Once more the brothers loudly expressed their discontent, and gave the King no peace, declaring—
"It is impossible for us to agree to Dummling becoming ruler of the kingdom," and they insisted that the women should be required to spring through a hoop which was suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the hall, thinking to themselves "Now, certainly our peasants will get the best of it, they are active and sturdy, but that fragile lady will kill herself if she jumps."
To this, again, the King consented, and the peasants were first given trial.
They sprang through the hoop, indeed, but so clumsily that they fell, breaking their arms and legs.
Upon which the lovely lady whom Dummling had brought home, leapt through as lightly as a fawn, and this put an end to all contention.
So the crown came to Dummling, who lived long, and ruled his people temperately and justly.
LITTLE SNOW WHITE
It was in the middle of winter, when the broad flakes of snow were falling around, that a certain queen sat working at her window, the frame of which was made of fine black ebony; and, as she was looking out upon the snow, she pricked her finger, and three drops of blood fell upon it. Then she gazed thoughtfully down on the red drops which sprinkled the white snow and said, "Would that my little daughter may be as white as that snow, as red as the blood, and as black as the ebony window-frame!" And so the little girl grew up; her skin was a white as snow, her cheeks as rosy as blood, and her hair as black as ebony; and she was called Snow-White.