Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/538

496 They followed the traces of the blood until they came to a slab of marble, which they lifted up, and there was a well with steps leading down it. The youngest boy bade his brothers tie a rope round him, and pull him up quickly when he should shake it from below. He went down forty steps, and came to a door, which he opened, and found himself in a room where sat a beautiful girl. "How did you come here?" she said to him; "don't you know that the ogre eats everyone who comes here?" "Won't you tell me his secret?" said the prince. "Well," said she, "so be it. When he has his eyes open, he is asleep, and when he has them shut, he is awake." Opening another door, he found a still more lovely girl. He asked her the same question, and received the same answer. In a third room was a girl more lovely yet than the others, and on her knees sat the ogre with his eyes wide open, and she was combing his hair. She gave him the same answer to his question as the others, and drawing his sword he cut off the ogre's head. "Strike me again," said the head. "But once my mother bore me, and but once I strike," replied the prince. He then returned as he had come, and took the three maidens with him to the bottom of the well, and sent the first two up to his brothers. Next he wished to send the third up, her whom he had chosen for himself, but she told him: "No, you must go up first; it may happen that when your brothers see me I shall be more pleasing in their sight than my sisters, and they will leave you here." He however refused, and then she told him: "If this befall, you will find here a white sheep and a black. You must catch the white one, and then you will be in the upper world. If you catch the black, you will fall still lower." She also gave him a nut containing three dresses, one with the fields and their flowers, one with the sea and its fish, and a third with the heaven and its stars. Bidding her good-bye, he sent her up; and it befel as she had surmised, and he was left behind. There, sure enough, were the black and white sheep, and do what he could to catch the white one, it always eluded him, while the black one was always running into his arms. At last, in despair he caught the black one, and at once felt himself falling. He fell as deep again as the first well on to the roof of a house. Out of the house came an old woman and began to exorcise him, thinking he was an evil spirit. He said: "Why do you speak so? I am a Christian like yourself.