Centuries of years ago, when almost all this part of the country was
wilderness, there was a little boy, who lived in a poor bit of property
and his father gave him a little bull-calf, and with it he gave him
everything he wanted for it.
But soon after his father died, and his mother got married again to a
man that turned out to be a very vicious step-father, who couldn't abide
the little boy. So at last the step-father said: "If you bring that
bull-calf into this house, I'll kill it." What a villain he was, wasn't
he?
Now this little boy used to go out and feed his bull-calf every day with
barley bread, and when he did so this time, an old man came up to
him--we can guess who that was, eh?--and said to him: "You and your
bull-calf had better go away and seek your fortune."
So he went on and he went on and he went on, as far as I could tell you
till to-morrow night, and he went up to a farmhouse and begged a crust
of bread, and when he got back he broke it in two and gave half of it to
the bull-calf. And he went to another house and begged a bit of cheese
crud, and when he went back he wanted to give half of it to the
bull-calf. "No," says the bull-calf, "I'm going across the field, into
the wild-wood wilderness country, where there'll be tigers, leopards,
wolves, monkeys, and a fiery dragon, and I'll kill them all except the
fiery dragon, and he'll kill me."
The little boy did cry, and said: "Oh, no, my little bull-calf; I hope
he won't kill you."
"Yes, he will," said the little bull-calf, "so you climb up that tree,
so that no one can come nigh you but the monkeys, and if they come the
cheese crud will save you. And when I'm killed, the dragon will go away
for a bit, then you must come down the tree and skin me, and take out my
bladder and blow it out, and it will kill everything you hit with it. So
when the fiery dragon comes back, you hit it with my bladder and cut its
tongue out."
(We know there were fiery dragons in those days, like George and his
dragon in the legend; but, there! it's not the same world nowadays. The
world is turned topsy-turvy since then, like as if you'd turn it over
with a spade!)
Of course, he did all the little bull-calf told him. He climbed up the
tree, and the monkeys climbed up the tree after him. But he held the
cheese crud in his hand, and said: "I'll squeeze your heart like the
flint-stone." So the monkey cocked his eye as much as to say: "If you
can squeeze a flint-stone to make the juice come out of it, you can
squeeze me." But he didn't say anything, for a monkey's cunning, but
down he went. And all the while the little bull-calf was fighting all
the wild beasts on the ground, and the little lad was clapping his hands
up the tree, and calling out: "Go in, my little bull-calf! Well fought,
little bull-calf!" And he mastered everything except the fiery dragon,
but the fiery dragon killed the little bull-calf.
But the lad waited and waited till he saw the dragon go away, then he
came down and skinned the little bull-calf, and took out its bladder and
went after the dragon. And as he went on, what should he see but a
king's daughter, staked down by the hair of her head, for she had been
put there for the dragon to destroy her.
So he went up and untied her hair, but she said: "My time has come for
the dragon to destroy me; go away, you can do no good." But he said:
"No! I can master it, and I won't go"; and for all her begging and
praying he would stop.
And soon he heard it coming, roaring and raging from afar off, and at
last it came near, spitting fire, and with a tongue like a great spear,
and you could hear it roaring for miles, and it was making for the place
where the king's daughter was staked down. But when it came up to them,
the lad just hit it on the head with the bladder and the dragon fell
down dead, but before it died, it bit off the little boy's forefinger.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE BULL-CALF]
Then the lad cut out the dragon's tongue and said to the king's
daughter: "I've done all I can, I must leave you." And sorry she was he
had to go, and before he went she tied a diamond ring in his hair, and
said good-bye to him.
By-and-by, who should come along but the old king, lamenting and
weeping, expecting to see nothing of his daughter but the prints of the
place where she had been. But he was surprised to find her there alive
and safe, and he said: "How came you to be saved?" So she told him how
she had been saved, and he took her home to his castle again.
Well, he put it into all the papers to find out who saved his daughter,
and who had the dragon's tongue and the princess's diamond ring, and was
without his forefinger. Whoever could show these signs should marry his
daughter and have his kingdom after his death. Well, any number of
gentlemen came from all parts of England, with forefingers cut off, and
with diamond rings and all kinds of tongues, wild beasts' tongues and
foreign tongues. But they couldn't show any dragons' tongues, so they
were turned away.
At last the little boy turned up, looking very ragged and desolated
like, and the king's daughter cast her eye on him, till her father grew
very angry and ordered them to turn the little beggar boy away.
"Father," says she; "I know something of that boy."
Well, still the fine gentlemen came, bringing up their dragons' tongues
that weren't dragons' tongues, and at last the little boy came up,
dressed a little better. So the old king says: "I see you've got an eye
on that boy. If it has to be him it must be him." But all the others
were fit to kill him, and cried out: "Pooh, pooh, turn that boy out, it
can't be him." But the king said: "Now, my boy, let's see what you have
to show." Well, he showed the diamond ring with her name on it, and the
fiery dragon's tongue. How the others were thunderstruck when he showed
his proofs! But the king told him: "You shall have my daughter and my
estate."
So he married the princess, and afterwards got the king's estate. Then
his step-father came and wanted to own him, but the young king didn't
know such a man.