Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/501

 Rh and you are asleep. I shall be back at ten o’clock to-morrow at this fountain. Be careful to come fasting, and without having kissed either woman or girl.” Jack awakes, and cries when he sees not the princess; and, finding the paper, he takes it to the inn, where the girl reads it to him.

Next morning he sets out again, but the girl has slipped a bean into his vest, which he eats, and then falls asleep, as before. The princess comes, and leaves a paper with him: she will give him one more chance; to-morrow, at noon. He awakes, and is full of sorrow, and, returning to the inn, gets the girl to read the paper for him as before.

The girl puts a fig into his pocket before he starts a third time for the fountain. Jack eats the fig and falls asleep. When he awakes he discovers a paper in his hand, and half of the princess’s gold ring. This time Jack gets the schoolmaster to read the paper: The princess will return no more; she has gone to her Castle of Gold, held by four chains over the Red Sea. If he loves her he may see her there, but only after many trials and much hardship. She adds that, as soon as he returns to the inn, he must pull off all the buttons of his clothes, and, as each came off, someone in the house would die. So he goes back to the inn, pulls off his buttons, and all die—the girl first. Then he takes his staff and the half-ring, and sets out in quest of the Golden Castle.

After long travel and vain inquiries, he meets with an old hermit, who refers him to an elder brother-hermit, who commands all the beasts, from whom he receives an ointment that can heal any wound, and a ball which rolls before him when the anchorite says: “Go, my ball; go straight to my brother, the hermit to his hermitage two hundred leagues hence.” Jack follows. When the ball strikes against the door, out comes the elder hermit, who recognises the ball, but knows nothing of the Golden Castle, nor do the beasts, whom he summons, and who come, from the mouse to the lion, from the goat to the camel. Jack is sent by him three hundred leagues off to his brother-hermit, who commands all the feathered tribes. He follows a conducting-ball, as before, and feels very tired when it raps at the door of the third hermit. Out comes a man of great age, who is so wise that he knows all Jack’s history and his mission, but confesses he knows