then. The lad came to the
bracket bull where he was lying on the ground, and he was not dead,
out-and-out. When he saw the boy coming he said, "Oh," said he, "make
haste as well as you can in the world, and take out your knife and cut
that strip off me, or you will be killed as well as myself."

There was a trembling in the poor creature's hand, and he was not able
to cut a piece at all off the bull, after his feeding him for so long,
and after the kindness he had got from him.

The bracket bull spoke again, and told him to cut the strip off him on
the instant, and that it would assist him as long as he would be alive.
He cut a strip off the back then, and another strip off the belly, and
he went away.

There was plenty of trouble and of grief on him, going of him, and he
ought to have that on him too, and he departing without any knowledge of
where he was making for, or where he would go.

A gentleman met him on the road, and asked him where he was going. The
lad said that he did not himself know where he was going, but that he
was going looking for work.

"What are you able to do?" says the gentleman.

"I'm as good a herd as ever you saw, but I'll not tell you a lie--I can
do nothing but herding; but, indeed, I'll do that as well as any man
that ever you saw."

"It's you I want," says the gentleman. "There are three giants up by my
land, on the one mearing with me, and anything that will go in on their
land they will keep it, and I cannot take it off them again. That's all
they're asking--my cattle to go in across the mearing to them."

"Never mind them. I'll go bail that I'll take good heed of them, and
that I'll not let anything in to them."

The gentleman brought him home then, and he went herding for him. When
the grass was getting scarce, he was driving the cows further out. There
was a big stone wall between the land of the giants and his master's
land. There was fine grass on the other side of the wall. When he saw
that, he threw down a gap in the wall and let in the pigs and the cows.
He went up into a tree then, and was throwing down apples and all sorts
(of fruit) to the pigs.

A giant came out, and when he saw the lad up on the tree throwing down
the apples to the pigs, the head rose on him (i.e., he got furious). He
came to the tree. "Get down out of that," says he. "I think you big for
one bite and small for two bites; come down till I draw you under my
long cold teeth."

"Arrah, take yourse