Soon after the second daughter came in, and thought to pluck a golden
feather for herself too; but hardly had she touched her sister than she
stuck fast as well. At last the third sister came with the same
intentions, but the other two cried out: ‘Keep off! for Heaven’s sake,
keep off!’
The younger sister could not imagine why she was to keep off, and
thought to herself: ‘If they are both there, why should not I be there
too?’
So she sprang to them; but no sooner had she touched one of them than
she stuck fast to her. So they all three had to spend the night with
the goose.
Next morning Dullhead tucked the goose under his arm and went off,
without in the least troubling himself about the three girls who were
hanging on to it. They just had to run after him right or left as best
they could. In the middle of a field they met the parson, and when he
saw this procession he cried: ‘For shame, you bold girls! What do you
mean by running after a young fellow through the fields like that? Do
you call that proper behaviour?’ And with that he caught the youngest
girl by the hand to try and draw her away. But directly he touched her
he hung on himself, and had to run along with the rest of them.
Not long after the clerk came that way, and was much surprised to see
the parson following the footsteps of three girls. ‘Why, where is your
reverence going so fast?’ cried he; ‘don’t forget there is to be a
christening to-day;’ and he ran after him, caught him by the sleeve,
and hung on to it himself: As the five of them trotted along in this
fashion one after the other, two peasants were coming from their work
with their hoes. On seeing them the parson called out and begged them
to come and rescue him and the clerk. But no sooner did they touch the
clerk than they stuck on too, and so there were seven of them running
after Dullhead and his goose.
After a time they all came to a town where a King reigned whose
daughter was so serious and solemn that no one could ever manage to
make her laugh. So the King had decreed that whoever should succeed in
making her laugh should marry her.
When Dullhead heard this he marched before the Princess with his goose
and its appendages, and as soon as she saw these seven people
continually running after each other she burst out laughing, and could
not stop herself. Then Dullhead claimed her as his bride, but the King,
who did not much fancy him as a son-in-law, made all sorts of
objections, and told him he must first find a man who could drink up a
whole cellarful of wine.
Dullhead bethought him of the little grey man, who could, he felt sure,
help him; so he went off to the forest, and on the very spot where he
had cut down the tree he saw a man sitting with a most dismal
expression of face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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