“What’s the matter with you?”
He tells her the wager he has made with the Tartaro, and how he will pull up an oak. The old woman gives him three balls of thread, and tells him to begin and tie them to all the oaks in the forest.[7]
Next day the Tartaro pulls up his oak, an enormously, enormously big one; and the madman begins to tie, and to tie, and to tie.
The Tartaro asks him:
“What are you doing that for?”
“You (pulled up) one, but I all these.”
The Tartaro replies,
“No! No! No! What shall I do to fatten my pigs with without acorns? You have won; you have won the wager.”
The Tartaro did not know what to think about it, and saw that he had found one cleverer than himself, and so he asks him if he will come and spend the night at his house.
The madman says, “Yes.”