He was a good serving-boy, and he minded the horses. He was not two days with his master when two of them were cured, fit to go with the carriage. He went every evening to an old couple, and he used to get news in plenty from them.
“Did you hear the great news there is to-night?”
“I did not hear. What is the news?”
“The daughter of the King of the great Wren is to be devoured to-morrow by a piast.”[15]
“I did not hear it,” said he.
“Was it in a wood or a hole in the ground you’ve been that you didn’t hear it? Gentle and simple of the three islands are to be there to-morrow to look at the piast swallowing her—at twelve o’clock to-morrow.”
(The next day) when he found that every one was gone to the place where the piast was to come on land, he called out for his second best suit of clothes, and it came to him with a leap; and he shook the bridle, and the ugliest pony in the stables came to him and put her head into the bridle. “Be up riding on me with a jump” (said the pony) lowering himself on his two knees. He gave his face to the way and he would overtake the wind of March that was before him, and the wind of March that was after would not overtake him. When he came in sight of the place where the gathering was, the piast was coming till she was half upon the land; and he and the piast went fighting, till he tore her with his mouth and feet.
He came back and gave his face to the way, and he ran so near to the place where the king’s daughter was to be swallowed that she caught the boot from the foot of the man who was riding on the pony. He came home and attended to his horses, and no one knew who was the man who was mounted on the pony that killed the piast. She proclaimed a gathering of all the men in the three islands, that she might see who the man was whom the shoe fitted. There was not a man at all coming whom the shoe would fit, and she was not going to marry any man but the one whom the shoe fitted. The old man said it was right for him to go to her to see if the shoe would fit him. He called for the suit of clothes that he wore on the day when the pony killed the piast, and he went to her (the king’s daughter). She knew him at once. The shoe was in her hand, and it leaped from her hand till it went on his foot.
“You are the man that was on the pony on the day that he killed the piast, and you are the man whom I will marry.”
He was seven nights and seven days at feast and festival, and they were married on the eighth day. They spent that night part in talking and part in story-telling; till the early day came and the clear brightness on the morrow morning.