Once upon a time there lived in Périgord, in a small village, a shepherd; His name was Pierre and he was twenty years old. Pierrou was an abandoned child, a “foundling,” as they say about people like him. The old curé found him near the altar in the church and took the boy to his youngest daughter, Cadette - just at that time she was breastfeeding her baby, Jeanty, and agreed to accept the second baby, a foundling.
The family lived a difficult life, and at the age of seven Pierre was forced to hire a shepherd for a rich lord from the castle, and from then on he tended sheep herds in the meadows and sandy plains of Périgord.
Whenever he had a free minute, he hurried to visit his adoptive mother, whom he loved with tenderness. And no less tenderly, but in a completely different way, he treated his foster sister, Francil, who spun yarn, looking after the goat and lambs.
Francille was a nice girl of sixteen years old, and the lovers met in some secluded corner whenever they managed to escape the watchful eye.
But then one spring day, when the breeze was blowing particularly gently, the flowers were emanating fragrances, the birds were singing, and the young shepherdess and shepherdess had something to tell each other, their herds wandered into the lands of the Dragon and began to feast on young grass.
The dragon was a monster with a human head, bird wings, lion paws with claws and a snake tail. He had a very evil disposition, this Dragon; he built himself a lair in a cave near a pond - bottomless, as the local peasants who lived on his vast estates and whom he forced to work for him said.
Walking through his estate, the Dragon noticed that other people's sheep were trampling down fresh shoots on his lands. He flew into an indescribable rage, turned purple with anger and screamed in a terrible voice. Hearing these cries, our shepherds were frightened, and Pierre, not finding his sheep in their usual place, immediately realized what was happening. He wanted to run away so as not to catch the eye of the enraged monster, but he immediately remembered the words of the old peasant Ladish, who had instructed him more than once, repeating that a real shepherd never leaves his flock; therefore, overcoming his fear, he went straight towards the terrible roar of the Dragon. He still managed to hug Francil one last time and strictly ordered her to return to her mother as soon as possible.
Soon he found himself near the Dragon, which was emitting boiling saliva - the sight of the monster was simply terrible.
“Excuse me, my lord,” Pierrou said meekly, thinking thereby to pacify the Dragon’s anger, “I will take my sheep away right now, and this will never happen again.”
- A-ah-ah! - Dragon grinned. - So you are their shepherd? I don’t need your apology at all, I’ll swallow you now.
“My lord,” the shepherd boy begged, “don’t kill me!” I will serve you, I will be your slave. Just save my life Well, - said the Dragon, - you are lucky, I am kind today, so be it, I will not eat you, but on one condition: tomorrow morning you will return here and we will argue - firstly, who will bring the largest bundle of brushwood from the forest; secondly, who can lift the largest bucket of water; thirdly, who will throw the boulder farther and, finally, fourthly, who will crush the stone in his hand harder. If you win, I'll let you go on good terms. But if you lose, I will eat you and take your mother as a maid to my cave.
Poor Pierre realized that he did not have long to live, but he told himself that he had one more day left and that during this time the Dragon might die of some illness.
He took his herd to the owner, to whom he did not say a word about what had happened to him, and rushed as fast as he could to his foster mother Kadetta, where they were waiting for him in anxious impatience.
Pierre told about his conversation with the Dragon and said with sadness that tomorrow he would no longer be alive.
Don’t be sad, little shooter,” said Kadetta, “I’ll try to help you.”
But I must tell you that everyone in the district considered Kadette a witch, because she was much braver, much kinder and much smarter than her other neighbors, and her daughter Francil was always dressed more elegantly than the rest of the village girls. Cadette thought for a minute, and then she took a ball of thread from Francil’s spindle, took a wheel of cheese that was drying on a shelf, wrapped in straw, and caught a tame partridge walking freely around the hut.
“Put it all in your knapsack,” she told Pierre, “and don’t forget to take the shepherd’s crook with you tomorrow morning.” Now listen carefully to what I tell you.
And the good mother pressed her lips tightly to her adopted son’s ear and spoke to him for a long time about something, but so quietly, so quietly that even the Giant-Keeping-Earing, the cousin of the Dragon, who can hear the smallest spikelet swaying in the field, would not have heard a word even if he had pressed his sensitive ear to the wall of a peasant hut.
The next morning, Pierre, true to his promise, went to meet the Dragon. On his back he carried a knapsack, and in his hand he held a shepherd's staff - a strong stick made of black thorns with an iron spatula at the end: with this stick the young shepherd more than once fought off wolves when they wanted to feast on some sheep from his flock.
- And here you are! - exclaimed the monster. - Why don’t you tremble with fear?
“Because,” answered Pierre, “I am confident of my victory.”
“We’ll see about that,” the Dragon answered angrily, “let’s get started!”
He grabbed a huge ax and chopped down many hundred-year-old oak trees in the area, then tied them all together with a rope as thick as a man’s arm, put the whole bundle on his back and carried it to his cave.
“Now you,” he said to Pierre.
He, remembering the advice given to him the day before by his good Cadet, pulled out a ball of thread from his knapsack, tied one end to a tree and moved, unwinding the ball, around the forest belonging to the Dragon, who followed on his heels, more and more surprised at what was happening.
-What are you going to do? - he asked finally.
“I’m tying up everything I want to take away,” Pierrou answered, “but I want to take all this forest to my mother’s house.”
- Stop immediately! - shouted the Dragon. “I won’t have anything to heat the stove with this winter, and I’ll freeze from the cold!” So be it, you win. But we'll see if you can turn pale in the second test.
The dragon grabbed a stone vat of immense size, placed it near the source, filled it to the brim with water, and then carried the vat to the entrance to his cave.
Then Pierre approached the source and slowly began to dig it in from all sides with his staff with an iron shovel at the end, throwing clods of dug earth far to the side.
The dragon looked and looked and finally, unable to bear it, shouted:
-What are you up to here again?
I want to dig up all the earth around the source in order to carry it entirely to my mother’s house.
- Stop immediately! I'll run out of water and die of thirst. Okay, so be it, you won the second time. But now you won’t trick me!
Grabbing a huge boulder, the Dragon held it in his hand for a second, and then threw it with such force that the boulder crashed to the ground three hundred steps away from them, raising a whole cloud of dust to the sky.
Then Pierrou rummaged in his knapsack and, grabbing a partridge, threw it into the sky. The partridge, noisily flapping its wings, flew straight to Kadetta's hut, more than five hundred toise (Toise - about 2,134 m) from them, and flew into the room through a small hole that the hostess always left open for her.
The dragon decided that it was a stone that Pierre had thrown with such force - and again had to admit defeat. However, his rage knew no bounds. Grabbing a huge cobblestone, he crushed it into small pieces and shouted to the shepherd:
- Let's see if you can do the same!
Then Pierrou took the stored cheese as if it were a large stone - so deftly that the Dragon did not notice the substitution - and began to squeeze his fingers until water splashed out of the half-dry cheese.
“You are stronger than me,” the Dragon shouted furiously, “if you can squeeze water out of a stone!”.. You won again. And yet I am your master. If you don't repeat what I do, I will definitely swallow you!
He took his golden hammer and threw it so far that the hammer disappeared from sight. When the Dragon and the shepherd found him, the monster said:
- Now let's see what you are capable of.
Pierre was despondent because the day before the Dragon had not offered him such a test and Mother Kadetta could not suggest a way to win this time too.
But Pierrou was a true Perigordian, he had a head on his shoulders, and it was not so easy to lead him into confusion.
Grabbing the golden hammer by the handle, he shouted loudly - so that the echo repeated his words:
— Bargiera dele lo mar, vira votra de bore, que lu marteu do Dragon va arriba!
In the Perigord dialect this meant: “Shepherds on the other side of the sea, quickly run away from the shore - the Dragon’s hammer is flying towards you!” -Where do you want to throw my hammer? — the Dragon asked cautiously. “To the other side of the sea,” answered Pierre.
- Stop it now! - the monster roared. - I won’t be able to find him there... It’s yours again!
Pierru did not force the Dragon to repeat it twice and rushed to run as fast as he could... Hearing a roar behind him, he turned around and managed to notice that the Dragon, blinded by rage, rushed into a bottomless pond, where he disappeared forever.
Curiosity turned out to be stronger than fear - Pierre stopped and waited for a long time to see if the monster would get ashore, until he was finally convinced that the Dragon had drowned.
Humming happily, he grabbed the golden hammer and returned to Kadetta, whom he thanked with all his heart. Then he sold his trophy, and with the proceeds he bought a large estate, where they all began to live together - Mother Cadetta da Pierre with her Francil, whom he took as his wife.
Both of them were happy, gave birth to a bunch of children and died at a very old age.
This tale was told by Mr. Miner in Saint-Martin-de-Gurson, Dordogne, and from his words it was written down by Mr. J. Roller, a primary school teacher. The storyteller learned this tale from a grandmother from a family of his relatives: and she learned from her own grandmother, born in the era of Louis XV (Guienne province).
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru