Golden Grain Garnered from the World's Great Harvest-field of Knowledge: Comprising Selections from the Ablest Modern Writers of Prose, Poetry, and Legendary Lore
General
Golden Grain Garnered from the World's Great Harvest-field of Knowledge: Comprising Selections from the Ablest Modern Writers of Prose, Poetry, and Legendary Lore
American literature
Later in the day she sat down under the castle windows and began
carding with her golden carding-comb, and then the same thing happened
again. The princess asked her what she wanted for the carding-comb, and
she told her that it wasn't for sale, neither for gold nor money, but
if she might get leave to sit in the arm-chair by the prince's bedside
that night, she should have it. But when she came up into the bedroom
she found him fast asleep again, and for all she cried and shook him,
for all she wept, he slept so soundly that she could not get life into
him; and when the day dawned in the early morning, in came the princess
with the long nose and turned her out of the room again.
So as the day wore on, she sat down under the castle windows and
began spinning on the spinning-wheel, and that the princess with the
long nose wanted also to have. She opened the casement and asked the
girl what she wanted for it. The girl told her, as she had done twice
before, that it was not for sale, either for gold or money, but if she
might sit in the arm-chair by the prince's bedside that night, she
should have it. Yes, she might do that. But there were some Christian
people who had been carried off and were imprisoned in the room next to
the prince's, and they had heard that some woman had been in his room
and wept and cried and called his name two nights running, and this
they told the prince.
In the evening, when the princess came and brought him his drink, he
made appear as if he drank, but he threw it over his shoulder, for he
felt sure she had put a sleeping draught in his drink.
So when the girl came into his room that night she found the prince
wide awake, and then she told him how she had come there. "You have
just come in time," said the prince, "for to-morrow I was to be married
to the princess; but I won't have that Long-nose, and you are the only
one that can save me. I will say that I want to see what my bride can
do, and if she is fit to be my wife; then I will ask her to wash the
shirt with the three tallow stains on it. She will try, for she does
not know that it is you who dropped the tallow on the shirt; but that
can only be done by Christian folks, and not by a pack of trolls like
we have in this place; and so I will say that I will not have anybody
else for a bride except the one who can wash the shirt clean, and I
know you can do that." And they felt very glad and happy, and they went
on talking all night about the joyful time in store for them.
The next day, when the wedding was to take place, the prince said: "I
think I must see first what my bride can do!"--"Yes, quite so!" said
the stepmother.
"I have got a very fine shirt, which I am going to use for my wedding
shirt; but there are three tallow stains on it which I want washed out;
and I have made a vow that I will not take any other woman for a wife
than the one who is able to do that; if she cannot do that, she is not
worth having," said the prince.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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