“Why?” asked the King. “What is the matter with her?”
“Oh, she vexes me, and she has strange ways that I cannot understand.”
“What ways?” asked the King.
Then Conrad told him how every day as he and the girl passed through the gateway she would look up at the horse’s head and say:
“Ah, Falada, that thou shouldst hang there!”
And how the head would answer:
“Ah, Princess that thou shouldst pass here!
If thy mother knew thy fate,
Then her heart would surely break.”
“I do not like such strange ways,” said Conrad.