Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/363

 Miscellanea. 343

still unable to persuade him that his mother was plotting against his life, told him in the morning, " The water of life is behind a rock which keeps opening and shutting; be as quick as you can, otherwise the rock will shut on you." The prince did as he was bid, and he just managed to ride out before the rock shut, nipping off his horse's tail. At night the fairy substituted wine for the water of life and kept this herself. This time she kept the prince two nights with her, so that his mother and the ogre might think he was dead.

When he returned, they were more disgusted than ever at seeing him, but his mother drank the water and pretended to be better. The ogre now asked her to find out from her son in what his strength lay. She asked him, and he first told her it was in a broom. " Take the broom," said the ogre, " and smoke it with incense, and then we shall see if he is telling the truth." When the son saw her incensing the broom he began to laugh at her, and said, " That is not my strength, it is in the door." When he found her incensing the door he laughed at her again, and then she coaxed him into telling her that his strength was a gold hair in his head.

One day, by the wicked ogre's advice, she begged her son to come and sit with his head on her lap and let her louse him. As he sat so he fell asleep, and she found and cut off the gold hair, and they killed and ate him.

The fawns, who were still with the fairy, smelt his flesh, and began to roar. The fairy, who knew what had happened, bade them go and collect the bones, and bring them to her ; but on no account were they to eat any of their master's flesh if the ogre offered it to them. They went and gathered together all the bones except the little finger, which they could not find. The fairy sent them to look for it, and they found it under the stairs. She then put all the bones together ; out of the hind's milk she made the flesh, and out of the water-melon she made the blood, and then she poured the water of life on the body, and the prince was alive again ; and, rubbing his eyes, he said, " Lightly I fell asleep, and heavily I wake up." The fairy told him what had happened, and he went back and killed his mother and the ogre, and the fawns gobbled them up. Now the fairy wanted the prince to marry her ; but he said, " I must first go to my own country to see how they fare there." The fairy tried to dissuade him, but