The hag was very old, and she herself did not know her own age, nor did anybody else. There was a friar and his boy journeying one day, and they came in to the house of the Old Woman of Beare.
"God save you," said the friar.
"The same man save yourself," said the hag; "you're welcome,[60] sit down at the fire and warm yourself."
The friar sat down, and when he had well finished warming himself he began to talk and discourse with the old hag.
"If it's no harm of me to ask it of you, I'd like to know your age, because I know you are very old" [said the friar].
"It is no harm at all to ask me," said the hag; "I'll answer you as well as I can. There is never a year since I came to age that I used not to kill a beef, and throw the bones of the beef up on the loft which is above your head. If you wish to know my age you can send your boy up on the loft and count the bones."
True was the tale. The friar sent the boy up on the loft and the boy began counting the bones, and with all the bones that were on the loft he had no room on the loft itself to count them, and he told the friar that he would have to throw the bones down on the floor—that there was no room on the loft.
"Down with them," said the friar, "and I'll keep count of them from below."
The boy began throwing them down from above and the friar began writing down [the number], until he was about tired out, and he asked the boy had he them nearly counted, and the boy answered the friar down from the loft that he had not even one corner of the loft emptied yet.
"If that's the way of it, come down out of the loft and throw the bones up again," said the friar.