Page:Czech Folk Tales.pdf/111

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THREE DOVES
91

they flew everywhere looking for the horses, and when they found them, they buzzed round them and plagued them till they drove them up to the herdsman. He drove them joyfully home.

The Devil's grandmother welcomed them, and when she saw that all the horses were there, she said: "You've herded them well enough, for you have brought them all back." Then she seized a hatchet and began to beat the horses with it, and most of all the lean one, till the flesh hung in strips from its body. The lad was sorry for the horse, for the hag was beating it hardest and it was the leanest of them all. But the Devil's grandmother took a salve and anointed the horses' wounds, and they were healed by morning.

The next day she fitted him out again for herding the horses, and gave him some more of the bread, telling him to eat it all. But when he came to the pasture he crumbled the bread and trampled the crumbs into the ground, so that it should be uneatable. But it was no good. He was forced to dig it up and eat it, earth and all, so great was the hunger that the Devil's grandmother had