Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/123

Rh

Once upon a time there was a fisherman. One day he went and cast his nets in a place he had never been to before. When he was about to pull them in, a terrible beast came up out of the sea and told him that his life was forfeited to it for daring to come and fish in that place. But the fisherman begged it to spare him, and promised that the next day he would give it his only son. Then he returned home, having caught more fish than he had ever caught before. Next day he went back to fish at the same place, but did not take his son. However, the beast consented to give him one more day's grace, and he again made a most plentiful catch of fish. On the morrow he told his son he must come fishing with him, and when they came to the place where the boat was drawn up he bid him get in first, but the boy knew that he had been promised to the beast, and said: "No, father, you get in and I will follow." When his father had stepped into the boat, he shoved it off, and his father was swallowed up by the beast.

The young man now started off to see the world. He came to the top of a hill, where there were three beasts, a lion, an eagle, and an ant, trying to agree, but in vain, about the division of a carcase. He said he would divide it for them, and gave the bones to the lion, the lean to the eagle, and the fat to the ant. In return for this service they asked him what gifts he desired. He said he wanted nothing, but they insisted, and the lion gave him his strength, the eagle his swiftness, and the ant the power of burrowing. He went on his way, and came to a sheepfold where all the shepherds save one were mutilated in some way. One had his nose cut off, another an ear, and so on. He asked them why they had been thus cruelly used, and they told him: "The king's daughter in the town near wishes to have her milk brought her every morning with the froth on it, and because we cannot do this she has so mutilated us. We have all tried save this our