He handed him a stone, and the dragon kept squeezing and squeezing till the blood streamed from his hand. ‘I see plainly,’ he said to the Gypsy, ‘you’re a better man than I.’
‘Well, take me now on your back, and carry me to your blind mother.’
They came to his blind mother. Fear seized her, for where did one ever hear the like of that—the dragon to carry the Gypsy on his back.
‘Now, you’ll give me just whatever I want.’
‘Fear not. I will give you as much money as you can carry, and as much food as you want, both to eat and to drink; only let me live and my mother. And I’ll never go after the sheep any more.’
‘Well and good. I could kill you this moment, and your blind mother too. Then swear to me that you will go no more to that peasant’s to devour his sheep.’
Straightway he swore to him, that indeed he would go no more.
‘Now you must give me money, both gold and silver, and then you must take me on your back and carry me home.’
Well and good. He gave him the money, and took him on his back, and carried home the Gypsy and the money. The Gypsy’s wife sees them. ‘My God! What’s up?’ And the children—he had plenty—came running out. The dragon was dreadfully frightened and ran off. But he flung down the Gypsy’s money and left it there. The Gypsy was so rich there was not his equal. He was just like a gentleman. And if he is not dead, he is still living, with his wife and children. [[85]]
There must be also a Turkish-Gypsy version, for Paspati on p. 576 gives this quotation from the story of a young man’s contest with a dragon:—‘I am looking to see which is the highest mountain, to seize you, and fling you thither, that not a bone of you be left whole.’ Wlislocki furnishes a Transylvanian-Gypsy variant, ‘The Omniscient Gypsy,’ No. 23, p. 61; and the hero is a Gypsy in Lithuanian and Galician stories. ‘The Valiant Little Tailor’ (Grimm, No. 20, i. 85, 359), is very familiar, but is less like our Gypsy versions than is Hahn’s No. 23, ‘Herr Lazarus und die Draken.’ Cf. also Hahn, i. 152 and ii. 211; Cosquin, i. 95–102; and Clouston, i. 133–154. The story is widely spread; we have Norwegian, Sicilian, Hungarian, Albanian, Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, and other versions. ‘Valiant Vicky, the Brave Weaver,’ in F. A. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, pp. 89–97, is a very modern, non-heroic Indian version; cf. also ‘The Close Alliance,’ pp. 132–7. ‘How the Three Clever Men outwitted the Demons’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 23, p. 271) offers certain analogies; so does the ‘Story of a Simpleton’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 45.