But the uncle pleaded so earnestly, that finally the boy yielded with pretended reluctance. The uncle then covered himself with a rice-sack, and Juan tied the mouth of the bag securely. “I will fool him,” Uncle Diego said to himself. “When I am under the water and the Sirena takes me to her house to become her husband, I shall never come back to Juan. Ha, ha, ha!”
“I will fool him,” Juan said to himself. “There is no such thing as the Sirena in the river. Thank God, my dreadful uncle will soon be disposed of!” At midnight Juan hurled his happy uncle into the river, saying, “There is no one who owes that must not pay his debt.[5] May my act be justified!”
The heavy sack sank to the bottom of the river, and nothing more was heard of Uncle Diego.
Notes.
Two other variants, which were collected by Mr. Rusk, and which I have only in abstract, run about as follows:—
Juan the Ashes-Trader.—Juan, a poor dealer in ashes, was in the woods when he heard some robbers coming, and climbed a tree for safety. While they were busy at the foot of the tree, counting their money, he dropped the sack of ashes among them. They ran away in fright, and he acquired all their gold. When the people of the town heard Juan tell how valuable ashes had become, they all burned their houses and took the ashes to the forest, where they arrived just in time to suffer from the wrath of the robbers. Only two escaped to accuse Juan; but Juan was already on a journey, doing good with his money. A dying woman, whom he helped, gave him a magic cane; and when the angry villagers at last found him, he summoned a legion of soldiers by means of his cane, and all of his assailants were killed. [With the second half of this story, cf. [No. 28] and [notes].]
Colassit and Colaskel.—Colassit was good but poor; Colaskel, rich but bad. Colaskel, quarrelling with Colassit, killed the latter’s only carabao. Colassit skinned his dead animal, and took the hide to Laoag to sell it, but could find no purchaser. At night he asked for shelter at a house, but was refused on the ground that the husband was away from home; yet he boldly staid under the house. At midnight he heard the clatter of dishes above, looked up through a hole in the floor, and saw the woman dining merrily with a man. Just then the husband arrived home and knocked at the door. Colassit saw the woman put her paramour into a box in the corner, and the food in another box. Colassit now appeared at the door, and was invited in by the hospitable husband. On being asked what was in his bag, Colassit replied that it was a miraculous thing, which, when it made a noise, as it had a moment before when he had stepped on it, desired to say something. On being asked to interpret, Colassit said that the skin told him that there was delicious food in one of the boxes. Thereupon the food was produced. Now, it was said in the neighborhood that this house was haunted by the Devil, and the owner thought this a good opportunity to find out by magic where the Devil was. Colassit interpreted for the carabao-hide. The Devil was in the other box, he said. After tying the box with heavy ropes, Colassit started toward the river with it. He repeated a jingle which informed the man inside of his imminent fate. The latter replied (also in verse) that he would give a thousand pesos ransom. Colassit accepted, and so became rich. [The narrator says that this is only one of ten adventures belonging to the complete story. It is a pity that the other nine are missing.]
The cycle of tales to which all our variants belong, and which may appropriately be called the “Master Cheat” cycle, is one of the most popular known. It occurs in many different forms; indeed, the very nature of the story—merely a succession of incidents in which a poor but shrewd knave outwits his rich friend or enemy (the distinction matters little to the narrator), and finally brings about his enemy’s death while he himself becomes rich—is such as to admit of indefinite expansion, so far as the number and variety of the episodes are concerned. There have been at least four comprehensive descriptive or bibliographical studies of this cycle made,—Köhler’s (on Campbell’s Gaelic story, No. 39), Cosquin’s (notes to Nos. 10 and 20), Clouston’s (2 : 229–288), and Bolte-Polívka’s (on Grimm, No. 61). Of these, the last, inasmuch as it is the latest (1914) and made use of all the preceding, is the most complete. From it (2 : 10) we learn that the characteristic incidents of this family of drolls are as follows:—
A¹ A rabbit (goat, bird) as carrier of messages. A² A wolf sold for a ram.
B A gold-dropping ass (or horse).