Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son; they
were very poor. This son wished to leave his mother and go away,
(saying) that they were wretched as they were. He goes off then far,
far, far away. He finds a castle in a forest, and goes in and asks if
they want a servant, and it is a Tartaro who comes to him. He asks him:
"Where are you going to like that, ant of the earth?"
He says that, being very poor at home, he wished to work to better
himself.
The Tartaro says to him, "As you have told the truth I spare your life,
ant of the earth, and in a few days you will go away from here. Three
young ladies will come to bathe in the water in my garden. They will
leave their pigeon-robes under a large stone, and you will take the
pigeon's skin which is in the middle. [120] The two young ladies will
come out of the water and will take their skins. She who stops in
the water will ask you for her skin, but you shall not give it her
before she shall promise to help you always."
The next day our lad sees that the young ladies are in the water. He
goes and does as the Tartaro tells him; he takes the middle one of
the three skins, the two young ladies take their skins, and the third
asks him to give her hers. The lad will not give it her without her
promise. The young lady will not give her word. He then says to her
that he will not give it her at all. The young lady then says to him
that he may reckon upon her, that she gives him her word, and that
he shall go to-morrow to her father's house, that he will take him
as servant, and that he lives in such a place. The lad goes off then
the next day and finds this beautiful house in a forest.
He asks if they want a servant? They tell him, "Yes," but that there
is a great deal of work to do there. The next morning (the father)
takes him into the forest and says to him:
"You must pull up all these oaks with their roots, you must cut them
into lengths, and put the trunks on one side, the branches on another,
and the roots by themselves, each in their place. Afterwards you will
plough the ground, then you will harrow it, then sow the wheat; you
will then cut it, and you bring me at noon a little cake made out of
this wheat, otherwise you will be put to death." [121]