to him:“You have saved me; I am very well pleased with you. But this is not enough; we must be off from here immediately.”All the three go off together, and travel far, far, far away, and they arrive in a city. The young lady did not think it proper to lodge in the same hotel with them. Next morning the young lady gets up very early, and goes in search of the landlord of the hotel, and says to him:“A gentleman will come here to ask for me. You will tell him that I have gone out, and if he wishes to see me he must come to the fountain at the Four Cantons34—but fasting—and he is to wait for me there.”The next morning the young gentleman goes to the hotel, and they tell him what the young lady has said. On that very day he goes to the fountain, taking his comrade with him, and fasting; but as the young lady had not yet arrived, forgetting himself, he put his hand in his pocket, and finding there a small nut, he eats it. As soon as he has eaten it hefalls asleep.35The young lady arrives. She sees that he is asleep. She says to his companion:“He has eaten something. Tell him that I will return, but tell, tell him, I beg you, to eat nothing.”She leaves him a beautiful handkerchief. Dragon wakes up as soon as the young lady is gone. His comrade tells him that she had come, and that she had told him not to eat anything. And he shows Dragon the handkerchief. He was very vexed at having eaten, and would have wished that it was already the next day. He starts then very, very early, and waits for the young lady, and, as was fated to happen, finding a walnut in his pocket, he eats it. He immediately falls asleep. The young lady appears and finds him sleeping. She says that she will return again the next day, but that he must not eat anything. She leaves him another handkerchief. Dragon awakes as soon as she has gone. Judge with what vexation. His friend tells him that she said that she would return the next day, but that he must do his best not to eat anything. He goes then the third day without eating anything, but, as was to happen, despairing of seeing the young lady, who was late, arrive, he takes an apple from an apple tree and eats it. He falls asleep immediately. The young lady comes and finds him asleep. She gives his comrade a ring to give to Dragon, telling him that if Dragon wishes to see her he will find her in the City of the Four Quarters. Dragon is very vexed, and he says to his friend:“The good God knows when I shall find this city, and it is better for you to go in one direction (and I in another).”Thereupon they separate. Dragon goes off, far, far, far away. He comes to a mountain; there he sees a man, who had before his door holy water, and whoever made use of it was well received. He goes in, therefore, and asks him ifhe knows where is the City of the Four Quarters. He tells him—“No; but there are the animals of the earth and of the air, and that the latter might perhaps guide him there.”He whistles to them. They come from all quarters, and he asks them if they know where is the City of the Four Quarters? They tell him “No.” Then the man says to him—“I have a brother on such a mountain, who has many more animals than I have; he has them all under his power, that man has.”Dragon goes off then, and arrives there; he asks of that man if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is? He tells him “No,” but that he has animals which will know it, if anyone ought to know it. He whistles to them. He sees the animals, small and great, coming from all quarters. Dragon was trembling with fright. He asks them one by one if they know where the City of the Four Quarters is. They tell him “No;” but the man sees that one animal is wanting, and that is the eagle. He whistles, and he comes. He asks him, too, if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is. He says to him—“I am just come from there.”The man says to him,“You must, then, guide this young gentleman there.”The eagle says to him, “Willingly, if he will give me a morsel of flesh each time that I open my mouth.”Dragon replies, “Yes, willingly.”He then buys an ox. The eagle tells him to get upon his back. The man climbs up there with his ox, and when he opens his mouth he gives him a morsel of the ox, which kept gradually diminishing.They were obliged to cross over the sea, and there was no bridge to it there. The ox was finished when they were in the middle of the sea, and there was a great rock there. The eagle opens his mouth again, and, as there was no more beef, what does he do? As he was afraid of being leftupon that rock, he cuts a morsel from the back of his own thighs, and puts it in his mouth.36They arrive on the other side of the sea. The eagle leaves him there, saying to him,“You are in the City of the Four Quarters. Do your own business here. I am going off to my own home.”This young gentleman asks what is the news in this city. They tell him that the king’s daughter is going to be married to-day. In this city it was permitted only to the wedding party to enter the church, but Dragon had bribed one of the keepers with money, (saying) that he would stop quiet in a corner of the church. It was also the custom in this city to publish the banns at the moment of marriage. When the priest began to publish them, Dragon came out of his corner, and said—“I make an objection.”He goes to the young lady, who recognises him; and he shows her the ring and the kerchiefs, and asks her in marriage. She says—“This shall be my husband; he has well deserved it.”He was still lame, as a piece of his flesh was still wanting. They were married then. The other bridegroom went back home quite ashamed. The others lived very happily, because both had suffered much. Then I was there, now I am here.Louise Lanusse,St. Jean Pied de Port.
A king had a son who was called Dragon. He was as debauched as it is possible to be. All the money that he had he had spent, and still more; not having enough, he demanded his portion from his father. The father gives it him immediately, and he goes off, taking with him a companion who had been a soldier, and who was very like himself.32Very quickly they spent all their money. While they were travelling in a forest they see a beautiful castle. They enter and find there a table ready set out, and a magnificent supper prepared. They sit down to table and sup. Nobody appears as yet, and they go up-stairs to see the house, and they find the beds all ready, and they go to bed. They pass a very good night. The next morning Dragon gets up and opens the shutters, and sees a dazzling garden.
He goes down into the garden, still without seeing anybody; but in passing under a fig tree, a voice says to him:
“Ay! ay! ay! what pain you have put me to, and what suffering you are causing me!”
He turns on all sides and finds nothing. He says:
“Who are you? You! I do not understand it. Appear!”
The voice says to him, “I cannot to-day; but perhapsto-morrow you will see me. But in order to do that you will have to suffer severely.”
He promises to suffer no matter what for her. The voice says to him:
“To-morrow night they will make you suffer every kind of torture, but you must not say anything; and if you do that, you will see me to-morrow.”
They had spoken all this before the soldier friend, but he had heard nothing of it.
They go to the house and find the dinner quite ready. Dragon would have wished that night had already come, to know what it was he was to see. He goes off to bed then, and after eleven o’clock he feels that something is coming, and his whole body is pricked all over. He keeps quite silent, because he wished to see the voice. And when the cock crew “Kukuruku!” he was released (from his torture). He lies waiting for daybreak to go to the fig tree. Day did not appear as soon as he would have wished it, and he goes running to the garden and sees under the fig tree, coming out of the ground as high as her shoulders, a young girl, and she says to him:
“Last night you have suffered in silence, but the next night they will make you suffer much more. I do not know if you can bear it without speaking.”
He promises her that he will suffer still more in order to save her.
As usual, they find the table ready for dinner and for supper. He goes off to bed. There happens to him the same thing as in the preceding night, but they do him still more harm. Happily he lies still without speaking. The cock crows “Kukuruku!” and they leave him quiet. As soon as daylight has come he goes off to the garden, and he sees the young lady visible as far as the knees. Dragon is delighted to save this beautiful girl, but she says sadly to him:
“You have seen nothing up to this time. They will make you suffer twice as much.”
He says that he has courage to endure anything, becausehe wishes to get her out of that state. When night comes, he perceives that two are coming instead of one. One of them was lame, and he says to him (and you know lame people and cripples are the most cruel).33He says then to the other:
“What! You have not been able to make this wretched boy speak! I will make him speak, I will.”
He cuts off his arms and then his legs, and our Dragon does not say anything. They make him suffer a great deal, but happily the cock crows “Kukuruku!” and he is delivered. He was much afraid what would become of him without hands and without feet; but on touching himself he feels with pleasure that all that is made right again. While he is in bed he hears a great noise. He lies without saying anything, being frightened, and not knowing what might happen to him, when all of a sudden this young lady appears and says to him:
“You have saved me; I am very well pleased with you. But this is not enough; we must be off from here immediately.”
All the three go off together, and travel far, far, far away, and they arrive in a city. The young lady did not think it proper to lodge in the same hotel with them. Next morning the young lady gets up very early, and goes in search of the landlord of the hotel, and says to him:
“A gentleman will come here to ask for me. You will tell him that I have gone out, and if he wishes to see me he must come to the fountain at the Four Cantons34—but fasting—and he is to wait for me there.”
The next morning the young gentleman goes to the hotel, and they tell him what the young lady has said. On that very day he goes to the fountain, taking his comrade with him, and fasting; but as the young lady had not yet arrived, forgetting himself, he put his hand in his pocket, and finding there a small nut, he eats it. As soon as he has eaten it hefalls asleep.35The young lady arrives. She sees that he is asleep. She says to his companion:
“He has eaten something. Tell him that I will return, but tell, tell him, I beg you, to eat nothing.”
She leaves him a beautiful handkerchief. Dragon wakes up as soon as the young lady is gone. His comrade tells him that she had come, and that she had told him not to eat anything. And he shows Dragon the handkerchief. He was very vexed at having eaten, and would have wished that it was already the next day. He starts then very, very early, and waits for the young lady, and, as was fated to happen, finding a walnut in his pocket, he eats it. He immediately falls asleep. The young lady appears and finds him sleeping. She says that she will return again the next day, but that he must not eat anything. She leaves him another handkerchief. Dragon awakes as soon as she has gone. Judge with what vexation. His friend tells him that she said that she would return the next day, but that he must do his best not to eat anything. He goes then the third day without eating anything, but, as was to happen, despairing of seeing the young lady, who was late, arrive, he takes an apple from an apple tree and eats it. He falls asleep immediately. The young lady comes and finds him asleep. She gives his comrade a ring to give to Dragon, telling him that if Dragon wishes to see her he will find her in the City of the Four Quarters. Dragon is very vexed, and he says to his friend:
“The good God knows when I shall find this city, and it is better for you to go in one direction (and I in another).”
Thereupon they separate. Dragon goes off, far, far, far away. He comes to a mountain; there he sees a man, who had before his door holy water, and whoever made use of it was well received. He goes in, therefore, and asks him ifhe knows where is the City of the Four Quarters. He tells him—
“No; but there are the animals of the earth and of the air, and that the latter might perhaps guide him there.”
He whistles to them. They come from all quarters, and he asks them if they know where is the City of the Four Quarters? They tell him “No.” Then the man says to him—
“I have a brother on such a mountain, who has many more animals than I have; he has them all under his power, that man has.”
Dragon goes off then, and arrives there; he asks of that man if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is? He tells him “No,” but that he has animals which will know it, if anyone ought to know it. He whistles to them. He sees the animals, small and great, coming from all quarters. Dragon was trembling with fright. He asks them one by one if they know where the City of the Four Quarters is. They tell him “No;” but the man sees that one animal is wanting, and that is the eagle. He whistles, and he comes. He asks him, too, if he knows where the City of the Four Quarters is. He says to him—
“I am just come from there.”
The man says to him,
“You must, then, guide this young gentleman there.”
The eagle says to him, “Willingly, if he will give me a morsel of flesh each time that I open my mouth.”
Dragon replies, “Yes, willingly.”
He then buys an ox. The eagle tells him to get upon his back. The man climbs up there with his ox, and when he opens his mouth he gives him a morsel of the ox, which kept gradually diminishing.
They were obliged to cross over the sea, and there was no bridge to it there. The ox was finished when they were in the middle of the sea, and there was a great rock there. The eagle opens his mouth again, and, as there was no more beef, what does he do? As he was afraid of being leftupon that rock, he cuts a morsel from the back of his own thighs, and puts it in his mouth.36They arrive on the other side of the sea. The eagle leaves him there, saying to him,
“You are in the City of the Four Quarters. Do your own business here. I am going off to my own home.”
This young gentleman asks what is the news in this city. They tell him that the king’s daughter is going to be married to-day. In this city it was permitted only to the wedding party to enter the church, but Dragon had bribed one of the keepers with money, (saying) that he would stop quiet in a corner of the church. It was also the custom in this city to publish the banns at the moment of marriage. When the priest began to publish them, Dragon came out of his corner, and said—
“I make an objection.”
He goes to the young lady, who recognises him; and he shows her the ring and the kerchiefs, and asks her in marriage. She says—
“This shall be my husband; he has well deserved it.”
He was still lame, as a piece of his flesh was still wanting. They were married then. The other bridegroom went back home quite ashamed. The others lived very happily, because both had suffered much. Then I was there, now I am here.
Louise Lanusse,St. Jean Pied de Port.
Ezkabi-Fidel.As there are many in the world, and as we are many of us, there was a mother who had a son. They were very poor. The son wished to go off somewhere, in order tobetter himself, (he said); that it was not living to live like that. The mother was sorry; but what could she do? In order that her son may be better off, she lets him go. He goes then, travelling on, and on, and on. In a forest he meets with a gentleman, who asks him where he is going. He tells him that, wishing to better himself, he had gone away from home to do something. This gentleman asks him if he is willing to be his servant. He replies, “Yes.” They go off then together, and come to a beautiful place. After having entered, the gentleman gives him all the keys of the house, saying that he has a journey he must make, and that he must see the whole house—that he will find in it everything he wants to eat, and to take care of the horses in the stable. The gentleman goes away as soon as he had seen all the house and the stable. There were a lot of horses there, and in the midst of them all a white mare,37who said to him,“Ay! ay! Fidel, save me, I pray you, from here, and get me outside. You will not be sorry for it.”Fidel stops at the place whence this voice came. A moment after, the white mare says to him,“Come near the white mare; it is she who is speaking to you.”Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, hecould hide it.38The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.39The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”They go on again, and the mare says again—“Look back again, if you see anything.”Fidel says to her, “Yes, I see again this terrible thing; it is coming after us quickly, and is going to catch us.”The mare at the same time says again to the earth, in striking it with her foot,“Let it hail stones, and hail there where he is as much as can possibly fall.”They go on. The mare says again,“Look back, if you see anything.”He says to her again, “He is here, this terrible monster. It is all up with us now—we cannot escape him; he is quite near, and he comes with speed.”The mare strikes the earth with her foot, and says to it—“Form before him a river, and let him drown himself there for evermore.”He sees him drown himself there. The mare says to him,“Now you shall go to such a spot. The king lives there. You will ask if they want a gardener, and they will tell you ‘Yes.’ You will stay there without doing anything, and the work will do itself by itself, without your doing anything. Every day three beautiful flowers will come up in this garden. You will carry them to the three daughters of the king, but you will always give the finest to the youngest.”40It was the custom to carry the dinner to the gardener, but it was the youngest of the daughters who carried it to him. From the first day the gardener pleased the young lady, and she said to him one day that he must marry her. The lad said to her that that cannot be, that she ought not to think of marrying with a person of low birth and who has nothing, and that she must not dream any such dreams. This young lady falls ill. The father sends for the doctor, who says, after having touched her pulse, that she is ill of love; and the doctor goes to tell it to the king. The father goes to the young lady and tells her what the physician has said to him—that she is not so very ill. The daughter says to him:“In order to cure me you must send and fetch the gardener. Let him give me some broth and I shall be cured.”The father sends to fetch him directly, has him washed and properly dressed, and makes him carry the broth. There was among the court an old, old nurse; she was awitch, and as she knew what the physician had said, she goes and hides herself in the young lady’s bedroom before the gardener came there, in order to know what the young lady would say to him. The young lady said to him:“Yes, and you shall marry me; I will not marry anybody else but you, whatever you may say.”The lad said to her: “No, no, I will not hear that mentioned.”The nurse had heard all that had passed, and she goes and tells it immediately to the king. The young lady was cured, and goes to carry the dinner to Fidel. Fidel had a habit of always giving the first spoonful of the soup to the dog. He gives it him that day too, and as soon as the dog has eaten it he falls stark dead. When the young lady saw that she goes and tells it to her father. The father sends for a big dog, and gives him some of the soup, and as soon as he has eaten it he falls dead. Judge of the anger of that young lady. She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that hemustmarry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:“If youwillmarry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.”That was all the same to this young lady, (and they are married), and go off there. As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily.One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? Let him stop at home.”His daughter says to him: “At least he is your son-in-law!”The father then says to her: “He may come on such a day.”Fidel goes as they had told him. He asks the king for a horse and a sword. The king gives him a horse blind and lame. Fidel was not pleased with it. He begins his march, wishing to get on as quickly as possible, but when he had gone a little distance, the horse sticks in the mud, and cannot in any way get out of it. While he is there, the white mare comes to him. She gives him a beautiful horse, and a lance and a sword, and tells him that he will see his brothers-in-law encamped round a city, but not to stop there with them, but to ride straight to the city; that the gates will be shut, but as soon as he shall have touched them with his lance they will be broken to pieces, and that they will make peace with him. He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousandfêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. They go back again. He stops at the place where he had left his old horse in the mud. He sends away his beautiful horse with all his things, and Fidel stops there, not being able to drag his old horse out of the mud. When his brothers-in-lawpass, they mock at him (and ask him) if it is there that he has passed all his time. He tells them, “Yes.” The others go on ahead, and at length he also arrives at the king’s house. He leaves his old horse there and goes off home. He does not tell his wife what has happened, and they live in their hole.The king was getting old, and he had entirely lost his sight. Somebody gave him to understand that there was a water which made people young again, and another which restored sight. He told his sons-in-law that they must go (and look for it)—that he could not live long like that. And both of them start off. Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on.He meets an old woman, who says to him, “Where are you going to?” He tells her how he wants a water which gives sight to the blind and makes the old young,43and that he would not go back home without finding it. This old woman says to him:“You will see two animals fighting close to you, and you will gather the herb which makes the dead to live; you will have it boiled, and you will keep this water for yourself.”This lad goes on a little farther, and he sees two lizards fighting so fiercely that one kills the other. The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44Fidel gathers this grass, and goesoff to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water.Fidel goes into the city, and as soon as he has entered, he cries:“Who wishes to buy the water that gives sight to the blind, and the water which makes old men young?”His two brothers-in-law appear, and say that they must have some of this water, and ask what it costs. And he tells them that he does not sell it, but only gives it in exchange for golden apples. These gentlemen willingly make the exchange. But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too; that they would help, one in cutting the wood, and the other in serving at table. She did not wish to go there at all. She told her husband that she would a hundred times sooner stop at home; but her husband sends her off by force, (saying) that they ought to be there on that day. She goes, then, the poor woman, against her wish. She asks her father if he does not want some one to help on the feast day. The father says, “No!”—they have servants enough. An old general who was sitting by his side said to him:“Why do you not let them come?”Then the king said, “Come then on such a day.”Fidel and his wife go. While they are at breakfast theold general asks Fidel if he also does not know something to relate? He replies “Yes,” that he knows some (stories), but more than one would not be pleased with what he would tell. Then the king says, placing his sword upon the table:“The point of my sword shall know news of the heart of him who shall speak.”Fidel begins then, how he went to the war with an old horse, blind and lame, but that in spite of that he had carried off the keys of the treasure and the papers. The king says to him that he has not seen them yet—that he is still expecting them. Fidel takes out the papers and gives them to the king. He gives also the keys of the treasury. The king assures himself that they are the real ones. He then narrates how he has sold in exchange for two golden apples that precious water. At this instant his wife rises and says to him:“Where have you these golden apples—you?”As it is she who has spoken the first words, Fidel takes up the king’s sword and strikes his wife dead.45The king was grieved to see that, but Fidel says to him:“Do not disturb yourself for that; as I have taken away her life I will give it her again.”He takes out his water which rekindles dead men, and rubs some on her temple, and she suddenly returns to life. Everyone is astounded at this great deed, and at all that he has already done. The king tells him that he has already gained the crown, but that he must be cured of this terrible scab46first. His wife rises, takes off his kerchief which he had upon his head, and shows the shining head of her husband, saying:“See, this is the scab of my husband!”The king says that the crown will shine much better on his head. He goes to fetch it, and places it upon this precious head. He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine.We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. He goes as gardener, and the king’s daughter falls in love with him, from catching a sight of his golden hair from her window; for the rest the stories are identical, except that this is a shorter form than the above.
As there are many in the world, and as we are many of us, there was a mother who had a son. They were very poor. The son wished to go off somewhere, in order tobetter himself, (he said); that it was not living to live like that. The mother was sorry; but what could she do? In order that her son may be better off, she lets him go. He goes then, travelling on, and on, and on. In a forest he meets with a gentleman, who asks him where he is going. He tells him that, wishing to better himself, he had gone away from home to do something. This gentleman asks him if he is willing to be his servant. He replies, “Yes.” They go off then together, and come to a beautiful place. After having entered, the gentleman gives him all the keys of the house, saying that he has a journey he must make, and that he must see the whole house—that he will find in it everything he wants to eat, and to take care of the horses in the stable. The gentleman goes away as soon as he had seen all the house and the stable. There were a lot of horses there, and in the midst of them all a white mare,37who said to him,
“Ay! ay! Fidel, save me, I pray you, from here, and get me outside. You will not be sorry for it.”
Fidel stops at the place whence this voice came. A moment after, the white mare says to him,
“Come near the white mare; it is she who is speaking to you.”
Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,
“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”
Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, hecould hide it.38The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.
The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,
“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”
He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”
The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”
After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.
He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.39The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,
“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”
They go on again, and the mare says again—
“Look back again, if you see anything.”
Fidel says to her, “Yes, I see again this terrible thing; it is coming after us quickly, and is going to catch us.”
The mare at the same time says again to the earth, in striking it with her foot,
“Let it hail stones, and hail there where he is as much as can possibly fall.”
They go on. The mare says again,
“Look back, if you see anything.”
He says to her again, “He is here, this terrible monster. It is all up with us now—we cannot escape him; he is quite near, and he comes with speed.”
The mare strikes the earth with her foot, and says to it—
“Form before him a river, and let him drown himself there for evermore.”
He sees him drown himself there. The mare says to him,
“Now you shall go to such a spot. The king lives there. You will ask if they want a gardener, and they will tell you ‘Yes.’ You will stay there without doing anything, and the work will do itself by itself, without your doing anything. Every day three beautiful flowers will come up in this garden. You will carry them to the three daughters of the king, but you will always give the finest to the youngest.”40
It was the custom to carry the dinner to the gardener, but it was the youngest of the daughters who carried it to him. From the first day the gardener pleased the young lady, and she said to him one day that he must marry her. The lad said to her that that cannot be, that she ought not to think of marrying with a person of low birth and who has nothing, and that she must not dream any such dreams. This young lady falls ill. The father sends for the doctor, who says, after having touched her pulse, that she is ill of love; and the doctor goes to tell it to the king. The father goes to the young lady and tells her what the physician has said to him—that she is not so very ill. The daughter says to him:
“In order to cure me you must send and fetch the gardener. Let him give me some broth and I shall be cured.”
The father sends to fetch him directly, has him washed and properly dressed, and makes him carry the broth. There was among the court an old, old nurse; she was awitch, and as she knew what the physician had said, she goes and hides herself in the young lady’s bedroom before the gardener came there, in order to know what the young lady would say to him. The young lady said to him:
“Yes, and you shall marry me; I will not marry anybody else but you, whatever you may say.”
The lad said to her: “No, no, I will not hear that mentioned.”
The nurse had heard all that had passed, and she goes and tells it immediately to the king. The young lady was cured, and goes to carry the dinner to Fidel. Fidel had a habit of always giving the first spoonful of the soup to the dog. He gives it him that day too, and as soon as the dog has eaten it he falls stark dead. When the young lady saw that she goes and tells it to her father. The father sends for a big dog, and gives him some of the soup, and as soon as he has eaten it he falls dead. Judge of the anger of that young lady. She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that hemustmarry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:
“If youwillmarry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.”
That was all the same to this young lady, (and they are married), and go off there. As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily.
One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:
“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? Let him stop at home.”
His daughter says to him: “At least he is your son-in-law!”
The father then says to her: “He may come on such a day.”
Fidel goes as they had told him. He asks the king for a horse and a sword. The king gives him a horse blind and lame. Fidel was not pleased with it. He begins his march, wishing to get on as quickly as possible, but when he had gone a little distance, the horse sticks in the mud, and cannot in any way get out of it. While he is there, the white mare comes to him. She gives him a beautiful horse, and a lance and a sword, and tells him that he will see his brothers-in-law encamped round a city, but not to stop there with them, but to ride straight to the city; that the gates will be shut, but as soon as he shall have touched them with his lance they will be broken to pieces, and that they will make peace with him. He does as she told him, and starts off on his horse like the lightning, without paying the slightest attention to his brothers-in-law. He goes up to the city, and as soon as he has touched the gates with his sword they are in pieces. He enters the city, and all the world comes out and makes him a thousandfêtes. They declare that they wish for no more war. They give him the key of the treasury and all the papers, and he retires from there with all the honours. When he returns he tells his brothers-in-law to retire—that the war is finished. They go back again. He stops at the place where he had left his old horse in the mud. He sends away his beautiful horse with all his things, and Fidel stops there, not being able to drag his old horse out of the mud. When his brothers-in-lawpass, they mock at him (and ask him) if it is there that he has passed all his time. He tells them, “Yes.” The others go on ahead, and at length he also arrives at the king’s house. He leaves his old horse there and goes off home. He does not tell his wife what has happened, and they live in their hole.
The king was getting old, and he had entirely lost his sight. Somebody gave him to understand that there was a water which made people young again, and another which restored sight. He told his sons-in-law that they must go (and look for it)—that he could not live long like that. And both of them start off. Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on.
He meets an old woman, who says to him, “Where are you going to?” He tells her how he wants a water which gives sight to the blind and makes the old young,43and that he would not go back home without finding it. This old woman says to him:
“You will see two animals fighting close to you, and you will gather the herb which makes the dead to live; you will have it boiled, and you will keep this water for yourself.”
This lad goes on a little farther, and he sees two lizards fighting so fiercely that one kills the other. The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44Fidel gathers this grass, and goesoff to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water.
Fidel goes into the city, and as soon as he has entered, he cries:
“Who wishes to buy the water that gives sight to the blind, and the water which makes old men young?”
His two brothers-in-law appear, and say that they must have some of this water, and ask what it costs. And he tells them that he does not sell it, but only gives it in exchange for golden apples. These gentlemen willingly make the exchange. But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too; that they would help, one in cutting the wood, and the other in serving at table. She did not wish to go there at all. She told her husband that she would a hundred times sooner stop at home; but her husband sends her off by force, (saying) that they ought to be there on that day. She goes, then, the poor woman, against her wish. She asks her father if he does not want some one to help on the feast day. The father says, “No!”—they have servants enough. An old general who was sitting by his side said to him:
“Why do you not let them come?”
Then the king said, “Come then on such a day.”
Fidel and his wife go. While they are at breakfast theold general asks Fidel if he also does not know something to relate? He replies “Yes,” that he knows some (stories), but more than one would not be pleased with what he would tell. Then the king says, placing his sword upon the table:
“The point of my sword shall know news of the heart of him who shall speak.”
Fidel begins then, how he went to the war with an old horse, blind and lame, but that in spite of that he had carried off the keys of the treasure and the papers. The king says to him that he has not seen them yet—that he is still expecting them. Fidel takes out the papers and gives them to the king. He gives also the keys of the treasury. The king assures himself that they are the real ones. He then narrates how he has sold in exchange for two golden apples that precious water. At this instant his wife rises and says to him:
“Where have you these golden apples—you?”
As it is she who has spoken the first words, Fidel takes up the king’s sword and strikes his wife dead.45The king was grieved to see that, but Fidel says to him:
“Do not disturb yourself for that; as I have taken away her life I will give it her again.”
He takes out his water which rekindles dead men, and rubs some on her temple, and she suddenly returns to life. Everyone is astounded at this great deed, and at all that he has already done. The king tells him that he has already gained the crown, but that he must be cured of this terrible scab46first. His wife rises, takes off his kerchief which he had upon his head, and shows the shining head of her husband, saying:
“See, this is the scab of my husband!”
The king says that the crown will shine much better on his head. He goes to fetch it, and places it upon this precious head. He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.
Laurentine.
We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. He goes as gardener, and the king’s daughter falls in love with him, from catching a sight of his golden hair from her window; for the rest the stories are identical, except that this is a shorter form than the above.
The Lady Pigeon and her Comb.47Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away, (saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far, far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:“Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?”He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better himself.The Tartaro says to him, “As you have told the truth I spare your life, ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the pigeon’s skin which is in the middle.48The two young ladies will come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her before she shall promise to help you always.”The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that he shall go to-morrow to her father’s house, that he will take him as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, “Yes,” but that there is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father) takes him into the forest and says to him:“You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another, and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death.”49The lad says to him, “I will try.”He goes then to the forest and sits down pensive. It was already eleven o’clock when the young lady appears to him. She says to him:“Why are you like that, so sad? Have not I promised that I would help you? Shut your eyes, but all the worse for you if you shall open them.”She throws a comb into the air,50and says:“Comb, with thy power tear up these oaks with their roots, cut them into lengths, put the trunks together, and the branches, and the roots too by themselves.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says to it:“Comb, with thy power turn up this ground, harrow it, and sow the wheat.”As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).51Nothing will be finished for us.”He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad,and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”52The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.When he arrived at the bank of the river he sat there weeping, not knowing what to do. The young lady comes to him, and says:“What! You are weeping! Did not I tell you that I would always help you?”It was eleven o’clock. The young lady says to him:“You must cut me in pieces with this sabre, and throw all the pieces into the water.”The lad will not do it by any means. He says to her:“I prefer to die here on the spot than to make you suffer.”The lady says to him, “It is nothing at all what I shall suffer, and you must do it directly—the favourable moment is passing by like this, like this.”The lad, trembling all over, begins with his sabre. He throws all the pieces into the river; but, lo! a part of the lady’s little finger sticks to a nail in his shoe. The young lady comes out of the water and says to him:“You have not thrown everything into the water. My little finger is wanting.”53After having looked for it, he sees that he has it under his foot, hooked on to a nail. The young lady gives him the ring. She tells him to go without losing a moment; for he must give it to the king at noon. He arrives happily (in time). The young lady, as she goes into the house, bangs the door with all her might and begins to cry out:“Ay! ay! ay! I have crushed my little finger.”And she makes believe that she has done it there. The king was pleased. He tells him that on the morrow he must tame a horse and three young fillies.54The lad says to him:“I will try.”The master gives him a terrible club. The young lady says to him in the evening:“The horse which my father has spoken to you about will be himself. You will strike him with all your might with your terrible club on the nose, and he will yield and be conquered. The first filly will be my eldest sister. You will strike her on the chest with all your force, and she also will yield and will be conquered. I shall come the last. You will make a show of beating me too, and you will hit the ground with your stick, and I too will yield, and I shall be conquered.”The next day the lad does as the young lady has told him. The horse comes. He was very high-spirited, but our lad strikes him on the nose, he yields, and is conquered. He does the same thing with the fillies. He beats them with his terrible club, they yield, and are conquered; and when the third comes he makes a show of hitting her, and strikes the earth. She yields, and all go off.The next day he sees the master with his lips swollen, and with all his face as black as soot. The young ladies had also pain in the chest. The youngest also gets up very late indeed in order to do as the others.The master says to him that he sees he is a valuable servant, and very clever, and that he will give him one of his daughters for wife, but that he must choose her with his eyes shut. And the young lady says to him:“You will choose the one that will give you her hand twice, and in any way you will recognise me, because you will find that my little finger is wanting. I will always put that in front.”The next day the master said to him:“We are here now; you shall now choose the one you wish for, always keeping your eyes shut.”He shuts them then; and the eldest daughter approaches, and gives him her hand. He says to the king:“It is very heavy, (this hand); too heavy for me. I will not have this one.”The second one approaches, she gives him her hand, and he immediately recognises that the little finger is wanting. He says to the king:“This is the one I must have.”They are married immediately.55They pass some days like that. His wife says to him:“It is better for us to be off from here, and to flee, otherwise my father will kill us.”They set off, then, that evening at ten o’clock, and the young lady spits before the door of her room, saying:“Spittle, with thy power, you shall speak in my place.”56And they go off a long way. At midnight, the father goes to the door of the lad and his wife, and knocks at the door; they do not answer. He knocks harder, and then the spittle says to him:“Just now nobody can come into this room.”The father says, “It is I. I must come in.”“It is impossible,” says the spittle again.The father grows more and more angry; the spittle makes him stop an hour like that at the door. At last, not being able to do anything else, he smashes the door, and goes inside. What is his terrible rage when he sees the room empty. He goes off to his wife, and says to her:“You were not mistaken; they were well acquainted, and they were really in league with one another, and they have both escaped together; but I will not leave them like that. I will go off after them, and I shall find them sooner or later.”He starts off. Our gentleman and lady had gone very far, but the young lady was still afraid. She said to her husband:“He might overtake us even now. I—I cannot turn my head; but (look) if you can see something.”The husband says to her: “Yes, something terrible is coming after us; I have never seen a monster like this.”The young lady throws up a comb, and says:57“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed before my father hedges and thorns, and before me a good road.”It is done as she wished. They go a good way, and she says again:“Look, I beg you, if you see anything again.”The husband looks back, and sees nothing; but in the clouds he sees something terrible, and tells so to his wife. And his wife says, taking her comb:“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed where he is a fog, and hail, and a terrific storm.”It happens as they wish. They go a little way farther, and his wife says to him:“Look behind you, then, if you see anything.”The husband says to her: “Now it is all over with us. We have him here after us; he is on us. Use all your power.”She throws again a comb immediately, and says:“Comb, with thy power, form between my father and me a terrible river, and let him be drowned there for ever.”As soon as she has said that, they see a mighty water, and there their father and enemy drowns himself.58The young lady says, “Now we have no more fear of him, we shall live in peace.”They go a good distance, and arrive at a country into which the young lady could not enter. She says to her husband:“I can go no farther. It is the land of the Christians there; I cannot enter into it. You must go there the first. You must fetch a priest. He must baptize me, and afterwards I will come with you; but you must take great care that nobody kisses you. If so, you will forget me altogether. Mind and pay great attention to it; and you, too, do not you kiss anyone.”He promises his wife that he will not. He goes, then, on, and on, and on. He arrives in his own country, and as he is entering it an old aunt recognises him, and comes behind him, and gives him two kisses.59It is all over with him. He forgets his wife, as if he had never seen her, and he stays there amusing himself, and taking his pleasure.The young lady, seeing that her husband never returned, that something had happened to him, and that she could no longer count upon him, she takes a little stick, and striking the earth, she says:“I will that here, in this very spot, is built a beautiful hotel, with all that is necessary, servants, and all the rest.”There was a beautiful garden, too, in front, and she had put over the door:“Here they give to eat without payment.”One day the young man goes out hunting with two comrades, and while they were in the forest they said one to the other:“We never knew of this hotel here before. We must go there too. One can eat without payment.”They go off then. The young lady recognises her husband very well, but he does not recognise her at all. She receives them very well. These gentlemen are so pleased with her, that one of them asks her if she will not let him pass the night with her.60The young lady says to him, “Yes.” The other asks also, “I, too, was wishing it.” The young lady says to him:“To-morrow then, you, if you wish it, certainly.”And her husband says to her: “And I after to-morrow then.”The young lady says to him, “Yes.” One of the young men remains then. He passes the evening in great delight, and when the hour comes for going to bed, the young lady says to him:“When you were small you were a choir-boy, and they used to powder you; this smell displeases me in bed. Before coming there you must comb yourself. Here is a comb, and when you have got all the powder out, you may come to bed.”Our lad begins then to comb his hair, but never could he get all the powder out, such quantities came out, and were still coming out of his head; and he was still at it when the young lady rose. The lad said to her:“What! you are getting up before I come.”“And do you not see that it is day? I cannot stop there any longer. People will come.”Our young man goes off home without saying a word more. He meets his comrade who was to pass the night with this young lady. He says to him:“You are satisfied? You amused yourself well?”“Yes, certainly, very well. If the time flies as fast with you as it did with me you will amuse yourself well.”He goes off then to this house. The young lady says to him, after he had had a good supper:“Before going to bed you must wash your feet. The water will be here in this big copper; when you have them quite clean you may come to bed.”Accordingly he washes one, and when he has finished washing the other, the first washed is still black and dirty. He washes it again, and finds the foot that he has just well washed very dirty again. He kept doing like that for such a long time. When the young lady gets up, the gentleman says to her:“What! You are getting up already, without me coming?”“Why did you not then come before day? I cannot stay any longer in bed. It is daylight, and the people will begin (to come).”Our young man withdraws as the other had done. Now it is the turn of her husband. She serves him still better than the others; nothing was wanting at his supper. When the hour for going to bed arrives, they go to the young lady’s room; when they are ready to get into bed, the young lady says to him:“Put out the light.”He puts it out, and it lights again directly. He puts it out again, and it lights again as soon as it is put out. He passes all the night like that in his shirt, never being able to put out that light. When daylight is come, the young lady says to him:“You do not know me then? You do not remember how you left your wife to go and fetch a priest?”As soon as she had said that he strikes his head, and says to her:“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am;but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.Laurentine Kopena.
Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away, (saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far, far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:
“Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?”
He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better himself.
The Tartaro says to him, “As you have told the truth I spare your life, ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the pigeon’s skin which is in the middle.48The two young ladies will come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her before she shall promise to help you always.”
The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that he shall go to-morrow to her father’s house, that he will take him as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.
He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, “Yes,” but that there is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father) takes him into the forest and says to him:
“You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another, and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death.”49
The lad says to him, “I will try.”
He goes then to the forest and sits down pensive. It was already eleven o’clock when the young lady appears to him. She says to him:
“Why are you like that, so sad? Have not I promised that I would help you? Shut your eyes, but all the worse for you if you shall open them.”
She throws a comb into the air,50and says:
“Comb, with thy power tear up these oaks with their roots, cut them into lengths, put the trunks together, and the branches, and the roots too by themselves.”
As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says to it:
“Comb, with thy power turn up this ground, harrow it, and sow the wheat.”
As soon as it was said it was done. She throws another comb, and says:
“Comb, with thy power make a cake of this wheat when you have cut it.”
Our lad was curious to know what was taking place, but the young lady said to him:
“Woe to you and to me if you open (your eyes).51Nothing will be finished for us.”
He does not open them, and the cake is cooked. Twelve o’clock was going to strike. She says to him:
“Go with speed, you have no time to lose.”
The lad goes to the king and brings him the cake. The king is astonished. He says (to himself), “That is a clever lad, that,” and he wishes to be assured of it by looking out of window; and, after having seen that this huge forest had been torn up, he is astonished. He sends away the lad,and goes and tells it to his wife. His wife says to him, “Take care that he is not in league with your daughter.”52
The husband says to her, “What do you mean? They have never seen each other.”
This husband was a devil. The young lady told our lad that her father is going to send him to fetch a ring in a river far away. “He will tell you to choose a sword from the midst of ever so many others, but you will take an old sabre and leave the others.”
The next day his wife told him that he ought to send him to fetch a ring which he had lost in the bed of a river. He sends him then, and tells him that he must choose a sword; that he will have quantities of evil fish to conquer. The lad says to him that he will not have those fine swords, that he has enough with this old sabre, which was used to scrape off the dirt.
When he arrived at the bank of the river he sat there weeping, not knowing what to do. The young lady comes to him, and says:
“What! You are weeping! Did not I tell you that I would always help you?”
It was eleven o’clock. The young lady says to him:
“You must cut me in pieces with this sabre, and throw all the pieces into the water.”
The lad will not do it by any means. He says to her:
“I prefer to die here on the spot than to make you suffer.”
The lady says to him, “It is nothing at all what I shall suffer, and you must do it directly—the favourable moment is passing by like this, like this.”
The lad, trembling all over, begins with his sabre. He throws all the pieces into the river; but, lo! a part of the lady’s little finger sticks to a nail in his shoe. The young lady comes out of the water and says to him:
“You have not thrown everything into the water. My little finger is wanting.”53
After having looked for it, he sees that he has it under his foot, hooked on to a nail. The young lady gives him the ring. She tells him to go without losing a moment; for he must give it to the king at noon. He arrives happily (in time). The young lady, as she goes into the house, bangs the door with all her might and begins to cry out:
“Ay! ay! ay! I have crushed my little finger.”
And she makes believe that she has done it there. The king was pleased. He tells him that on the morrow he must tame a horse and three young fillies.54The lad says to him:
“I will try.”
The master gives him a terrible club. The young lady says to him in the evening:
“The horse which my father has spoken to you about will be himself. You will strike him with all your might with your terrible club on the nose, and he will yield and be conquered. The first filly will be my eldest sister. You will strike her on the chest with all your force, and she also will yield and will be conquered. I shall come the last. You will make a show of beating me too, and you will hit the ground with your stick, and I too will yield, and I shall be conquered.”
The next day the lad does as the young lady has told him. The horse comes. He was very high-spirited, but our lad strikes him on the nose, he yields, and is conquered. He does the same thing with the fillies. He beats them with his terrible club, they yield, and are conquered; and when the third comes he makes a show of hitting her, and strikes the earth. She yields, and all go off.
The next day he sees the master with his lips swollen, and with all his face as black as soot. The young ladies had also pain in the chest. The youngest also gets up very late indeed in order to do as the others.
The master says to him that he sees he is a valuable servant, and very clever, and that he will give him one of his daughters for wife, but that he must choose her with his eyes shut. And the young lady says to him:
“You will choose the one that will give you her hand twice, and in any way you will recognise me, because you will find that my little finger is wanting. I will always put that in front.”
The next day the master said to him:
“We are here now; you shall now choose the one you wish for, always keeping your eyes shut.”
He shuts them then; and the eldest daughter approaches, and gives him her hand. He says to the king:
“It is very heavy, (this hand); too heavy for me. I will not have this one.”
The second one approaches, she gives him her hand, and he immediately recognises that the little finger is wanting. He says to the king:
“This is the one I must have.”
They are married immediately.55They pass some days like that. His wife says to him:
“It is better for us to be off from here, and to flee, otherwise my father will kill us.”
They set off, then, that evening at ten o’clock, and the young lady spits before the door of her room, saying:
“Spittle, with thy power, you shall speak in my place.”56And they go off a long way. At midnight, the father goes to the door of the lad and his wife, and knocks at the door; they do not answer. He knocks harder, and then the spittle says to him:
“Just now nobody can come into this room.”
The father says, “It is I. I must come in.”
“It is impossible,” says the spittle again.
The father grows more and more angry; the spittle makes him stop an hour like that at the door. At last, not being able to do anything else, he smashes the door, and goes inside. What is his terrible rage when he sees the room empty. He goes off to his wife, and says to her:
“You were not mistaken; they were well acquainted, and they were really in league with one another, and they have both escaped together; but I will not leave them like that. I will go off after them, and I shall find them sooner or later.”
He starts off. Our gentleman and lady had gone very far, but the young lady was still afraid. She said to her husband:
“He might overtake us even now. I—I cannot turn my head; but (look) if you can see something.”
The husband says to her: “Yes, something terrible is coming after us; I have never seen a monster like this.”
The young lady throws up a comb, and says:57
“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed before my father hedges and thorns, and before me a good road.”
It is done as she wished. They go a good way, and she says again:
“Look, I beg you, if you see anything again.”
The husband looks back, and sees nothing; but in the clouds he sees something terrible, and tells so to his wife. And his wife says, taking her comb:
“Comb, with thy power, let there be formed where he is a fog, and hail, and a terrific storm.”
It happens as they wish. They go a little way farther, and his wife says to him:
“Look behind you, then, if you see anything.”
The husband says to her: “Now it is all over with us. We have him here after us; he is on us. Use all your power.”
She throws again a comb immediately, and says:
“Comb, with thy power, form between my father and me a terrible river, and let him be drowned there for ever.”
As soon as she has said that, they see a mighty water, and there their father and enemy drowns himself.58
The young lady says, “Now we have no more fear of him, we shall live in peace.”
They go a good distance, and arrive at a country into which the young lady could not enter. She says to her husband:
“I can go no farther. It is the land of the Christians there; I cannot enter into it. You must go there the first. You must fetch a priest. He must baptize me, and afterwards I will come with you; but you must take great care that nobody kisses you. If so, you will forget me altogether. Mind and pay great attention to it; and you, too, do not you kiss anyone.”
He promises his wife that he will not. He goes, then, on, and on, and on. He arrives in his own country, and as he is entering it an old aunt recognises him, and comes behind him, and gives him two kisses.59It is all over with him. He forgets his wife, as if he had never seen her, and he stays there amusing himself, and taking his pleasure.
The young lady, seeing that her husband never returned, that something had happened to him, and that she could no longer count upon him, she takes a little stick, and striking the earth, she says:
“I will that here, in this very spot, is built a beautiful hotel, with all that is necessary, servants, and all the rest.”
There was a beautiful garden, too, in front, and she had put over the door:
“Here they give to eat without payment.”
One day the young man goes out hunting with two comrades, and while they were in the forest they said one to the other:
“We never knew of this hotel here before. We must go there too. One can eat without payment.”
They go off then. The young lady recognises her husband very well, but he does not recognise her at all. She receives them very well. These gentlemen are so pleased with her, that one of them asks her if she will not let him pass the night with her.60The young lady says to him, “Yes.” The other asks also, “I, too, was wishing it.” The young lady says to him:
“To-morrow then, you, if you wish it, certainly.”
And her husband says to her: “And I after to-morrow then.”
The young lady says to him, “Yes.” One of the young men remains then. He passes the evening in great delight, and when the hour comes for going to bed, the young lady says to him:
“When you were small you were a choir-boy, and they used to powder you; this smell displeases me in bed. Before coming there you must comb yourself. Here is a comb, and when you have got all the powder out, you may come to bed.”
Our lad begins then to comb his hair, but never could he get all the powder out, such quantities came out, and were still coming out of his head; and he was still at it when the young lady rose. The lad said to her:
“What! you are getting up before I come.”
“And do you not see that it is day? I cannot stop there any longer. People will come.”
Our young man goes off home without saying a word more. He meets his comrade who was to pass the night with this young lady. He says to him:
“You are satisfied? You amused yourself well?”
“Yes, certainly, very well. If the time flies as fast with you as it did with me you will amuse yourself well.”
He goes off then to this house. The young lady says to him, after he had had a good supper:
“Before going to bed you must wash your feet. The water will be here in this big copper; when you have them quite clean you may come to bed.”
Accordingly he washes one, and when he has finished washing the other, the first washed is still black and dirty. He washes it again, and finds the foot that he has just well washed very dirty again. He kept doing like that for such a long time. When the young lady gets up, the gentleman says to her:
“What! You are getting up already, without me coming?”
“Why did you not then come before day? I cannot stay any longer in bed. It is daylight, and the people will begin (to come).”
Our young man withdraws as the other had done. Now it is the turn of her husband. She serves him still better than the others; nothing was wanting at his supper. When the hour for going to bed arrives, they go to the young lady’s room; when they are ready to get into bed, the young lady says to him:
“Put out the light.”
He puts it out, and it lights again directly. He puts it out again, and it lights again as soon as it is put out. He passes all the night like that in his shirt, never being able to put out that light. When daylight is come, the young lady says to him:
“You do not know me then? You do not remember how you left your wife to go and fetch a priest?”
As soon as she had said that he strikes his head, and says to her:
“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am;but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”
“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”
The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:
“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”
As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.
Laurentine Kopena.