“Yes, yes, he is asleep.”
The mother said to her then (you may guess whether he was listening)—
“I must go and charm this newly-born infant.”
She takes up a stone under the hearth, and takes from under it a saucepan, in which there was an ointment. She takes a brush, and well rubs herself over her whole body, saying,[6]
“Under all the clouds and over all the hedges, half an hour on the road, another half-hour there, and another to return.”
As soon as she had said that, off she went. When the man saw that she was gone, he comes out of his room. He had seen what she did. He anoints himself like her, and says,
“Over the clouds, and under the hedges”—(he made a blunder there[7])—“a quarter of an hour to go there, half an hour to stop, and a quarter of an hour for the return.”
He arrives at his house, but torn to pieces by the thorns, and his clothes in strips, but that was all the same to him; he places himself behind the door of his wife’s bedroom with a big stick. There comes a great white cat, “Miau, miau!”[8] When the man heard that, he goes out of the place where he was hiding, and with his stick he almost killed this cat, and set out directly afterwards for the inn, but not easily, under all the hedges. In spite of that, he arrives at the woman’s house. He goes to bed quickly. The next day, when he gets up, he sees only the daughter. He asks her where her mother is. “She is ill, and you must pay me.”
“No! I prefer to see your mother.”
He goes to the mother, and finds her very ill. From this day he goes no more to that inn. When he gets home, he tells his wife what had happened, and how he had saved the child. But all was not ended there. They had misfortune upon misfortune. All their cows died, and all their other animals too. They were sinking into the deepest misery.[9] They did not know what would become of them. This man was brooding sadly in thought, when he met an old woman, who asked him what was the matter with him. He told her all his troubles, how many misfortunes they had had—all his cows lost. He had bought others, and they too had died directly. He is charmed by witches.