Not very far from a town where dwelt the king lived once upon a time a
farmer. He was well to do and had three daughters; the eldest was twenty
years of age, the two others younger, but both marriageable. Once, when
they were walking outside their father’s farm, they saw the king coming
riding on horseback with two followers, his secretary and his bootmaker.
The king was unmarried, as were also those two men. When they saw him,
the eldest of the sisters said, “I do not wish anything higher than to
be the wife of the king’s shoemaker.” Said the second, “And I of the
king’s secretary.” Then the youngest said, “I wish that I were the wife
of the king himself.” Now the king heard that they were talking
together, and said to his followers, “I will go to the girls yonder and
know what it is they were talking about. It seemed to me that I heard
one of them say, ‘The king himself.’” His followers said that what the
girls had been chattering about could hardly be of much importance. The
king did not heed this, however, but declared that they would all go to
the girls and have a talk with them. This they did. The king then asked
what they had been talking about a moment ago, when he and his men
passed them. The sisters were unwilling to tell the truth, but being
pressed hard by the king, did so at last. Now as the damsels pleased the
king, and he saw that they were both handsome and fair-spoken,
particularly the youngest of them, he said that all should be as they
had wished it. The sisters were amazed at this, but the king’s will must
be done.
So the three sisters were married, each to the husband she had chosen.
But when the youngest sister had become queen, the others began to cast
on her looks of envy and hatred, and would have her, at any cost,
dragged down from her lofty position. And they laid a plot for the
accomplishment of this their will. When the queen was going to be
confined for the first time, her sisters got leave to act as her
midwives. But as soon as the child was born they hid it away, and
ordered it to be thrown into a slough into which all the filth was cast.
But the man to whom they had entrusted this task could not bring himself
to do it, so put the child on the bank of the slough, thinking that some
one might find it and save its life. And so it fell out; for an old man
chanced to pass the slough soon afterwards, and finding a crying child
on the bank, thought it a strange find, took it up and brought it to his
home, cherishing it as he could. The queen’s sisters took a whelp and
showed it to the king as his queen’s offspring. The king was grieved at
this tale, but, being as fond of the queen as of his own life, he
restrained his anger and punished her not.
At the second and third confinement of the queen her sisters played the
same trick: they exposed the queen’s children in order to have them
drowned in the slough. The man, however, always left them on the bank,
and it so happened that the same old carl always passed by and took up
the children, and carried them home, and brought them up as best he
could. The queen’s sisters said that the second time the queen was
confined she had given birth to a kitten, and the third time, to a log
of wood. At this the king waxed furiously wroth, and ordered the queen
to be thrown into the house where he kept a lion, as he did not wish
this monster to fill his kingdom with deformities. And the sisters
thought that they had managed their boat well and were proud of their
success. The lion, however, did not devour the queen, but even gave her
part of his food and was friendly towards her, and thus the queen lived
with the lion a wretched enough life, without anybody’s knowing anything
about it.
Now the story turns to the old man who fostered the king’s children. The
eldest of these, a boy, he called Vilhjámr, the second, also a boy,
Sigurdr; the third child was a girl and her name is unknown. All that
came to him, or with whom he met, the old man would ask if they knew
nothing of the children he had found on the bank of the slough. But no
one seemed to have the faintest notion about their birth or descent. As
the children grew up they were hopeful and fine-looking. The carl had
now waxed very old, and, expecting his end, he gave the children this
rede, always to ask every one to whom they spoke for news of their
family and birth, in order that they might perchance be able at last to
trace out the truth. He himself told them all he knew about the matter.
After this the old man died, and the children followed closely his
advice. Once there came to them an old man, of whom they asked the same
questions as of all others. He said he could not give them any hints on
the matter himself, but that he could point out one to them who was able
to do so. He told them that a short way from their farm was a large
stone, whereupon was always sitting a bird which could both understand
and speak the tongue of men. It would be best for them, he went on, to
find this bird; but there was a difficulty in the matter to be got over
first, for many had gone there but none had ever returned. He said that
many king’s children had gone to this bird in order to know their future
fate, but they had all come short in the very thing needed. He told them
that whosoever wanted to mount the stone must be so steady as never to
look back, whatever he might hear or see, or whatever wonders seemed to
take place around the rock. All who did not succeed in this were changed
into stones, together with everything they had with them. This
steadiness no one had had yet, but whosoever had it could easily mount
the rock, and having once done so would be able to quicken all the
others who have been turned to stone there. For the top of the rock was
flat, and there was a trap-door on it, wherein the bird was sitting.
Underneath the trap-door was water, the nature of which was that it
would turn all the stones back to life again. The old man ended by
saying, “Now he who succeeds in getting to the top is allowed by the
bird to take the water and sprinkle the stone-changed folk, and call
them to life again, just as they were before.” This the king’s children
thought no hard task. The brothers, however, were the most outspoken
about the easiness of the thing. They thanked the old man much for his
story and took leave of him.
Not long after this, Vilhjámr, the eldest brother, went to the rock. But
before he left he said to his brother, that if three drops of blood
should fall on his knife at table while he was away, Sigurdr should at
once come to the rock, for then it would be sure that he fared like the
others. So Vilhjámr went away, following the old man’s directions, and
nothing further is told of him for a while. But after three days, or
about the time when his brother should have reached the stone, three
drops of blood fell upon Sigurdr’s knife, once, while at table. He was
startled at this and told his sister that he must needs leave her, in
order to help his brother. He made the same agreement with his sister as
Vilhjámr had before made with him. Then he went away, and, to make the
story short, all came to the same issue with him as with his brother,
and the blood-drops fell on his sister’s knife, at the time when Sigurdr
should have reached the stone.
Then the damsel went herself, to see what luck she might have. She
succeeded in finding the rock, and when she came there she was greatly
struck with the number of stones that surrounded it, in every shape and
position. Some had the form of chests, others of various animals, while
some again were in other forms. She paid no heed to all this, but going
straight forward to the great rock began climbing it. Then she heard,
all of a sudden, behind her a loud murmur of human voices, all talking,
one louder than another, and amongst the number she heard those of her
brothers. But she paid no heed to this, and took good care never to look
back, in spite of all she heard going on behind her. Then she got at
last to the top of the rock, and the bird greatly praised her steadiness
and constancy and promised both to tell her anything she chose to ask
him and to assist her in every way he could. First, she would have the
surrounding stones recalled to their natural shapes and life. This the
bird granted her, pointing to one of the stones and saying, “Methinks
you would free that one from his spell, if you knew who he was.” So the
king’s daughter sprinkled water over all the stones and they returned to
life again, and thanked her for their release with many fair words. Next
she asked the bird who were the parents of herself and her brothers, and
to whom they might trace their descent. The bird said that they were the
children of the king of that country, and told her how the queen’s
sisters had acted by them at their birth, and last of all told her how
her mother was in the lion’s den, and how she was nearer dead than alive
from sorrow and want of good food and comfort.
The stone which the bird had pointed out to the princess was a king’s
son, as noble as he was handsome. He cast affectionate looks to his
life-giver and it was plain that each loved the other. It was he who had
brought the greater part of the chest-shaped stones thither, the which
were coffers full of gold and jewels. When the bird had told to every
one that which each wanted to know, all the company of the disenchanted
scattered, the three children and the wealthy prince going together.
When they came home the first thing they did was to break into the
lion’s den. They found their mother lying in a swoon, for she had lost
her senses on hearing the house broken into. They took her away, and she
soon afterwards recovered. Then they dressed her in fitting attire, and
taking her to the palace asked audience of the king. This granted,
Vilhjamr, Sigurdr, and their sister declared to the king that they were
his children and that they had brought with them their mother from the
lion’s den. The king was amazed at this story and at all that had
happened. The sisters of the queen were sent for and questioned, and,
having got into scrapes by differing in accounts, confessed at last
their misdeed and told the truth. They were thrown before the same lion
that the queen had been given to, and it tore them to pieces immediately
and ate them up, hair and all.
Now the queen took her former rank, and a banquet was held in joy at
this happy turn of affairs, and for many days the palace resounded with
the glee of the feast. And at the end of it the foreign prince wooed the
king’s daughter and gained easily her hand, and thus the banquet was
begun afresh and became the young people’s marriage-feast. Such glee has
never been witnessed in any other kingdom. After the feast the strange
prince returned to his home with his bride and became king after his
father. Vilhjamr also married and took the kingdom after his father.
Sigurdr married a king’s daughter abroad, and became king after the
death of his father-in-law; and all of them lived in luck and
prosperity. And now is the story ended.
From bleak Iceland to sunny India is certainly a “far cry,” but we had
already got half-way thither in citing the Egypto-Arabian versions, and
then turned westwards and northwards. We must now, however, go all the
way to Bengal for our next form of the story, which is much simpler in
construction than any of the foregoing versions, and may be considered
as a transition stage of the tale in its migration to Europe. This is an
abridgment of the story—not of Envious Sisters but of jealous
co-wives—from the Rev. Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal,”[182] a
work of no small value to students of the genealogy of popular fictions: