The grain gatherer

Берокласецот

In a certain village, a priest had a very beautiful daughter. One day she was out harvesting with her sister-in-law. As she was reaping, she pricked herself on a thorn and began to moan and to call to her sister-in-law:

"Hey sister, come pull this thorn, I'm dying from pain."

"Indeed, you're afraid of a thorn," said the sister-in-law, "your brother sticks such a stump in me in here every day, and I'm not afraid."

The girl became very frightened and said to her sister-in-law: "If that's the way it is, I'll never get married! Why have a husband so that he can stick his stump into me?"

Years went by, and the priest's daughter still didn't want to get married. The priest promised a great reward to anyone who could somehow convince his daughter to take a husband.

A young man said to him:

"I will trick your daughter into it, if you just let her go out harvesting with me."

The priest agreed, and the youth went harvesting with the daughter. He suggested that they reap naked, and the girl agreed. Pointing to his tool, she asked him:

"What's that you have waving around like that?"

"This is a grain gatherer for gathering grain," he answered.

They reaped and reaped, and time came for them to eat lunch. They sat down to eat. They ate and ate, and the youth crumbled little pieces of food down on the grain gatherer.

"What are you doing that for?" the girl asked him.

"He works too, so he also needs to eat," he said. They had eaten something salty, and the girl soon felt thirsty. Near the meadow, in a clearing, there was a spring. They went there to get a drink. First he stooped over to get a drink and said to her:

"Stop up my hole from behind so that the water won't pour out of me when I drink"

When he finished drinking, he said:

"Ah, what sweet water!"

Then she stooped over to drink and said to him:

"Come and stop up my hole, too."

"How should I do it, you have two holes," he said. "Shall I put the grain gatherer in?"

"Put it in," she said.

She felt real good and said:

"Oh, that really is good water."

They went back and reaped some more. After a while she said to him:

"Oh, I'm so thirsty, let's go get a drink again." They went to get a drink, and the water tasted even better. After a little while, she wanted to get a drink again, and again, and again. It wasn't so much because she was thirsty, but because of the damned grain gatherer. And the youth said to her:

"Let's not go get a drink. We can do the thing with the grain gatherer even here under the pear tree."

And so, she realized that the thing was in the grain gatherer, and not that the water tasted so good.

After that he married her, and he inherited the priest's property.