And they went further, and came on a certain house, and there were three maidens. And the lad hurled his club, and carried away half their house. And when the maidens saw that, they came out, and saw them coming. And they flung a comb on their path, and it became a forest—no needle could thread it. So when the lad saw that, he flung his club and his sabre. And the sabre cut and the club battered. And it cut all the forest till nothing was left.
And when the maidens saw that they had felled the forest, they flung a whetstone, and it became a fortress of stone, so that there was no getting further. And he flung the club, and demolished the stone, and made dust of it. And when the maidens saw that they had demolished the stone, they flung a mirror before them, and it became a lake, and there was no getting over. And the lad flung his sabre, and it cleft the water, and they passed through, and went there to the maidens. When they came there they said, ‘And what were you playing your cantrips on us for, maidens?’
Then the maidens said, ‘Why, lad, we thought that you were coming to kill us.’
Then the lad shook hands with them, the three sisters, and said to them, ‘There, maidens, and will you have us?’ [[65]]
And they took them to wife—one for himself, and one for him who had lost his kidneys, and one they gave to another lad. And he went with them home. And they made a marriage.
And I came away, and I have told the story.
And a very quaint story it is; to the best of my knowledge, that rarest of all things, a new one. ‘God’s Godson,’ No. 6, also offers an instance of an heroic hero, nought-heeding, who sets out in quest of heroic achievements; and we find the same notion in a good many folk-tales of South-east Europe, e.g. in the Croatian story of ‘Kraljevitch Marko’ (Wratislaw, No. 52, p. 266). For the comb, whetstone, and mirror, cf. Ralston, p. 142, and the Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Made over to the Devil’ (No. 34), where it is a whetstone, a comb, and a towel.
No. 16.—The Apples of Pregnancy
There were where there were a king and a queen. Now for sixteen years that king and that queen had had no sons or daughters. So he thought they would never have any. And he was always weeping and lamenting, for what would become of them without any children? Then the king said to the queen, ‘O queen, I will go away and leave you, and if I do not find a son born of you by my return, know that either I will kill you with my own hands, or I will send you away, and live no longer with you.’