The younger children were running on first to the house, being hungry, and the eldest was coming, reading a book, after them. The father was standing at the gate on the inside, and he threw him a purse of money, and told him he must go seek his fortune, that he gave him to God and to the Djachwi.
He went and spent that night with the old druid. He rose in the morning and washed his face, and prayed to God to put him in luck again until evening. He gave a good heap of the gold to the old druid. The old druid gave him a card and a bridle, and told him that any beast he would rub the card to, if his skin was full of disease, would be cured.[14] He went away that morning and he met with a king upon the road. The king asked him,—
“Your like is what I am wanting,” said the king. “I have three hundred horses and there is not one of them fit to put to my carriage, they are so full of lumps in their skin.”
“I am able to cure them,” said the other.
“How much do you ask till the end of a day and a year?”
“I’ll be asking of you nothing at all but the beast that comes and puts the head in this bridle mine.”
He was a good serving-boy, and he minded the horses. He was not two days with his master when two of them were cured, fit to go with the carriage. He went every evening to an old couple, and he used to get news in plenty from them.
“Did you hear the great news there is to-night?”
“The daughter of the King of the great Wren is to be devoured to-morrow by a piast.”[15]
“Was it in a wood or a hole in the ground you’ve been that you didn’t hear it? Gentle and simple of the three islands are to be there to-morrow to look at the piast swallowing her—at twelve o’clock to-morrow.”
(The next day) when he found that every one was gone to the place where the piast was to come on land, he called out for his second best suit of clothes, and it came to him with a leap; and he shook the bridle, and the ugliest pony in the stables came to him and put her head into the bridle. “Be up riding on me with a jump” (said the pony) lowering himself on his two knees. He gave his face to the way and he would overtake the wind of March that was before him, and the wind of March that was after would not overtake him. When he came in sight of the place where the gathering was, the piast was coming till she was half upon the land; and he and the piast went fighting, till he tore her with his mouth and feet.