When they had eaten, they then went a long way further, [[115]]and then those two brothers ate, and gave not to the third. He now had nothing, and says, ‘Brothers mine, why don’t you give me to eat? You ate up mine, and now you don’t give me to eat.’
‘If you’ll let one of your eyes be taken out, then we will give you to eat,’ said the two elder brothers. And then they took out his eye, and then gave him to eat. When they had eaten, they went a long way further. And there again those two brothers eat, and the third one says, ‘Why don’t you give me to eat? Now you’ve taken my eye out, and yet give me nothing to eat.’
‘If you’ll let your other eye be taken out, then we will give you to eat.’
And he, the youngest, says, ‘Just do with me what you will.’
Then they took out his eye; then they gave him to eat; then that eyeless one said, ‘Lead me under the cross; maybe some one will give me something.’
They led him not under the cross, but under a gallows, and there hung a dead man. And then thither came three crows, and thus talked one with another:
‘What’s the news in your country?’ thus they asked one of them. ‘What’s the news?’
‘In my country there is no water.’
‘And in your country what’s the news?’
‘There’s a dew there, if a blind man rubs his eyes with it, he forthwith sees.’