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The Burden Bearer The sound of the running feet of the man smashing through the burned stubble ceased abruptly. He stopped at the threshold of the door. No friendly bark of dog welcomed him. From the barn there came no gentle lowing of cattle, no homely clucking of chickens. Like the house the byre too had been ruined, gutted with flame.
Said the golden pigeon to him, "If you remembered when I cleared the byre, you would not eat that without giving me a share." Again there fell three other grains of barley, and the silver pigeon sprung, and ate that up as before. "If you remembered when I thatched the byre, you would not eat that without giving me my share," says the golden pigeon.
"Well!" she said to Henry as they moved towards the byre. He had sat with the farmer for a while, talking of the weather and the crops and the prospects of the harvest, and then, seeing Sheila going across the yard, he had followed her. "Well?" she said, looking at him quizzically. He did not know what to say, so he stood there smiling at her.
If I could inclose this to him in a letter, I would get them off at once, although it would be bringing myself into trouble with the parish afterwards; but, at all events, says he, 'I wouldn't make every one of you both so, to prove that I wish to sarve you, I'll sell the best cow in my byre, and pay him myself, rather than their wedding day should be put off, poor things, or themselves brought to any bad luck the Lord keep them from it!
He continued to hold Hornie's tail for some time, as if he wished to give her some further information on the theory of beauty, as understood in the "laich" end of the parish. Saunders saw him from afar, and cried out to him down the length of the byre, "Are ye gaun to mak' a watch-guard o' that coo's tail, Ebie? ye look fell fond o't."
She didn't know at all what to do, or what to make of it; but the little birds sang again that she should take the broom-stick and toss out a little with that, and all the rest of the dung would fly after it. So she did that, and as soon as ever she began with the broom-stick, the byre was as clean as if it had been swept and washed.
When the Master-Maid came into Edgar's room she bent over his bed and cried: "I cleaned the byre for thee, I swung the axe for thee, And now thou'lt not speak to me." But still Edgar slept on, and in the morning the Master-Maid had to leave without speaking to him.
At length, when he was so tired he could hardly move, the giant's youngest daughter stood in the doorway. 'Lay down thy weariness, said she, and the king's son, thinking he could only die once, sank on the floor at her bidding, and fell sound asleep. When he woke the girl had disappeared, and the byre was so clean that a golden apple could roll from end to end of it.
The dreaded hour of night arrived; and, as he said, I was expelled from the family residence, and ordered to a byre, or cow-house, that stood parallel with the dwelling-house behind, where, on a divot loft, my humble bedstead stood, and the cattle grunted and puffed below me. How unlike the splendid halls of Dalcastle! And to what I am now reduced, let the reflecting reader judge.
One especially, who was accustomed to take the lead of the other cows, was more particularly addicted to this trick. She was thus sometimes the last to be driven into the byre. When, however, she found that her three companions had entered before her, nothing would induce her to follow them.
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