"You have learnt nothing?"
The captain goes to find the schoolmaster, and asks him if his child
does not learn anything.
"I cannot drive anything into that child's head."
The boy comes up, and the father, asks him again what he has learnt
at school.
"This is all. (To understand) the song of the birds."
"O, my son, the song of the birds! the song of the birds! Come,
come on board ship with me."
And he carries him off. While they were on the voyage a bird comes
and settles on the end of the ship, singing, "Wirittitti, kirikiriki."
"My son, come, come, instead of beginning by learning the art of a
captain you have learned the song of birds. Do you know what this
bird sings?"
"Yes, my father. I know he sings that I am now under your orders,
but you shall also be under mine."
What does this captain do? He takes a barrel, knocks out the head,
and puts his son into it. He closes up the barrel and throws it into
the sea, and a storm casts it ashore.
A king was walking there just at that moment, and he finds this barrel
and sends for his men. They begin to try and break open the barrel,
and the boy cries out from inside:
"Gently, gently, there is someone inside."
They open the barrel, and the boy comes out from inside. The king
takes him home, and he marries the king's daughter.
One day the father of this boy was caught in a great storm, and
the captain is thrown by the tempest on the sea-shore. He went to
the king, and saw his son. The son recognised the father, but the
father did not recognise the son at all, and he became his own son's
servant. One day he said to him:
"Do you know who I am?"
"No, sir."
"I am such an one, your son. At such a time you threw me into the
sea in a barrel, and now the bird's song has come true."
And after that the father and the son lived together very happily.
Estefanella Hirigaray.