But the youth again went down to the stable to Dapplegrim, and told him
that the Princess had hidden herself again, and that he had not the
least idea what had become of her.
‘Oh, just take a very large bread-knife, sharpen it, and pretend that
you are going to cut straight through the third of the four loaves
which are lying on the kitchen table in the King’s palace—count them
from right to left—and you will soon find her,’ said Dapplegrim.
So the youth went up to the kitchen, and began to sharpen the largest
bread-knife that he could find; then he caught hold of the third loaf
on the left-hand side, and put the knife to it as if he meant to cut it
straight in two. ‘I will have a bit of this bread for myself,’ said he.
‘No, dear friend, don’t cut, it is I!’ said the Princess again; so he
had found her the second time.
And now it was his turn to go and hide himself; but Dapplegrim had
given him such good instructions that it was not easy to find him.
First he turned himself into a horse-fly, and hid himself in
Dapplegrim’s left nostril. The Princess went poking about and searching
everywhere, high and low, and wanted to go into Dapplegrim’s stall too,
but he began to bite and kick about so that she was afraid to go there,
and could not find the youth. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘as I am unable to find
you, you must show yourself; ‘whereupon the youth immediately appeared
standing there on the stable floor.
Dapplegrim told him what he was to do the second time, and he turned
himself into a lump of earth, and stuck himself between the hoof and
the shoe on Dapplegrim’s left fore foot. Once more the King’s daughter
went and sought everywhere, inside and outside, until at last she came
into the stable, and wanted to go into the stall beside Dapplegrim. So
this time he allowed her to go into it, and she peered about high and
low, but she could not look under his hoofs, for he stood much too
firmly on his legs for that, and she could not find the youth.
‘Well, you will just have to show where you are yourself, for I can’t
find you,’ said the Princess, and in an instant the youth was standing
by her side on the floor of the stable.
‘Now you are mine!’ said he to the Princess.
‘Now you can see that it is fated that she should be mine,’ he said to
the King.
‘Yes, fated it is,’ said the King. ‘So what must be, must.’
Then everything was made ready for the wedding with great splendour and
promptitude, and the youth rode to church on Dapplegrim, and the King’s
daughter on the other horse. So everyone must see that they could not
be long on their way thither.[20]
[20] From J. Moe.
THE ENCHANTED CANARY
I
Once upon a time, in the reign of King Cambrinus, there lived at
Avesnes one of his lords, who was the finest man—by which I mean the
fattest—in the whole country of Flanders. He ate four meals a day,
slept twelve hours out of the twenty-four, and the only thing he ever
did was to shoot at small birds with his bow and arrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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