Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/440

426 swan comes and gives her a ball of yarn, and says, "I am a bewitched prince, if thou canst unwind this yarn as I fly away, thou canst deliver me, but beware of letting it break." The girl begins to unwind it, and the swan rises up in the air. The livelong day she unwinds the yarn and the end of it is already visible, when unluckily it is caught in the branch of a thorn, and breaks. The maiden weeps, and as night is falling, she becomes alarmed, begins to run, and at length reaches a house where she had seen a light shining. She knocks, and an old dame comes out, and says, "Alas, my child, whence come you at this late hour?" She begs for food and lodging. "That is difficult to give," says the woman; "my husband is a man-eater, and if he comes home, he will devour you, but if you stay in the forest the wild beasts will devour you, so come in, and I will see if I can help you." She gives the girl a small loaf, and hides her under the bed. Before midnight when the sun had quite set, the man-eater always came home, and he went out again before sunrise. When he comes in, he at once says, "I smell, I smell man's flesh," feels beneath the bed, pulls out the maiden, and says, "This is a dainty mouthful!" "Oh, do keep it for your breakfast," says his wife; "after all, it is a mere nothing!" He lets himself be persuaded to do this, and falls asleep. Before sunrise the old woman comes to the maiden and says, "Be quick, and run away; there, I present you with a golden spinning-wheel, my name is Sun." The maiden walks onwards the whole day until night, and then she comes to another house where another old woman and a man-eater are living, and where all happens as on the preceding night. On her departure, the old woman gives her a golden spindle, and says, "My name is Moon." On the third night the same events are repeated, and the old woman presents her with a golden reel, and says, "I am called Star." And she also tells her that though the yarn had not been quite unwound, King Swan was nevertheless so far delivered from the spell as to have received his human form again, and was imprisoned on the Glass Mountain in his own kingdom, and living in great magnificence, and that he had there married. She tells the maiden also that she will reach the Glass Mountain that evening, but that a lion and a dragon lie before it, and that she must pacify them with bread and bacon, which things the old woman gives her. And now the maiden walks on until she reaches the mountain, then she throws the bread and bacon into the monsters' jaws, and they suffer her to pass, and thus she reaches the gate of the palace, but that the watchman refuses to open to her. She sits down outside it, and spins with her golden spinning-wheel, and the Queen watches her from above, and would fain have it. In return for it the maiden requests to be allowed to pass one night near the King's bed-chamber. When the King is lying in bed, she sings,