When she had done that she went away to the pig-sty, but all the way as
she went she wept, and was very sorrowful. Then she put on the wooden
gown, and walked to the King’s palace. When she got there she went into
the kitchen and begged for a place, saying that her name was Kari
Woodengown.
The cook told her that she might have a place and leave to stay there
at once and wash up, for the girl who had done that before had just
gone away. ‘And as soon as you get tired of being here you will take
yourself off too,’ said he.
‘No,’ said she, ‘that I shall certainly not.’
And then she washed up, and did it very tidily.
On Sunday some strangers were coming to the King’s palace, so Kari
begged to have leave to carry up the water for the Prince’s bath, but
the others laughed at her and said, ‘What do you want there? Do you
think the Prince will ever look at such a fright as you?’
She would not give it up, however, but went on begging until at last
she got leave. When she was going upstairs her wooden gown made such a
clatter that the Prince came out and said, ‘What sort of a creature may
you be?’
‘I was to take this water to you,’ said Kari.
‘Do you suppose that I will have any water that you bring?’ said the
Prince, and emptied it over her.
She had to bear that, but then she asked permission to go to church.
She got that, for the church was very near. But first she went to the
rock and knocked at it with the stick which was standing there, as the
Bull had told her to do. Instantly a man came forth and asked what she
wanted. The King’s daughter said that she had got leave to go to church
and listen to the priest, but that she had no clothes to go in. So he
brought her a gown that was as bright as the copper wood, and she got a
horse and saddle too from him. When she reached the church she was so
pretty and so splendidly dressed that every one wondered who she could
be, and hardly anyone listened to what the priest was saying, for they
were all looking far too much at her, and the Prince himself liked her
so well that he could not take his eyes off her for an instant. As she
was walking out of church the Prince followed her and shut the church
door after her, and thus he kept one of her gloves in his hand. Then
she went away and mounted her horse again; the Prince again followed
her, and asked her whence she came.
‘Oh! I am from Bathland,’ said Kari. And when the Prince took out the
glove and wanted to give it back to her, she said:
‘Darkness behind me, but light on my way,
That the Prince may not see where I’m going to-day!’
The Prince had never seen the equal of that glove, and he went far and
wide, asking after the country which the proud lady, who rode away
without her glove, had said that she came from, but there was no one
who could tell him where it lay.
Next Sunday some one had to take up a towel to the Prince.
‘Ah! may I have leave to go up with that?’ said Kari.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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