saw the money in the barrel. He jumped into the barrel to get it. He stuck in the tar up to his neck. When he [the boy] came back he saw his father stuck. He said, "Father, I knew you were greedy. Now you are going to stay there." He took a large knife he had with him, he cut off his father's head.[1] He took it home with him. "I'm going to bury father's head here in the yard," he said to his mother. "Now whatever happens, don't say anything."[2]
II.
There was a man had two sons. He sent them to school. They finished school and came home. One night they were sitting out doors, at bed time their father called them in. They said, "No, we are not coming in because we have a journey to make to-night." After their father went to bed they went to the house of a rich man. They went into the safe and got two sacks of money. They said to their father, "This is what we got for you." Every night for thirty nights they went stealing. Their father wanted to go with them, but they would not let him go. The guards of the house were sleepy. They put a barrel of tar where they thought the thieves would come. They went to sleep. On the thirty-first night the father insisted on going. He said to his sons, "You stay home." He went, he saw the barrel of tar. He said, "Sir Barrel, make haste, get what you want and go. Let me get something too. This place is no place to stop." The barrel did not answer. "Make haste. Sir Barrel, go and let me pass." The barrel did not answer. "Sir Barrel, move aside." The barrel did not answer. He got angry, he struck the barrel with his right hand, his right hand was caught. "Let go, Sir Barrel, or I will give it to you with my other hand." He hit with his left hand and his left hand was caught.
- ↑ In a variant from the Tûr ’Abdîn the uncle falls into a pit of pitch and resin covered with soil. In trying to rescue his uncle, the young thief pulls off first his uncle's arm and then his head (Prym, E., and Socin, A., Der Neu-Aramaeische Dialekt des Tûr ’Abdîn, No. xlii. Göttingen, 1881).
- ↑ Follow the episode of the mother weeping and of the son stealing the corpse from the guards.
