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By Root 1957 0

her. On this they went together to the old King, and fetched him to the hut, and she led him into her room, and told him that the huntsman was the man who had really set her free from the giants. And when the aged King saw all the proofs of this, he could no longer doubt, and said that he was very glad he knew how everything had happened, and that the huntsman should have her to wife, on which the maiden was glad at heart. Then she dressed the huntsman as if he were a foreign lord, and the King ordered a feast to be prepared. When they went to table, the captain sat on the left side of the King’s daughter, but the huntsman was on the right, and the captain thought he was a foreign lord who had come on a visit. When they had eaten and drunk, the old King said to the captain that he would set before him something which he must guess. “Supposing someone said that he had killed the three giants and he were asked where the giants’ tongues were, and he were forced to go and look, and there were none in their heads. How could that have happened?” The captain said: “Then they cannot have had any.” “Not so,” said the King. “Every animal has a tongue,” and then he likewise asked what punishment should be meted out to anyone who made such an answer. The captain replied: “He ought to be torn in pieces.” Then the King said he had pronounced his own sentence, and the captain was put in prison and then torn in four pieces; but the King’s daughter was married to the huntsman. After this he brought his father and mother, and they lived with their son in happiness, and after the death of the old King he received the kingdom.

The Flail from Heaven

A COUNTRYMAN WAS once going out to plough with a pair of oxen. When he got to the field, both the animals’ horns began to grow, and went on growing, and when he wanted to go home they were so big that the oxen could not get through the gateway. By good luck a butcher came by just then, and he delivered them over to him, and made the bargain in this way, that he should bring the butcher a peck of rape-seed, and then the butcher was to count him out a Brabant taler for every seed. I call that well sold! The peasant now went home, and carried the peck of rape-seed to him on his back. On the way, however, he lost one seed out of the bag. The butcher paid him justly as agreed on, and if the peasant had not lost the seed, he would have had one taler more. By the time he returned, the seed had grown into a tree which reached up to the sky. Then thought the peasant: “As you have the chance, you must just see what the angels are doing up there above. So he climbed up, and saw that the angels above were threshing oats, and he looked on. While he was thus watching them, he observed that the tree on which he was standing, was beginning to totter; he peeped down, and saw that someone was just going to cut it down. “If I were to fall down from hence it would be a bad thing,” thought he, and in his extremity he did not know how to save himself better than by taking the chaff of the oats which lay there in heaps, and twisting a rope of it. He likewise snatched a hoe and a flail which were lying about in heaven, and let himself down by the rope. But he came down on the earth exactly in the middle of a deep, deep hole. So it was a real stroke of luck that he had brought the hoe, for he hoed himself a flight of steps with it, and mounted up, and took the flail with him as a token of his truth, so that no one could have any doubt of his story.

The Two Kings’ Children

THERE WAS once upon a time a King who had a little boy in whose stars it had been foretold that he should be killed by a stag when he was sixteen years of age, and when he had reached that age the huntsmen once went hunting with him. In the forest, the King’s son was separated from the others, and all at once he saw a great stag which he wanted to shoot, but could not hit. At length he chased the stag so far that they were quite out of the forest, and then suddenly a great tall man was standing there instead of the stag, and said: “It is