Part 30 (1/2)
”If you leave 'em, leave 'em,” said a hoodie that was in a tree, ”we'll steal 'em, steal 'em.”
”If you will do that,” says the giant, ”I must take them home.” He returned home and left them at the house.
At the heat of day the giant's daughter felt her father's breath burning her back.
”Put your finger in the filly's ear, and throw behind whatever you find in it.”
He got a splinter of grey stone, and in a twinkling there were twenty miles, by breadth and height, of great grey rock behind them.
The giant came full pelt, but past the rock he could not go.
”The tricks of my own daughter are the hardest things that ever met me,” says the giant; ”but if I had my lever and my mighty mattock, I would not be long in making my way through this rock also.”
There was no help for it, but to turn the chase for them; and he was the boy to split the stones. He was not long in making a road through the rock.
”I will leave the tools here, and I will return no more.”
”If you leave 'em, leave 'em,” says the hoodie, ”we will steal 'em, steal 'em.”
”Do that if you will; there is no time to go back.”
At the time of breaking the watch, the giant's daughter said that she felt her father's breath burning her back.
”Look in the filly's ear, king's son, or else we are lost.”
He did so, and it was a bladder of water that was in her ear this time. He threw it behind him and there was a fresh-water loch, twenty miles in length and breadth, behind them.
The giant came on, but with the speed he had on him, he was in the middle of the loch, and he went under, and he rose no more.
On the next day the young companions were come in sight of his father's house. ”Now,” says she, ”my father is drowned, and he won't trouble us any more; but before we go further,” says she, ”go you to your father's house, and tell that you have the likes of me; but let neither man nor creature kiss you, for if you do, you will not remember that you have ever seen me.”
Every one he met gave him welcome and luck, and he charged his father and mother not to kiss him; but as mishap was to be, an old greyhound was indoors, and she knew him, and jumped up to his mouth, and after that he did not remember the giant's daughter.
She was sitting at the well's side as he left her, but the king's son was not coming. In the mouth of night she climbed up into a tree of oak that was beside the well, and she lay in the fork of that tree all night. A shoemaker had a house near the well, and about midday on the morrow, the shoemaker asked his wife to go for a drink for him out of the well. When the shoemaker's wife reached the well, and when she saw the shadow of her that was in the tree, thinking it was her own shadow--and she never thought till now that she was so handsome--she gave a cast to the dish that was in her hand, and it was broken on the ground, and she took herself to the house without vessel or water.
”Where is the water, wife?” said the shoemaker.
”You shambling, contemptible old carle, without grace, I have stayed too long your water and wood thrall.”
”I think, wife, that you have turned crazy. Go you, daughter, quickly, and fetch a drink for your father.”
His daughter went, and in the same way so it happened to her. She never thought till now that she was so lovable, and she took herself home.
”Up with the drink,” said her father.
”You home-spun shoe carle, do you think I am fit to be your thrall?”
The poor shoemaker thought that they had taken a turn in their understandings, and he went himself to the well. He saw the shadow of the maiden in the well, and he looked up to the tree, and he sees the finest woman he ever saw.