“Well, however easy a master you may be, you set me very hard work
to do,” thought the Prince; “but I will see if I cannot find your
Master-maid; you say she is yours, but for all that she may be able
to tell me what to do now,” and he went back to her. So, when the
Master-maid asked him what the giant had set him to do that day, he told
her that he was to go underground and get the taxes.
“And how will you set about that?” said the Master-maid.
“Oh! you must tell me how to do it,” said the Prince, “for I have never
yet been underground, and even if I knew the way I do not know how much
I am to demand.”
“Oh! yes, I will soon tell you that; you must go to the rock there under
the mountain-ridge, and take the club that is there, and knock on the
rocky wall,” said the Master-maid. “Then someone will come out who will
sparkle with fire; you shall tell him your errand, and when he asks you
how much you want to have you are to say: ‘As much as I can carry.’”
“Yes, I will keep that in mind,” said he, and then he sat there with the
Master-maid the whole day, until night drew near, and he would gladly
have stayed there till now if the Master-maid had not reminded him that
it was time to be off to fetch the taxes before the giant came.
So he set out on his way, and did exactly what the Master-maid had told
him. He went to the rocky wall, and took the club, and knocked on it.
Then came one so full of sparks that they flew both out of his eyes and
his nose. “What do you want?” said he.
“I was to come here for the giant, and demand the tax for him,” said the
King’s son.
“How much are you to have then?” said the other.
“I ask for no more than I am able to carry with me,” said the Prince.
“It is well for you that you have not asked for a horse-load,” said he
who had come out of the rock. “But now come in with me.”
This the Prince did, and what a quantity of gold and silver he saw! It
was lying inside the mountain like heaps of stones in a waste place, and
he got a load that was as large as he was able to carry, and with that
he went his way. So in the evening, when the giant came home with the
goats, the Prince went into the chamber and hummed and sang again as he
had done on the other two evenings.
“Have you been for the tax?” said the giant.
“Yes, that I have, master,” said the Prince.
“Where have you put it then?” said the giant again.
“The bag of gold is standing there on the bench,” said the Prince.
“I will see about that,” said the giant, and went away to the bench,
but the bag was standing there, and it was so full that gold and silver
dropped out when the giant untied the string.
“You have certainly been talking with my Master-maid!” said the giant,
“and if you have I will wring your neck.”
“Master-maid?” said the Prince; “yesterday my master talked about this
Master-maid, and to-day he is talking about her again, and the first
day of all it was talk of the same kind. I do wish I could see the thing
myself,” said he.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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