At night, when all the others had gone to bed, the King’s daughter
stole softly down to the byre to the Bull, and he took her on his back
and got out of the courtyard as quickly as he could. So at cock-crow
next morning, when the people came to kill the Bull, he was gone, and
when the King got up and asked for his daughter she was gone too. He
sent forth messengers to all parts of the kingdom to search for them,
and published his loss in all the parish churches, but there was no one
who had seen anything of them.
In the meantime the Bull travelled through many lands with the King’s
daughter on his back, and one day they came to a great copper-wood,
where the trees, and the branches, and the leaves, and the flowers, and
everything else was of copper.
But before they entered the wood the Bull said to the King’s daughter:
‘When we enter into this wood, you must take the greatest care not to
touch a leaf of it, or all will be over both with me and with you, for
a Troll with three heads, who is the owner of the wood, lives here.’
So she said she would be on her guard, and not touch anything. And she
was very careful, and bent herself out of the way of the branches, and
put them aside with her hands; but it was so thickly wooded that it was
all but impossible to get forward, and do what she might, she somehow
or other tore off a leaf which got into her hand.
‘Oh! oh! What have you done now?’ said the Bull. ‘It will now cost us a
battle for life or death; but do be careful to keep the leaf.’
Very soon afterwards they came to the end of the wood, and the Troll
with three heads came rushing up to them.
‘Who is that who is touching my wood?’ said the Troll.
‘The wood is just as much mine as yours!’ said the Bull.
‘We shall have a tussle for that!’ shrieked the Troll.
‘That may be,’ said the Bull.
So they rushed on each other and fought, and as for the Bull he butted
and kicked with all the strength of his body, but the Troll fought
quite as well as he did, and the whole day went by before the Bull put
an end to him, and then he himself was so full of wounds and so worn
out that he was scarcely able to move. So they had to wait a day, and
the Bull told the King’s daughter to take the horn of ointment which
hung at the Troll’s belt, and rub him with it; then he was himself
again, and the next day they set off once more. And now they journeyed
on for many, many days, and then after a long, long time they came to a
silver wood. The trees, and the boughs, and the leaves, and the
flowers, and everything else was of silver.
Before the Bull went into the wood, he said to the King’s daughter:
‘When we enter into this wood you must, for Heaven’s sake, be very
careful not to touch anything at all, and not to pluck off even so much
as one leaf, or else all will be over both with you and with me. A
Troll with six heads lives here, who is the owner of the wood, and I do
not think I should be able to overcome him.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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