Once upon a time there lived a couple who had long been married, but had no child. Every Sunday they went to church and begged God to give them a son. They even asked the witches in their town why God would not give them a child. The witches told them that they would have one after a year, but that when born he would be no longer than a span. Nevertheless the couple gave thanks.

 

After a year a son was born to them. He was very small, as the witches had foretold¹, but he was stronger than any one would expect such a small child to be. “It is strange,” said a neighbor. “Why, he eats more food than his stomach can hold.” The boy grew larger and larger, and the amount of food he ate became greater and greater. When he became four feet tall, his daily requirements were a cavan1 of rice and twenty-five pounds of meat and fish. “I can’t imagine how so small a person can eat so much food,” said his mother to her husband. “He is like a grasshopper²: he eats all the time.”

 

Carancal, as the boy was called, was very strong and very kind-hearted. He was the leader of the other boys of the town, for he could beat all of them in wrestling.

 

After a few years the family’s property had all been sold to buy food for the boy. Day after day they became poorer and poorer, for Carancal’s father had no other business but fishing. So one day when Carancal was away playing, the wife said to her husband, “What shall we do with Carancal? He will make us as poor as rats. It is better for us to tell him to go earn his living, for he is old enough to work.”

 

[18]“No, it is a shame to send him off,” said the father, “for we asked God for him. I will take him to the forest and there kill him; and if the neighbors ask how he died, we will say that an accident befell him while cutting trees.”

 

Early the next morning his father led Carancal to the forest, and they began to cut down a very big tree. When the tree was about to fall, Carancal’s father ordered the son to stand where the tree inclined; so that when it fell, Carancal was entirely³ buried. The father immediately went home, thinking that his son had surely been killed; but when he and his wife were talking, Carancal came home with the big tree on his shoulders.

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