We have several variations of this tale, some like the above, very similar to Grimm’s “Valiant Little Tailor,” others like Campbell’s “Highland Tales.” In one tale there are two brothers, an idiot and a fool (Enuchenta eta Ergela). The idiot goes out to service first, and gets sent back for his stupidity. Then the fool goes, and outwits both his master and the Tartaro, whose eye he burns out with a red-hot spit, as in the first instance. In another the servant frightens the Tartaro at the outset by cracking two walnuts, and saying that they were bones of Christians he was cracking. Another wager is as to which shall carry most water from a fountain. The Tartaro fills two hogsheads to carry, but the lad says to him, “Only that; I will take the whole fountain;” and he begins to stir the water about with a stick. But the Tartaro cries out, “No! No! No! I give up. Where shall I go and drink if you carry away all my water?” Another variation is as follows:—
Like many others in the world, there lived a mother with her three sons. They were not rich, but lived by their work. The eldest son said one day to his mother—
“It would be better for us if I should go out to service.”
The mother did not like it, but at last she let him go. He goes off, far, far, far away, and comes to a house, and asks if they want a servant. They say “Yes,” and they make their agreement.
The master was to give a very high salary—100,000 francs—but the servant was to do everything that the master ordered him, and, if he did not do it, the master was to tear the skin off his back at the end of the year, and to dismiss him without pay.17
The servant said to him,
“All right; I am strong, and I will work.”
On the morrow the master gives him a great deal of work, but he does it easily. The last months of the year the master presses him much more, and one day he sends him into a field to sow fourteen bushels of wheat in the day. The lad goes sadly, taking with him a pair of oxen. He returns to the house very late in the evening. The master says to him,
“Have you done your work?”
He says, “No.”
“Do you remember the agreement we made? I must tear the skin off your back: that is your salary.”
He tears the skin off, as he had said, and sends him away home without anything. His mother was in great grief at seeing him come home so thin and weak, and without any money.
He tells what has happened, and the second brother wishes to start off at once, saying that he is strong, and that he will do more work. The mother did not like it, but she was obliged to let him go.
He goes to the same house as his brother, and makes the same terms with the master. When he had almost finished his year, his master sends him too to sow fourteen bushels of wheat. He starts very early in the morning, with two pair of oxen; but the night came before he had sown it all. The master was very glad at the sight of that. He strips his skin off his back also, and sends him away without any money. Think of the vexation of this mother in seeing both her sons return in this fashion.
The third wishes to start off at once. He assures his mother that he will bring back both the money and the skin of his back. He goes to this same gentleman. He tells this one, too, that he will give him a high salary, on condition that he will do all that he shall tell him to do, otherwise he shall have the skin torn off his back, and be sent away without anything, at the end of the year.
He had made him work hard and well for ten months, and then wished to try him. He sent him to the field, and told him to sow fourteen bushels of wheat before night. He answers, “Yes.”
He takes two pairs of oxen, and goes off to the field. He ploughs a furrow all round the field, and throws his fourteen bushels of wheat into it. He then makes another furrow, to cover it up, and at night time he goes home to the house. The master is astonished. He asks him if he has sown it.
“Yes, it is all under ground; you may be sure of it.”
The master was not pleased; he had his fears.
The next day he sends him with sixteen head of cattle to such a field, and says to him,
“You must take all these cattle into the field without unlocking the gate or making a gap.”
Our lad takes a hatchet, a hoe, and a fork. Off he goes, and when he gets to the field he kills them all, one by one. He cuts them up with the hatchet, and throws them with the fork into the field.
He comes home at nightfall, and says to his master that all the cattle are in the field as he had told him. The master was not pleased, but he said nothing.
The next day he told him to go to such a forest and to bring a load of wood from there, but all the sticks quite, quite straight. Our lad goes off and cuts down in the chestnut copse all the young chestnut trees which his master had planted, and which were very fine ones; and he comes home. When the master saw that, he was not pleased, and said to him,
“To-morrow you shall go again with the oxen; and you must bring a load of wood quite crooked, all quite crooked; if you bring only one straight, so much the worse for you.”
The lad goes off, and pulls up a fine vineyard. After he had loaded his cart, he comes home. When the master saw that, he could not say anything; but he did not know what to think of it.
He sends him into a forest. There was a Tartaro there; and all the persons, and all the animals who went there, he ate them all. The master gives him ten pigs, and also food for ten days, telling him that the hogs would fatten themselves well there, because there were plenty of acorns, and that he must return at the end of ten days.
Our lad begins, and he goes on, and on, and on. He meets an old woman, who says to him:
“Where are you going to, lad?”
“To such a forest, to fatten these pigs.”
The woman says to him:
“If you are not a fool, you will not go there. That horrible Tartaro will eat you.”
This woman was carrying a basket of walnuts on her head, and he said to her:
“If you will give me two of these walnuts I will beat the Tartaro.”
She willingly gives them to him, and he goes on, and on, and on. He meets another old woman, who was winding thread. She says to him:
“Where are you going, lad?”
“To such a forest.”
“Don’t go there. There is a horrible Tartaro there, who will be sure to eat you, and your pigs as well.”
“I must go there all the same, and I will conquer him, if you will give me two of your balls of thread.”
She gives him them, willingly; and he goes on farther, and finds a blacksmith, and he, too, asks him where he is going? And he answers, “To such a forest, to fatten my pigs.”
“You may just as well go back again. There is a terrible Tartaro there, who will be sure to eat you.”
“If you will give me a spit, I will beat him.”
“I will give it you, willingly,” and he gives it him with goodwill.
Our lad goes on, and comes to this forest. He cuts off the tails of all his pigs, and hides them in a safe place. The Tartaro appears, and says to him:
“How did you come here? I am going to eat you.”
The lad says to him:
“Eat a pig if you like, but don’t touch me.”
He takes his two nuts, and rubs them one against the other.
“I have two balls here, and if one of them touches you, you are dead.”
The Tartaro is frightened, and goes away in silence. After having eaten a pig, he comes back again, and says to him:
“We must make a wager—which of the two will make the greatest heap of wood?”
The Tartaro begins to cut and to cut. Our lad leaves him alone, and when he has made a terrible big heap, he begins to go round all the trees with his balls of thread, and says to him.
“You, that; but I, all this;” and he goes on tying and tying. The Tartaro gives in, saying “that he is more clever than he.” As he had stopped his ten days, he makes in the night a great fire, and makes his spit red-hot in it; and while the Tartaro was sleeping, he plunges this spit into his only eye. After having taken his pigs’ tails, he goes away from the forest without any pigs, because the Tartaro had eaten one every day. Near his master’s house there was “a well of the fairy.”18 Our lad sticks in there the tails of all his hogs, excepting one, as well as he could. He then goes running to his master, telling him that all the pigs were coming home very gaily, and that they had got so hot in coming so fast that they had all gone under the mud. “I wished to drag one out by pulling, but only the tail came away; here it is.”
He goes off then with the master to this marsh; but the master did not dare go in there to pull them out. He goes off sadly with his servant home, not knowing what to think about it. There he counts him out his 100,000 francs, and he went home proudly to his mother and his brothers. There they lived happily, and their master was left with 100,000 francs less. That served him right for having so much.
Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son. They were very wretched. One day the son said to his mother that he must go away, to see if he could do anything. He goes far, far, far away. He traverses many countries, and still goes on and on. He arrives in a great city, and asks if they know of a place for a servant. They tell him that there is one in the king’s house. There they tell him that he is to be gardener. But he tells them that he does not know how to use a hoe at all, but that, all the same, he would learn it with the others. He was very nice-looking. He soon learnt it, and was liked by everybody.
This king had a daughter, and she often noticed Petit Perroquet, because he was polite to everybody. In this city there was a prince, and he was paying court to this young princess, and he was seized with dislike and jealousy of Petit Perroquet. One day this prince19 went to find the king. He said to him,
“You do not know what Petit Perroquet says?—that he could bring the Tartaro’s horse here.”
The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him,
“It seems that you have said that you could bring the Tartaro’s horse here?”
“I certainly did not say it.”
“Yes, yes,” said the king, “you said it.”
“If you will give me all that I ask for, I will try.”
He asks for a great deal of money, and sets off. He travels on, and on, and on, and he had to pass a wide river. He speaks to the ferryman, and pays the passage money, and tells him that perhaps he will have a heavy load on his return, but that he will be well paid.
He lands on the other side; but he had yet a long way to go in the forest, because the Tartaro lived in a corner of the mountain. At last he arrives, and knocks at the door. An old, old woman comes to him, and says to him,
“Be off from here as quickly as possible; my son smells the smell of a Christian a league off.”
“To eat me here, or to eat me elsewhere, it is all the same to me.”
But he goes outside, and hides himself under a great heap of cut ferns. He had scarcely been there a moment, when he hears a deep breathing and a grinding of teeth, which sounded like thunder. He stops where he is, trembling. The Tartaro goes to his house, and asks his mother if there is not some Christian or other hidden here.
“No, no,” says she. “But eat away, your dinner is all ready.”
“No, no! I must eat this Christian first.”
He goes hunting, looking, looking into every corner. He goes to the heap of ferns, and pulls off some to put them on one side; but our Petit Perroquet was quite, quite at the bottom. The Tartaro was just on the point of finding him, but he grew tired, and went indoors, and began to eat and to drink enormously. Our Petit Perroquet creeps out of his ferns, and goes off to the stable. The horse had a big bell round his neck, but he fills it with ferns (this bell was as large as the big bell in the church of St. Jean de Luz). He mounts on the horse’s back, and very soon he arrives at the ferry, and the ferryman comes to meet him. Together they get the horse into the ferry-boat as well as they could, and they cross over. He gave him a handsome reward. As soon as he was on the other side, the Tartaro appeared, crying out to him to give him his horse back again, and that he would give him all he could wish for. He replies, “No,” and goes off full gallop. When he came near the king’s palace he took the fern out of the bell, and everybody comes running out of doors or to the windows. All the world was astonished to see Petit Perroquet return.
The king was in ecstasy. He did not know what to say, but he liked him even more than he did formerly, and the princess did also. The other prince was not at all pleased, and he begins to think of some other plot. He goes off to find the king, and he says to him,
“Do you not know that Petit Perroquet says that he could bring the Tartaro’s diamond?”
The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him,
“It seems that you say you can get the Tartaro’s diamond?”
“I certainly did not say any such thing.”
“Yes, yes—you said it.”
“No, no! I did not say it; but I will try, if you give me all I shall ask for.”
And he asks for a great deal of money.
He goes off, and reaches the ferry, and pays the ferryman well, and goes far, far, far away into the forest, till he gets to the house of the Tartaro. The old woman tells him to be off from there; and he goes and hides himself again in the ferns. And he stops there until the Tartaro comes to the house, just as he did the first time. He turns over nearly all the ferns, and leaves him scarcely covered. He stops quietly there all the time that the Tartaro was having his huge supper, and when he thinks he has finished, and is taking his nap, he creeps out very, very gently. The Tartaro always put his diamond under his pillow, and he takes it away without waking him, and escapes, running off as fast as if to break his feet. The ferryman is there, and he crosses him over, and he pays him well. The Tartaro appears on the other side again, and calls out to him telling him to give him back his diamond, and that he would give him all that he could wish for. He answers, “No, no!” and runs on to the king’s house.
When he arrived there, the king did not know what to do. One feasted him, and another feasted him, and all the world was busied about him, and everyone loved him more and more, and the princess as well as the rest. The wicked prince did not know what to think of it. He was eaten up with jealousy, and he thought of something else, and said to the king:
“Petit Perroquet says that he can bring the Tartaro himself.”
The king sends for Petit Perroquet, and says to him:
“It appears that you have said that you will bring the Tartaro himself here.”
“No, no, no, I did not say anything at all like that; but if you will give me all I ask for, I will try. You must have a carriage made of iron, half-a-yard thick, and three horses to draw it, and lots of money. When all that is ready, I will set out.”
He asks, also, for a barrel of honey, another of feathers, and two horns, and starts off.
When he comes to the ferry, it was no easy thing to get this carriage into the boat. When he has got to the other side, he first puts himself into the barrel of honey, and then into the barrel of feathers, and ties the horns on to his head, and then mounts as postilion. He then comes to the Tartaro’s house, and just then he happened to be at home. Petit Perroquet knocks at the door. The Tartaro himself comes to open, and asks:
“Who are you? You!”
“I!!—I am the oldest of all the devils in hell.”
He opens the carriage door for him, and says:
“Get in there.”
The Tartaro gets in, and Petit Perroquet, very glad, starts off, and arrives at the ferry. He crosses, as he best can, with his carriage and horses. He pays the ferryman generously, and comes to the king’s palace. They were all terrified when they saw that he had the Tartaro there. They tried to shoot him with cannon, but he caught the bullets, and sent them back as if they had been balls to play with. They could not kill him in that way, so they finished him with other arms.
As Petit Perroquet had well gained her, they gave him the princess in marriage. He sent for his mother to the court, and as they lived well, so they died happily.
Pierre Bertrand.
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