The lady says, "I do not know if he is your uncle, but it is that
gentleman there."
The bridegroom takes his sword and kills him on the spot, saying to
his wife,
"You shall not be afraid of him any more."
They lived very happily. Some time afterwards they had two children,
a boy and a girl. When the elder was seven years old he died, telling
his father and mother that he was going to Heaven to get a place there
ready for them. At the end of a week the other child dies too, and
she says to them that she, too, is going to Heaven, and that she will
keep their place ready; that they, too, would quickly go to them. And,
as she had said, at the end of a year, at exactly the very same time,
both the gentleman and lady died, and they both went to Heaven.
Laurentine.
We have four other variations of the above story, written down, with
others, that we heard, but did not copy out. One, which much resembles
the above, excepting in the commencement, opens with the proposal of a
king's son to marry one of the three daughters of another king. This
king asks his three daughters (like King Lear) how much they love
him. The eldest says, "As much as I do my little finger." That did
not please him. The second says, "As much as my middle finger." The
youngest says, "As much as the bread loves the salt." In a rage the
father sends her into the forest, with two servants, to be killed. They
spare her, and carry the horse's heart to the king, and the girl lives
in the forest "on the plants which the birds brought her, and on the
flowers which the bees brought her." The king's son finds her there
while hunting, takes her home, and marries her. At the wedding feast
she gives her father bread without salt, and then discovers herself,
and all is made right, and they live all happily, except the two
sisters, who remain old maids.
Two others open like Campbell's "The King who Wished to Marry his
Daughter." A king loses his wife, who on her deathbed makes him
promise only to marry some one just like her. This is, of course,
her daughter. The daughter will not, and takes counsel of her
godmother. She bids her ask for a wedding dress made of the wings
of flies; but this impossibility is performed. Then the daughter
escapes--in the one tale in a ship, in the other on foot--and takes
a place as servant. The king has a ball; the old woman appears, and
gives her the nut with the dresses, etc. But in one of these tales,
on the wedding-day she was more handsomely dressed than ever before,
"and think! they had their dresses made for each other"--i.e., they
dress each other! "I don't understand how it is," said the narrator,
"but the story says so."
Our fifth version is short, and, as it puts the step-mother in an
unusual light, we give it entire:--