Next Sunday some one had to go to the Prince with a comb. Kari begged
for leave to go with it, but the others reminded her of what had
happened last time, and scolded her for wanting to let the Prince see
her when she was so black and so ugly in her wooden gown, but she would
not give up asking until they gave her leave to go up to the Prince
with the comb. When she went clattering up the stairs again, out came
the Prince and took the comb and flung it at her, and ordered her to be
off as fast as she could. After that the Prince went to church, and
Kari also begged for leave to go. Again they all asked what she would
do there, she who was so black and ugly, and had no clothes that she
could be seen in by other people. The Prince or some one else might
very easily catch sight of her, they said, and then both she and they
would suffer for it; but Kari said that they had something else to do
than to look at her, and she never ceased begging until she got leave
to go.
And now all happened just as it had happened twice already. She went
away to the rock and knocked at it with the stick, and then the man
came out and gave her a gown which was very much more magnificent than
either of the others. It was almost entirely made of pure gold and
diamonds, and she also got a noble horse with housings embroidered with
gold, and a golden bridle.
When the King’s daughter came to the church the priest and people were
all standing on the hillside waiting for her, and the Prince ran up and
wanted to hold the horse, but she jumped off, saying:
‘No, thank you, there is no need; my horse is so well broken in that it
will stand still when I bid it.’
So they all hastened into the church together and the priest got into
the pulpit, but no one listened to what he said, for they were looking
far too much at her and wondering whence she came; and the Prince was
far more in love than he had been on either of the former occasions,
and he was mindful of nothing but of looking at her.
When the sermon was over and the King’s daughter was about to leave the
church, the Prince had caused a firkin of tar to be emptied out in the
porch in order that he might go to help her over it; she, however, did
not trouble herself in the least about the tar, but set her foot down
in the middle of it and jumped over it, and thus one of her gold shoes
was left sticking in it. When she had seated herself on the horse the
Prince came running out of the church and asked her whence she came.
‘From Combland,’ said Kari. But when the Prince wanted to reach her her
gold shoe, she said:
‘Darkness behind me, but light on my way,
That the Prince may not see where I’m going to-day!’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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