“If you are like that you have only to put a consecrated taper under the peck measure in the stable, and you will catch her.”
He does as the old woman told him, and hides himself in the manger. At midnight she comes under the form of a cat, and gets astride the ox, saying:
“The others before were fine, but this is very much finer.”
When our man heard that he comes out from where he was hiding, and with his stick he leaves her quite dead; although when he had done that our man was without any resources; (he had) neither bread, nor maize, nor cows, nor pigs, and his wife and children were starving.
He goes off to see if he can do anything. There meets him a gentleman, who says to him:
“What is the matter, man, that you are so sad?”
“It is this misery that I am in that torments me so.”
“If you have only that, we will arrange all that if you like. I will give you as much money as you wish, if at the end of the year you can guess, and if you tell me with what the devil makes his chalice; and if you do not guess it then your soul shall be for us.”
When our man has got his money, he goes off home without thinking at all of the future. He lived happily for some time with his wife and child; but as the time approached he grew sad, and said nothing to his wife. One day he had gone a long way, wishing and trying to find out his secret, and the night overtakes him. He stops at a cross-roads, and hides himself. (You know that the witches come to the cross-roads[10] to meet together.) They come then, “hushta” from one side, “fushta” from the other, dancing. When they had well amused themselves like that, they begin to tell each other the news. One says:
“You do not know, then, such a man has sold his head to the devil; certainly he will not guess with what the devil makes his chalice. I do not know myself; tell it me.”