‘Be it unto me according to God’s will,’ said the lad.
And he went and took four needles and lay down with his head on the pillow; and he stuck the four needles in four places. When sleep seized him he knocked his head against a needle, so he stayed awake until ten o’clock. And his sister arose from her cradle, and he saw. And she turned a somersault, and he was watching her. And her teeth became like a shovel and her nails like an axe. And she went to the press and ate up everything. She left the platters bare. And she turned a somersault, and became tiny again as she was; went to her cradle. The lad, when he saw that, trembled with fear; it seemed to him ten years till daybreak. And he arose and went to his father. ‘Father, all hail.’
Then his father asked him, ‘Didst see anything, Peterkin?’
‘What did I see? what did I not see? Give me money and a horse, a horse fit to carry the money, for I am away to marry me.’
His father gave him a couple of sacks of ducats, and he put them on his horse. The lad went and made a hole on the border of the city. He made a chest of stone, and put all the money there and buried it. He placed a stone cross above and departed. And he journeyed eight years and came to the queen of all the birds that fly.
And the queen of the birds asked him, ‘Whither away, Peterkin?’
‘Thither, where there is neither death nor old age, to marry me.’
The queen said to him, ‘Here is neither death nor old age.’
Then Peterkin said to her, ‘How comes it that here is neither death nor old age?’
Then she said to him, ‘When I whittle away the wood of [[60]]all this forest, then death will come and take me and old age.’