‘I will.’
‘Make a covenant with me.’
He made a covenant with him, and the Devil pulled him out of the mud, and the man went home. By the time he got home he had forgotten the covenant.
The boy was twenty years old. ‘Make me a cake, mother, for I’m off to the place my father pledged me to.’ And he went far over the mountains, and came to the Devil’s house. There was an old woman in the house, and a daughter of the Devil’s, and she asked him, ‘Whither art going, lad?’
‘I have come to the lord here, to serve.’
And the girl saw him, and he pleased her. ‘I may tell you that he is my father. My father will turn himself into a horse, and will tell you to mount him and traverse the world. And do you make yourself an iron club and an iron curry-comb, and hit him with the club, for he will not stoop, and get on his back, and as you go keep hitting him on the head.’
He traversed the world, and came home, put him in the stable, and went to the maiden.
‘My father didn’t fling you?’
‘No, for I kept hitting him on the head.’
The Devil called him, and took a jar of poppy-seed, and poured it out on the grass, and told him to gather it all up, and fill the jar, for, ‘If you don’t, I will cut off your head.’