‘Oh, but it might be done,’ said Dapplegrim. ‘I will help you; but you
must first have me well shod. You must ask for ten pounds of iron and
twelve pounds of steel for the shoeing, and one smith to hammer and one
to hold.’
So the youth did this, and no one said him nay. He got both the iron
and the steel, and the smiths, and thus was Dapplegrim shod strongly
and well, and when the youth went out of the King’s palace a cloud of
dust rose up behind him. But when he came to the mountain into which
the Princess had been carried, the difficulty was to ascend the
precipitous wall of rock by which he was to get on to the mountain
beyond, for the rock stood right up on end, as steep as a house side
and as smooth as a sheet of glass. The first time the youth rode at it
he got a little way up the precipice, but then both Dapplegrim’s fore
legs slipped, and down came horse and rider with a sound like thunder
among the mountains. The next time that he rode at it he got a little
farther up, but then one of Dapplegrim’s fore legs slipped, and down
they went with the sound of a landslip. But the third time Dapplegrim
said: ‘Now we must show what we can do,’ and went at it once more till
the stones sprang up sky high, and thus they got up. Then the lad rode
into the mountain cleft at full gallop and caught up the Princess on
his saddle-bow, and then out again before the Troll even had time to
stand up, and thus the Princess was set free.
When the youth returned to the palace the King was both happy and
delighted to get his daughter back again, as may easily be believed,
but somehow or other the people about the Court had so worked on him
that he was angry with the lad too. ‘Thou shalt have my thanks for
setting my Princess free,’ he said, when the youth came into the palace
with her, and was then about to go away.
She ought to be just as much my Princess as she is yours now, for you
are a man of your word,’ said the youth.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the King. ‘Have her thou shalt, as I have said it; but
first of all thou must make the sun shine into my palace here.’
For there was a large and high hill outside the windows which
overshadowed the palace so much that the sun could not shine in.
‘That was no part of our bargain,’ answered the youth. ‘But as nothing
that I can say will move you, I suppose I shall have to try to do my
best, for the Princess I will have.’
So he went down to Dapplegrim again and told him what the King desired,
and Dapplegrim thought that it might easily be done; but first of all
he must have new shoes, and ten pounds of iron and twelve pounds of
steel must go to the making of them, and two smiths were also
necessary, one to hammer and one to hold, and then it would be very
easy to make the sun shine into the King’s palace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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