Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/195

 Rh horse, and every bell rang again, and waked the woman. She came out, and she says: "Whittlegaire, I'll not go in till I get you." She looked, and she got him.

"Whittlegaire, I have you," she says.

"Well, you have," said he.

"I don't know what death will be hard enough to give you."

"Well, I don't know, for I've earned a hard death; so the worst death you can give me is to put down a pot and boil a pot of stirabout, and put lots of butter in it, and let me eat until I 'm not able to stir, and put me into a bag, tie me in, and get a stick and beat me until the butter comes out through the bag!"

"Well, that's the very death I'll give you."

So she put down the pot, and boiled the stirabout, and put lots of butter in it, and let him eat it till he wasn't able to stir, and put him in the bag, and tied him in.

She had ne'er a stick heavy enough to beat him, and she had to go away to get one. When he got her away, he took out his knife and cut the bag, got out and filled it up with stones, and tied it up again. The old woman came back with the stick and began to beat the bag, and she beat it a long time.

"Whittlegaire," she says, "I think I have killed you enough, though the butter isn't coming through the bag." So she opened the sack and shook out—all the stones!

She ran out to the stable, but the steed was gone; and she looked and saw Whittlegaire galloping with the horse, which soon leaped the river. Then he waited. "Whittlegaire," she said, "you killed my three daughters, you stole my Quilt of Diamonds, and Boots of Swiftness, and Sword of Lightning, and now you have my Steed of Bells; you have all from me now."

He came back a few days after, and he found the old woman dead in the house. He got a room full of gold, and a room full of silver, and a room full of dead people