So when the lad arose, he went home to his mother, and drove a stake into the earth, and placed both her and the dragon on one great pile of straw. And he set it alight, and [[29]]they were consumed. And he departed thence, and took the maiden, and made a marriage, and kept up the marriage three months day and night. And I came away and told the story.
Of this Roumanian-Gypsy story Miklosich furnishes a Gypsy variant from the Bukowina, which I will give in full at the risk of seeming repetition, italicising such words and phrases as show the most marked correspondence:—
No. 9.—The Mother’s Chastisement
There was an emperor’s son, and he went to hunt. And he departed from the hunters by himself. And by a certain stack there was a maiden. He passed near the stack, and heard her lamenting. He took that maiden, and brought her home.
‘See, mother, what I’ve found.’
His mother took her to the kitchen to the cook to bring her up. She brought her up twelve years. The empress dressed her nicely, and put her in the palace to lay the table. The prince loved her, for she was so fair that in all the world there was none so fair as she. The prince loved her three years, and the empress knew it not.
Once he said, ‘I will take a wife, mother.’
‘From what imperial family?’
‘I wish to marry her who lays the table.’