Oh led the man down to the underworld and over to a field where a flock of rams was grazing.
“All these are my servants,” said Oh, “and one of them is your son. Look well and tell me which is he, for unless you can choose him out he must stay here with me.”
The man looked and looked, but he could not tell which of the rams was his son, for they all looked alike to him, so he had to go home without him.
When the lad’s mother heard of this second trick the Green One had played on her husband she wept bitterly. “If we cannot find some way to get round him, we will never have the lad back again,” she said.
“That is true,” said the man; “but if our son looks like a cock, how can I tell him from other cocks; and if he looks like a ram, how can I tell him from other rams?”
Well, time slipped by, and the man and his wife grew poorer and poorer, for they were growing old, and they needed a young body in the house to work for them.
When it was about time for the man to set out for Oh’s house his wife said to him, “See now! we have nothing left in the house but a small loaf and a bit of honeycomb. But we can do better than fill our stomach with them. Do you take them to the old Wise Woman who lives over beyond the hill. Tell her they are a gift, and then ask her what we can do to meet the tricks of the little old Green One.”
The man did as his wife bade him, though he was hungry and would have been glad of a bit of the bread himself.
The Wise Woman was pleased with the gift, and thanked the man kindly. Then the man told her all his troubles and asked her how he was to get his son back again from Oh.
“Listen!” said the old woman. “Oh would gladly keep your son with him as a husband for his daughter, and if you do not bring the lad away with you this time, you will never have him back. This time Oh will show you a flock of doves, and one of them will be your son. Look closely at them, and the one that has tears in its eyes is he, for only a human soul can weep.”