The bracket bull went then to fight with the other bull, and the other bull killed him. The other bull went away then. The lad came to the bracket bull where he was lying on the ground, and he was not dead, out-and-out. When he saw the boy coming he said, "Oh," said he, "make haste as well as you can in the world, and take out your knife and cut that strip off me, or you will be killed as well as myself."
There was a trembling in the poor creature's hand, and he was not able to cut a piece at all off the bull, after his feeding him for so long, and after the kindness he had got from him.
The bracket bull spoke again, and told him to cut the strip off him on the instant, and that it would assist him as long as he would be alive. He cut a strip off the back then, and another strip off the belly, and he went away.
There was plenty of trouble and of grief on him, going of him, and he ought to have that on him too, and he departing without any knowledge of where he was making for, or where he would go.
A gentleman met him on the road, and asked him where he was going. The lad said that he did not himself know where he was going, but that he was going looking for work.
"What are you able to do?" says the gentleman.
"I'm as good a herd as ever you saw, but I'll not tell you a lie--I can do nothing but herding; but, indeed, I'll do that as well as any man that ever you saw."
"It's you I want," says the gentleman. "There are three giants up by my land, on the one mearing with me, and anything that will go in on their land they will keep it, and I cannot take it off them again. That's all they're asking--my cattle to go in across the mearing to them."
"Never mind them. I'll go bail that I'll take good heed of them, and that I'll not let anything in to them."
The gentleman brought him home then, and he went herding for him. When the grass was getting scarce, he was driving the cows further out. There was a big stone wall between the land of the giants and his master's land. There was fine grass on the other side of the wall. When he saw that, he threw down a gap in the wall and let in the pigs and the cows. He went up into a tree then, and was throwing down apples and all sorts (of fruit) to the pigs.