The lad thought: “Poor fly! how could you help me?” Nevertheless, he tore off one of her feet and kept it.
Then he went on his way, and he saw a wolf with his tail trapped under a heavy log, and he was unable to help himself, for wolves have stiff backs, and no wolf has ever been able to turn. The lad rolled the log away and released the wolf.
The wolf said: “Thank you for helping me. Take one of my claws, and, whenever you are in sore need, think of me, and I will help you.” So the lad took one of his claws and kept it.
When he got quite close to the sea, he saw a crab as big as a barrel. The crab was lying on the sand with his belly upwards, and he couldn’t manage to turn himself over again. So the lad went and turned the crab over again. The crab asked him where he was going. He said he was going to the Devil’s grandmother across the Red Sea.
The crab said: “My dear lad, I’ll make a bridge for you across the sea, so that you will be able to get across. But, besides that, you must pluck off one of my claws from under my belly, and when you are in sore need, think of me, and I will help you.”
So he plucked off one of the claws and kept it. The crab sidled into the sea, and immediately all the crabs of the sea came together, and they closed in on one another so that they made a bridge across the sea. The lad crossed the bridge and came to the Devil’s grandmother. She was standing waiting for him in the doorway of her house, and welcomed him. He’d just come at the right time; she wanted him to herd her horses. She gave him plenty of good food to eat, and sent him out to the fields. She put twelve horses in his charge, and said to him:
“Look to it that you herd them well, for if you lose one of them you will lose your head. Just look here at these twenty-four posts, with a hook on each one of them. There are heads on twenty-three of them. The last hook is waiting for your head. If you herd my horses badly, that hook is waiting for your head.”
Then she fitted him out for herding the horses. She gave him a piece of bread, so that he might have enough to eat and not starve. He meant to follow the horse’s advice, and threw the bread away. But a fierce hunger came upon him, and he had to go and look for the bread and eat it up.
The moment he had eaten it he fell asleep and all the horses were lost. When he awoke there wasn’t a single horse there. Sorrowfully he said: “The Devil’s grandmother was right; my head will hang from that hook.” In his grief he thought of the fly, and it came flying up and called out: “Why are you weeping and wailing?”
He said that he had been hungry, and had been forced to eat the bread, so that he fell asleep and all the horses were lost.