Suddenly he heard a voice which seemed to come from the river bed itself, it was so deep. This is what it said: “If you will give me whatever new you find in your house when you go home I will give you fisherman’s luck. You will catch all the fish you wish.”
The man remembered the request which his seventh son had made that morning. “The new thing I’ll find in my house when I get home will be that puppy,” said the man to himself. “This will be a splendid way to get rid of the puppy which I did not want to keep anyway.”
Accordingly the man consented to the request which came from the strange voice in the depths of the river. “You must seal this covenant with your blood,” said the voice.
The man cut his finger a tiny bit with his sharp knife and squeezed a few drops of blood from the wound into the river. “If you break this vow the curse of the river giant will be upon you and your children for ever and ever,” said the deep voice solemnly.
The fisherman cast his net where the river giant commanded, and immediately it was so full of fish that the man could hardly draw it out of the water. Three times he drew out his net, so full that it was in danger of breaking. “Truly this was a fortunate bit of business,” said the man. “Here I have fish enough to feed my family and all I can sell in addition.”
As the fisherman approached his house with his enormous catch of fish one of the children came running to meet him. “O father, guess what we have at our house which we did not have when you went away,” said the child.
“A new puppy,” replied her father.
“O no, father,” replied the child. “You have not guessed right at all. It is a new baby brother.”
The poor fisherman burst into tears. “What shall I do! What shall I do!” he sobbed. “I dare not break my vow to the river giant.”
The fisherman’s wife was heartbroken when she heard about the business which her husband had transacted with the river giant. However she could think of no way to escape from keeping the contract which he had made. She kissed the tiny babe good-bye and gave it her blessing. Then the fisherman took it down to the river bank and threw it into the river at the exact spot from which the deep voice had come.