When the handsome knight carried Little Two-eyes away with him, the two
sisters envied her good luck at first. ‘But the wonderful tree is still
with us, after all,’ they thought, ‘and although we cannot break any
fruit from it, everyone will stop and look at it, and will come to us
and praise it; who knows whether _we_ may not reap a harvest from it?’
But the next morning the tree had flown, and their hopes with it; and
when Little Two-eyes looked out of her window there it stood underneath,
to her great delight. Little Two-eyes lived happily for a long time.
Once two poor women came to the castle to beg alms. Then Little Two-eyes
looked at then and recognised both her sisters, Little One-eye and
Little Three-eyes, who had become so poor that they came to beg bread at
her door. But Little Two-eyes bade them welcome, and was so good to them
that they both repented from their hearts of having been so unkind to
their sister.
Grimm.
JORINDE AND JORINGEL
There was once upon a time a castle in the middle of a thick wood where
lived an old woman quite alone, for she was an enchantress. In the
day-time she changed herself into a cat or a night-owl, but in the
evening she became like an ordinary woman again. She could entice
animals and birds to come to her, and then she would kill and cook them.
If any youth came within a hundred paces of the castle, he was obliged
to stand still, and could not stir from the spot till she set him free;
but if a pretty girl came within this boundary, the old enchantress
changed her into a bird, and shut her up in a wicker cage, which she put
in one of the rooms in the castle. She had quite seven thousand of such
cages in the castle with very rare birds in them.
Now, there was once a maiden called Jorinde, who was more beautiful
than other maidens. She and a youth named Joringel, who was just as
good-looking as she was, were betrothed to one another. Their greatest
delight was to be together, and so that they might get a good long
talk, they went one evening for a walk in the wood. ‘Take care,’ said
Joringel, ‘not to come too close to the castle.’ It was a beautiful
evening; the sun shone brightly between the stems of the trees among the
dark green leaves of the forest, and the turtle-dove sang clearly on the
old maybushes.
Jorinde wept from time to time, and she sat herself down in the sunshine
and lamented, and Joringel lamented too. They felt as sad as if they had
been condemned to die; they looked round and got quite confused, and did
not remember which was their way home. Half the sun was still above the
mountain and half was behind it when Joringel looked through the trees
and saw the old wall of the castle quite near them. He was terrified and
half dead with fright. Jorinde sang:
‘My little bird with throat so red Sings sorrow, sorrow, sorrow; He
sings to the little dove that’s dead, Sings sorrow, sor--jug, jug, jug.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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