When she got home

When she got home, she told the king that she had enjoyed herself very much, and said nothing else.

The next day at three o 'clock in the afternoon, there were drums, trumpets, a procession of horses in full dress, and out of the procession came a steward Shouting that the prince of their country wanted to see the king.

The prince asked the king's daughter to marry him according to royal protocol, and told the king what had happened. When the king heard this, he was not pleased to know that he had been kept in the dark. He called his daughter out, and she ran in at once. Seeing the prince, she jumped on him and hugged him tightly, saying, "This is my bridegroom, this is my bridegroom." The king knew that it was impossible to stop them, so he married them quickly.

11. Isbourne and Witch Fairy Tales

Once upon a time, there was a young man who wanted to find a place to work. On the way, he met a man who asked him where he was going. He told the man in detail that he wanted to find a place to work. The stranger said, "You can be my servant. I want a young man like you, and I will pay you well -- one ear in the first year, two in the second, and three in the third. You'll have to wait on me for three years, and you'll listen to everything I say, no matter how strange the assignment. Don't be afraid to be my servant. You won't be in any danger as long as you do what I tell you."

They reached an agreement, and the young man went home with the man who had hired him. It was a strange place indeed, for he lived on a sandbar in the middle of a forest, and the lad could see no one but his master. His master was a giant who had magical powers over men and beasts.

The next day, the young man went to work. The first thing the giant asked him to do was to feed all the wild animals in the forest. The animals were tied up by the giant, wolves, bears, deer, hares, and so on, and adopted by the giant into a barn under the ground. The corral was a mile long. The young man did all the work well, and the giant praised him, saying that he had done well.

The third morning the giant said to the young man, "Don't feed the animals today. They don't have to feed them like that every day. You can go out and play for a while today and come back when it's time to feed them."

Then the giant said something to him that he did not understand, and the lad changed into a hare and ran away into the woods. He ran for a long time, for all the hunters aimed at him and wanted to shoot him. And the hounds, whenever they caught his scent, came barking after him. He was the only free animal in the wood. All the others were locked up by the giants, so every hunter was eager to kill him. But even then, they didn't succeed. No hound could overtake him, no archer could strike him. They kept shooting at him. He kept running. It was not a peaceful life, and at last he got used to it. He knew he was in no danger, and when he saw all the hunters and hounds so eager to pursue him, he even joked with them.

A whole year passed, and at the end of the year the giant told him to go home. Like all the other animals, he was firmly under the giant's control. The giant said something to the young man that he did not understand, and at once the hare became a man again. "Well, how do you like being my servant?" "Do you like being a hare?"

The lad said he liked it very much. He had never run so fast on the ground before. The giant showed him a lump of money and said it was his wages. The young man gladly agreed to serve the giant for another year.

On the first day of the second year, the young man did the same thing as the year before -- that is, he fed all the wild animals in the giant's stable. When he had finished feeding, the giant said some more words to him, and he changed into a crow and flew high into the air. The lad was glad, for now he could fly faster than the hare, and the hounds could not come after him. This was indeed a happy thing for him, but he soon found that he could not live peacefully, for he saw all the shooters and hunters aiming at him and shooting him, for they had no other birds to shoot but him, and the giant had shut up all the others.