A king, who dwelt on the Keuterberg, was out hunting one day, when he
was seen by three young girls who were watching their cows on the
mountain, and the eldest, pointing to him, calls out to the two others,
“If I do not get that one, I’ll have none;” the second, from another
part of the hill, pointing to the one who was on the king’s right hand,
cries, “If I don’t get that one, I’ll have none;” and the youngest,
pointing to the one who was on the king’s left hand, shouts, “And if I
don’t get him, I’ll have none.” When the king has returned home he sends
for the three girls, and after questioning them as to what they had said
to each other about himself and his two ministers, he takes the eldest
girl for his own wife and marries the two others to the ministers. The
king was very fond of his wife, for she was fair and beautiful of face,
and when he had to go abroad for a season he left her in charge of the
two sisters who were the wives of his ministers, as she was about to
become a mother. Now the two sisters had no children, and when the queen
gave birth to a boy who “brought a red star into the world with him,”
they threw him into the river, whereupon a little bird flew up into the
air, singing:
“To thy death art thou sped,
Until God’s word be said.
In the white lily bloom,
Brave boy, is thy tomb.”
When the king came home they told him his queen had been delivered of a
dog, and he said, “What God does is well done.” The same thing happens
the two following years: when the queen had another little boy, the
sisters substituted a dog and the king said, “What God does is well
done;” but when she was delivered of a beautiful little girl, and they
told the king she had this time born a cat, he grew angry and ordered
the poor queen to be thrown into prison. On each occasion a fisherman
who dwelt near the river drew the child from the water soon after it was
thrown in, and having no children, his wife lovingly reared them. When
they had grown up, the eldest once went with some other boys to fish,
and they would not have him with them, saying to him, “Go away,
foundling.” The boy, much grieved, goes to the fisherman and asks
whether he is a foundling, and the old man tells him the whole story,
upon which the youth, spite of the fisherman’s entreaties, at once sets
off to seek his father. After walking for many days he came to a great
river, by the side of which was an old woman fishing. He accosted her
very respectfully, and she took him on her back and carried him across
the water. When a year had gone by, the second boy set out in search of
his brother, and the same happened to him as to the elder one. Then the
girl went to look for her two brothers, and coming to the water she said
to the old woman, “Good day, mother. May God help you with your
fishing.” (The brothers had said to her that she would seek long enough
before she caught any fish, and she replied, “And thou wilt seek long
enough before thou findest thy father”—hence their failure in their
quest.)
When the old woman heard that, she became quite friendly, and carried
her over the water, gave her a wand, and said to her, “Go, my daughter,
ever onwards by this road, and when you come to a great black dog, you
must pass it silently and boldly, without either laughing or looking at
it. Then you will come to a great high castle, on the threshold of which
you must let the wand fall, and go straight through the castle and out
again on the other side. There you will see an old fountain out of which
a large tree has grown, whereon hangs a bird in a cage, which you must
take down. Take likewise a glass of water out of the fountain, and with
these two things go back by the same way. Pick up the wand again from
the threshold and take it with you, and when you again pass by the dog
strike him in the face with it, but be sure that you hit him, and then
just come back here to me.” The maiden found everything exactly as the
old woman had said, and on her way back she found her two brothers who
had sought each other over half the world. They went together where the
black dog was lying on the road; she struck it in the face and it turned
into a handsome prince, who went with them to the river. There the old
woman was still standing. She rejoiced much to see them again, and
carried them all over the water, and then she too went away, for now she
was freed. The others, however, went to the old fisherman, and all were
glad that they had found each other again, and they hung the bird in its
cage on the wall. But the second son could not settle at home, and took
his crossbow and went a-hunting. When he was tired he took his flute and
played on it. The king happened to be also hunting, and hearing the
music went up to the youth, and said, “Who has given thee leave to hunt
here?” “O, no one.” “To whom dost thou belong, then?” “I am the
fisherman’s son.” “But he has no children.” “If thou wilt not believe
it, come with me.” The king did so, and questioned the fisherman, who
told the whole story, and the little bird on the wall began to sing:
“The mother sits alone
There in the prison small;
O King of the royal blood,
These are thy children all.
The sisters twain, so false,
They wrought the children woe,
There in the waters deep,
Where the fishers come and go.”
Then the king took the fisherman, the three little children, and the
bird back with him to the castle, and ordered his wife to be taken out
of prison and brought before him. She had become very ill and weak, but
her daughter gave her some of the water of the fountain to drink and she
became strong and healthy. But the two false sisters were burnt, and the
maiden was married to the Prince.
Even in Iceland, as already stated, the same tale has long cheered the
hardy peasant’s fire-side circle, while the “wind without did roar and
rustle.” That it should have reached that out-of-the-way country through
Galland’s version is surely inconceivable, notwithstanding the general
resemblance which it bears to the “Histoire des Deux Sœurs jalouses de
leur Cadette.” It is found in Powell and Magnússon’s “Legends of
Iceland,” second series, and as that excellent work is not often met
with (and why so, I cannot understand), moreover, as the story is told
with much naïveté, I give it here in full: