But the princess told him, ‘Just one blow right on the head, and he will die at once.’
When he had killed him, he plucked out all his tongues, and then had himself drawn up and the maiden. So now there were two sisters up, and now they went for the third. The third dragon had twenty-four heads. When Bruntslikos had served him like the other two, he helped the third maiden also out. But when the three maidens were out, his two comrades threw him into a well, for they wished not to give him the credit of that achievement, but rather themselves to vaunt at home that they had slain the dragons.
But Bruntslikos had covenanted with his bride that if he did not come within eight years, she should take a husband. So the eighth year came: she had chosen another man, and was celebrating the marriage. Then came Bruntslikos dressed like a beggar, so she knew him not, and felt no shame for her conduct. But he asked her for wine. When she gave him such, he threw as he drank that half of the ring into the glass, then offered it her. When she drank, her lips came against it. When she noticed it, she threw her half of the ring into the glass, and it straightway united with the other. Forthwith she fell to kissing him, for she recognised he was her lover. The marriage she straightway broke off, and plighted herself to him. When now he flung the dragons’ tongues on the table, the gentlemen cried, ‘Hurrah! That’s it! that’s the real thing!’ at the sight of the tongues.
So, if they are not dead, they are living together.
This is a sort of compound of the Roumanian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit’ (No. 10), and of the Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Mare’s Son’ (No. 20). The ring episode occurs in ‘Made over to the Devil’ (No. 34). For the hiding under the trough and the thrice-repeated challenge, cf. Wratislaw’s Croatian story of ‘The Daughter of the King of the Vilas’ (p. 278), and for the leaden dumplings his Hungarian-Slovenish story of ‘The Three Lemons’ (p. 65). Cf. also notes to ‘An Old King and his Three Sons’ (No. 55).
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[1] He threw the hat in the direction of the light, so that when he had descended, and could no longer discern the light, he might know by the hat in which direction to find it. So in Grimm, No. 111 (ii. 103). [↑]
[2] The idea may be far-fetched (literally), but this passage has a very Oriental flavour. Cf. ‘A Simple Thief’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 126.—The thieves ‘went to a rich man’s house, and dug a hole through the wall. They then said, “You creep in.” ’ [↑]
[3] The text for the next ten lines is very corrupt, like the narrative. I have Bowdlerised much, and omitted a good deal more. [↑]