“Tell me another story about the creation!”
I was not there at the time, but I heard a great deal about it from
my grandfather. All he did there was to turn the wheel. People tell me
that the world was made from the sun, but gypsies, who do everything
all contrary, say that the sun was made from the earth. A bad horse is
that which will not travel either way on a road. Once in the old time,
as [there may be] now, was a great old witch, who made enchantments,
and lived all alone in the sky in the night. One day she found a flint
in a field, and picked her up, and the stone told her that her name was
Flint. And after a bit she found a small piece of steel, and picked him
up, and asked his name, and he replied, “Steel” [iron]. She put the two
in her pocket, and said to Flint, “You must marry Master Steel.” So
they did, but one day the two began to quarrel, and Steel gave his wife
Flint a hot one [a severe blow] in the eye, and made sparks fly, and
set fire to the old woman's pocket. So she threw the burning pocket up
into the sky, and told it to stay there until a man and his wife who
had never quarreled should come there. The sparks [from Flint's eye]
are the stars, and the fire is the sun, and it has not gone out as yet,
and it will burn on many a year, for all I know to the contrary. Is it
true? I was not there.