ICELANDIC VERSION.
Not very far from a town where dwelt the king lived once upon a time a farmer. He was well to do and had three daughters; the eldest was twenty years of age, the two others younger, but both marriageable. Once, when they were walking outside their father’s farm, they saw the king coming riding on horseback with two followers, his secretary and his bootmaker. The king was unmarried, as were also those two men. When they saw him, the eldest of the sisters said, “I do not wish anything higher than to be the wife of the king’s shoemaker.” Said the second, “And I of the king’s secretary.” Then the youngest said, “I wish that I were the wife of the king himself.” Now the king heard that they were talking together, and said to his followers, “I will go to the girls yonder and know what it is they were talking about. It seemed to me that I heard one of them say, ‘The king himself.’” His followers said that what the girls had been chattering about could hardly be of much importance. The king did not heed this, however, but declared that they would all go to the girls and have a talk with them. This they did. The king then asked what they had been talking about a moment ago, when he and his men passed them. The sisters were unwilling to tell the truth, but being pressed hard by the king, did so at last. Now as the damsels pleased the king, and he saw that they were both handsome and fair-spoken, particularly the youngest of them, he said that all should be as they had wished it. The sisters were amazed at this, but the king’s will must be done.
So the three sisters were married, each to the husband she had chosen. But when the youngest sister had become queen, the others began to cast on her looks of envy and hatred, and would have her, at any cost, dragged down from her lofty position. And they laid a plot for the accomplishment of this their will. When the queen was going to be confined for the first time, her sisters got leave to act as her midwives. But as soon as the child was born they hid it away, and ordered it to be thrown into a slough into which all the filth was cast. But the man to whom they had entrusted this task could not bring himself to do it, so put the child on the bank of the slough, thinking that some one might find it and save its life. And so it fell out; for an old man chanced to pass the slough soon afterwards, and finding a crying child on the bank, thought it a strange find, took it up and brought it to his home, cherishing it as he could. The queen’s sisters took a whelp and showed it to the king as his queen’s offspring. The king was grieved at this tale, but, being as fond of the queen as of his own life, he restrained his anger and punished her not.
At the second and third confinement of the queen her sisters played the same trick: they exposed the queen’s children in order to have them drowned in the slough. The man, however, always left them on the bank, and it so happened that the same old carl always passed by and took up the children, and carried them home, and brought them up as best he could. The queen’s sisters said that the second time the queen was confined she had given birth to a kitten, and the third time, to a log of wood. At this the king waxed furiously wroth, and ordered the queen to be thrown into the house where he kept a lion, as he did not wish this monster to fill his kingdom with deformities. And the sisters thought that they had managed their boat well and were proud of their success. The lion, however, did not devour the queen, but even gave her part of his food and was friendly towards her, and thus the queen lived with the lion a wretched enough life, without anybody’s knowing anything about it.
Now the story turns to the old man who fostered the king’s children. The eldest of these, a boy, he called Vilhjámr, the second, also a boy, Sigurdr; the third child was a girl and her name is unknown. All that came to him, or with whom he met, the old man would ask if they knew nothing of the children he had found on the bank of the slough. But no one seemed to have the faintest notion about their birth or descent. As the children grew up they were hopeful and fine-looking. The carl had now waxed very old, and, expecting his end, he gave the children this rede, always to ask every one to whom they spoke for news of their family and birth, in order that they might perchance be able at last to trace out the truth. He himself told them all he knew about the matter. After this the old man died, and the children followed closely his advice. Once there came to them an old man, of whom they asked the same questions as of all others. He said he could not give them any hints on the matter himself, but that he could point out one to them who was able to do so. He told them that a short way from their farm was a large stone, whereupon was always sitting a bird which could both understand and speak the tongue of men. It would be best for them, he went on, to find this bird; but there was a difficulty in the matter to be got over first, for many had gone there but none had ever returned. He said that many king’s children had gone to this bird in order to know their future fate, but they had all come short in the very thing needed. He told them that whosoever wanted to mount the stone must be so steady as never to look back, whatever he might hear or see, or whatever wonders seemed to take place around the rock. All who did not succeed in this were changed into stones, together with everything they had with them. This steadiness no one had had yet, but whosoever had it could easily mount the rock, and having once done so would be able to quicken all the others who have been turned to stone there. For the top of the rock was flat, and there was a trap-door on it, wherein the bird was sitting. Underneath the trap-door was water, the nature of which was that it would turn all the stones back to life again. The old man ended by saying, “Now he who succeeds in getting to the top is allowed by the bird to take the water and sprinkle the stone-changed folk, and call them to life again, just as they were before.” This the king’s children thought no hard task. The brothers, however, were the most outspoken about the easiness of the thing. They thanked the old man much for his story and took leave of him.
Not long after this, Vilhjámr, the eldest brother, went to the rock. But before he left he said to his brother, that if three drops of blood should fall on his knife at table while he was away, Sigurdr should at once come to the rock, for then it would be sure that he fared like the others. So Vilhjámr went away, following the old man’s directions, and nothing further is told of him for a while. But after three days, or about the time when his brother should have reached the stone, three drops of blood fell upon Sigurdr’s knife, once, while at table. He was startled at this and told his sister that he must needs leave her, in order to help his brother. He made the same agreement with his sister as Vilhjámr had before made with him. Then he went away, and, to make the story short, all came to the same issue with him as with his brother, and the blood-drops fell on his sister’s knife, at the time when Sigurdr should have reached the stone.
Then the damsel went herself, to see what luck she might have. She succeeded in finding the rock, and when she came there she was greatly struck with the number of stones that surrounded it, in every shape and position. Some had the form of chests, others of various animals, while some again were in other forms. She paid no heed to all this, but going straight forward to the great rock began climbing it. Then she heard, all of a sudden, behind her a loud murmur of human voices, all talking, one louder than another, and amongst the number she heard those of her brothers. But she paid no heed to this, and took good care never to look back, in spite of all she heard going on behind her. Then she got at last to the top of the rock, and the bird greatly praised her steadiness and constancy and promised both to tell her anything she chose to ask him and to assist her in every way he could. First, she would have the surrounding stones recalled to their natural shapes and life. This the bird granted her, pointing to one of the stones and saying, “Methinks you would free that one from his spell, if you knew who he was.” So the king’s daughter sprinkled water over all the stones and they returned to life again, and thanked her for their release with many fair words. Next she asked the bird who were the parents of herself and her brothers, and to whom they might trace their descent. The bird said that they were the children of the king of that country, and told her how the queen’s sisters had acted by them at their birth, and last of all told her how her mother was in the lion’s den, and how she was nearer dead than alive from sorrow and want of good food and comfort.
The stone which the bird had pointed out to the princess was a king’s son, as noble as he was handsome. He cast affectionate looks to his life-giver and it was plain that each loved the other. It was he who had brought the greater part of the chest-shaped stones thither, the which were coffers full of gold and jewels. When the bird had told to every one that which each wanted to know, all the company of the disenchanted scattered, the three children and the wealthy prince going together. When they came home the first thing they did was to break into the lion’s den. They found their mother lying in a swoon, for she had lost her senses on hearing the house broken into. They took her away, and she soon afterwards recovered. Then they dressed her in fitting attire, and taking her to the palace asked audience of the king. This granted, Vilhjamr, Sigurdr, and their sister declared to the king that they were his children and that they had brought with them their mother from the lion’s den. The king was amazed at this story and at all that had happened. The sisters of the queen were sent for and questioned, and, having got into scrapes by differing in accounts, confessed at last their misdeed and told the truth. They were thrown before the same lion that the queen had been given to, and it tore them to pieces immediately and ate them up, hair and all.
Now the queen took her former rank, and a banquet was held in joy at this happy turn of affairs, and for many days the palace resounded with the glee of the feast. And at the end of it the foreign prince wooed the king’s daughter and gained easily her hand, and thus the banquet was begun afresh and became the young people’s marriage-feast. Such glee has never been witnessed in any other kingdom. After the feast the strange prince returned to his home with his bride and became king after his father. Vilhjamr also married and took the kingdom after his father. Sigurdr married a king’s daughter abroad, and became king after the death of his father-in-law; and all of them lived in luck and prosperity. And now is the story ended.
From bleak Iceland to sunny India is certainly a “far cry,” but we had already got half-way thither in citing the Egypto-Arabian versions, and then turned westwards and northwards. We must now, however, go all the way to Bengal for our next form of the story, which is much simpler in construction than any of the foregoing versions, and may be considered as a transition stage of the tale in its migration to Europe. This is an abridgment of the story—not of Envious Sisters but of jealous co-wives—from the Rev. Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal,”[[182]] a work of no small value to students of the genealogy of popular fictions: