The Two Travellers
An international fairy tale (ATU 613), which in Fryslân took on its own form: two travellers, one honest, one dishonest, go together through the Greidhoeke. The tale ends with a reversal: who sows evil, reaps evil.
1 Two travellers on the road
Two craftsmen went together from Bolsward to Leeuwarden. One was a tailor, the other a shoemaker. Both sought work. The tailor was honest and generous, the shoemaker mean and miserly. When they had been on the road three days and their food was gone, the shoemaker struck the honest tailor down and stole his bread. «Show me the way on,» he said, «or I leave you here in the field to die.»
The wounded tailor pointed the direction. The shoemaker thrust his shoemaker’s knife into his eyes once more, so that he himself could find no way, and went on.
2 The tree and the crows
The blind tailor groped his way to a tree in the middle of the field — a three-trunked beech on a Frisian terp. Beneath the tree he slept. At night he was woken by three crows talking in the tree. The first said: «Whoever washes his eyes with the dew that falls on this tree sees again.» The second: «Whoever makes tea of the bark of this tree is healed of any illness.» The third: «And whoever cuts a flute from the wood of this tree hears what the trees think.»
The tailor washed his eyes with dew at dawn. He saw again. He cut bark for a sick count in Leeuwarden, who recovered and made him rich. He cut a flute and heard what the trees by the road were thinking. He became the wisest man in Leeuwarden and married the count’s daughter.
3 The return of the shoemaker
Later in Leeuwarden the shoemaker heard that an once-blind tailor had grown rich. He asked the man how it was possible. The tailor, who recognised his attacker but forgave him, told of the tree with the three crows.
The shoemaker walked back to the three-trunked beech. He lay down beneath the tree. At night the crows came again. The first said: «Someone has heard us.» The second: «Our gifts are no secret.» The third: «Then this one too must vanish.» They fell on the sleeping shoemaker and pecked his eyes out with their heavy beaks. He rose blind in the morning, and the three-trunked beech was gone. He died under a fence between Bolsward and Leeuwarden, and since then they say in the Greidhoeke: «Whoever overhears the crows may do it only once.»
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