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 threw him into the road. In the evening the shepherds returned on their oxen to the village. An ox became wild, and the herdsman fell off, and seeking the cause he found the bard, who wept and lamented and asked the herdsman:

“Which of the brothers lives in that castle?”

The shepherd answered: “Here lives Zöranwegi; yonder, in Mösr, David.”

And the bard gave a piece of gold to the shepherds, and they gathered up the pieces of his broken tambur and pointed out his way to him. He went and sang of Chandud-Chanum’s beauty before David. David rewarded him richly, and said, “Go before, I will come,” and the singer went and told all to Chandud-Chanum.

David departed straightway and went by way of Sassun and the Heights of Zözmak. He found a plough standing in his way. He freed the oxen, seized the plough-chain, mounted his horse, and dragged the plough down. And it fell from the summit of the Black Mountain plump into the aqueduct of the village of Marnik.

He drew on and perceived that a buffalo had got loose and run along the road and left its dung there. David looked at the dung and said: “If evil befalls me he is guilty of it who left the dung there; if not, it is also his work that it befalls me not.”

From a side-path appeared a buffalo, and David had never seen the like before. He lifted his club to slay him when from the opposite side a shepherd came and began to scold the buffalo. David thought the shepherd was scolding him and said, “Fellow, what have I done to you that you rail at me?”

The shepherd answered: “Who are you? Ah, you are a Sassun brawler who has seen nothing of the world! I spoke to my buffalo.”

“Don't be angry, youngster! It is a shame, indeed, that in my country I have never seen the like. Are there many such creatures in these parts?”

The shepherd said, “Come, and I will show you.”