“Indeed, you ask me to make a great sacrifice, but if it must be so it
must.”
The magician then blew at him, and the man came to the ground. He was
very pleased to find the earth once more under his feet, and to have
escaped from the power of the wind. Off he hurried to his hut, and at
the threshold he met his sweetheart. She cried aloud with amazement when
she saw the long-lost peasant, whom she had so long lamented and wept
for. With his skinny hands the man put her gently aside, and went into
the house, where he found the farmer who had employed him sitting down,
and said to him, as he commenced to weep—
“I can no longer stay in your service, and I cannot marry your daughter.
I love her very much, as much as the apple of my eye, but I cannot marry
her.”
The old farmer wondered to see him, and when he saw his white pinched
face and the traces of his suffering, he asked him why he did not wish
for the hand of his daughter.
The man told him all about his ride in the air, and the bargain he had
made with the magician. When the farmer had listened to it all, he told
the poor fellow to keep a good heart, and putting some money in his
pocket, went out to consult a sorceress.
Towards evening he returned very merry, and taking the peasant aside,
said to him—
“To-morrow morning, before day, go to the witch, and you will find all
will be well.”
The wearied peasant, who had not slept for three months, went to bed,
but he woke before it was day, and went off to the witch. He found her
sitting beside the hearth boiling herbs over a fire. She told him to
stand by her, and, suddenly, although it was a calm day, such a storm of
wind arose that the hut shook again.
The sorceress then took the peasant outside into the yard and told him
to look up. He lifted up his eyes, and—O wonder!—saw the evil magician
whirling round and round in the air.
“There is your enemy,” said the woman, “he will trouble you no more. If
you would like to see him at your wedding, I will tell you what to do,
but he must suffer the torment that he meant to put you to.”
The peasant was delighted, and ran back to the house, and a month later
he was married. While the wedding folk were dancing, the peasant went
out into the yard, looked up, and saw right over the hut the magician
turning round and round. Then the peasant took a new knife, and throwing
it with all his force, stuck it in the magician’s foot.
He fell at once to the ground, and the knife held him to the earth, so
that he could only stand at the window and see how merry the peasant and
his friends were.
The next day he had disappeared, but he was afterwards seen flying in
the air over a lake. Before him and behind him were flocks of ravens and
crows, and these, with their hoarse cries, heralded the wicked
magician’s endless ride on the wind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------