The Master Thief
A poor cottager has nothing to give his three sons, so he walks with them to a crossroad, where each son takes a different road.
The youngest goes into a great woods, and when a storm strikes, he seeks shelter in a house. An old woman nearby warns him that the house is a den of robbers, but he stays anyway. When the robbers arrive, he persuades them to take him on as a servant.
The robbers tell the boy to prove himself by stealing an ox that a man is bringing to market. The boy puts a shoe with a silver buckle in the road. When the man sees it, he thinks it would be good if only he had the other, and he continues on. The boy takes the shoe, runs through the countryside, and puts it in the road again. The man, when he comes across the shoe a second time, leaves his ox to go back and find the other, and the son drives the ox off.
The man goes to get his second ox to sell. The robbers tell the boy that if he steals that one as well, they will take him into the band. The boy hangs himself up along the path, and the man passes him. The boy runs ahead and hangs himself again and then a third time, until the man is half-convinced that it is witchcraft, and when he goes back to see if the first two bodies are still hanging, the son drives off his second ox.
The man gets his third and last ox, and the robbers say that they will make the boy the band's leader if he steals it. The son makes a sound like an ox bellowing in the woods, and the man, thinking it was his stolen oxen, runs off, leaving the third behind, the son steals that one as well.
The robbers are not pleased with the boy leading the band, so they leave him. The boy drives the oxen out so they return to their owner, takes all the treasure in the house, and returns to his father.
The boy wants to marry the daughter of a local squire, so he sends his father to ask for her hand, telling him to inform the squire that he is a Master Thief. The squire agrees to the union, but only if the boy proves himself by stealing the roast from the spit on Sunday. The boy catches three hares and releases them at intervals near the squire's kitchen, and the people there, thinking it was one hare, go out to catch it. The boy enters and steals the roast.
When the Master Thief comes to claim his reward, the squire asks him to prove his skill further by playing a trick on the priest. The Master Thief dresses up as an angel and convinces the priest that he has come to take him to heaven. He drags the priest over stones and thorns and throws him into the goose-house, telling him it is purgatory, and then steals all his treasure.
The squire is pleased, but still denies the boy, telling him to steal twelve horses from his stable with twelve grooms in their saddles. The Master Thief disguises himself as an old woman and takes shelter in the stable. When the night grows cold, he drinks brandy against it. The grooms demand some, and he gives them a drugged drink, putting them to sleep, and steals the horses.
The squire denies the boy again, asking if he could steal a horse while the squire is out riding it. The Master Thief says he can. He disguises himself as an old man with a cask of mead and puts his finger in the hole in place of the tap. The squire rides up and asks the disguised boy if he would look in the woods to be sure that the Master Thief did not lurk there. The boy says that he cannot because he has to keep the mead from spilling. The squire takes his place and lends him his horse so he can look, and the boy steals the horse.
The squire denies him once more, asking if he could steal the sheet off his bed and his wife's shift. The Master Thief makes a dummy with the appearance of a man, and when he puts it at the window, the squire shoots it, and the boy lets it drop. Fearing talk, the squire goes to bury it, and the Master Thief, pretending to be the squire, acquires the sheet and the shift on the pretext that they are needed to clean up the blood.
The squire is too afraid of what the thief will steal next, so he lets him marry his daughter.
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This Image Selection touches on the idea of truth, collective memorie and object oriented visualization methods in an image based world. It is a contiuation of previous works, that ask questions of the displayability of images, object memory and shared interpersonal narratives such as folklore, family matters and concepts like history is written by the victors.