“You’re the best lad that ever I met,” says the gentleman, and he was thankful to him.
The giants used to put—each man of them—a shout of him every evening. The people only heard two shouts that evening. “There’s some change in the caher[2] to-night,” said the gentleman, when he heard the two shouts.
h,” says the lad, “I saw one of them going away by himself to-day, and he did not come home yet.”
On the next day the lad drove out his cattle until he came to the big stone wall, and he threw a gap in it, and let the cattle into the same place. He went up into a tree and began throwing down the apples. The second giant came running, and said, “What’s the meaning of throwing my wall and letting in your cattle on my estate? Get down out of that at once. You killed my brother yesterday.”
“Go down, black thong, and bind that one,” says the lad. The thong squeezed him so that he was not able to put a stir out of himself, and he promised the lad anything at all—only to spare his life.
“I am asking nothing of you but the loan of the old sword that is under your bed.”
“I’ll give you that, and welcome.” He went in, and brought out the sword with him. Each man of them had a sword, and every sword better than another.
“Try that sword on the six biggest trees that are in the wood, and it will go through them without turning the edge.”
“I don’t see any tree in the wood bigger or uglier than yourself,” says he, drawing the sword and whipping the head off him, so that he sent it seven furrows and seven ridges from the body.