Page:The Pentamerone, or The Story of Stories.djvu/277

Rh THE THREE ENCHANTED PRINCES.

upon a time the King of Green-Bank had three daughters, who were perfect jewels, with whom three sons of the King of Fair-Meadow were desperately in love; but these princes having been changed into animals by the spell of a fairy, the king of Green-Bank disdained to give them his daughters to wife. Whereupon the first, who was a beautiful Falcon, called together all the birds to a council; and there came the chaffinches, tomtits, woodpeckers, flycatchers, jays, blackbirds, cuckoos, thrushes, and alia genera pennatorum. And when they were all assembled at his summons, he ordered them to destroy all the blossoms on the trees of Green-Bank, so that not a flower or leaf should remain. The second prince, who was a Stag, summoning all the goats, rabbits, hares, hedgehogs, and other animals of that country, laid waste all the corn-fields, so that there was not a single blade of grass or corn left. The third prince, who was a Dolphin, consulting together with a hundred monsters of the sea, made