The King and Queen told Jack that it would be impossible ever to get a girl that would answer that description, and tried to persuade Jack from setting out, but Jack wouldn’t be persuaded.
He started off with his father’s and his mother’s blessing, and a hundred guineas that his father had given him in his pocket. He traveled away and away very far, and about the middle of the day on the second day out, passing a graveyard, he saw a crowd there wrangling over a corpse. He went in and inquired what was the matter, and he found there were bailiffs wanting to seize the corpse for a debt of a hundred guineas. Jack was sorry for the poor corpse, so he put his hand in his pocket, took out the hundred guineas, and paid them down; and then the friends of the corpse thanked him heartily and buried the body.
That very same evening Jack was overtaken by a little red man who asked him where he was going.
Says Jack: “I’m going in search of a wife.”
“Well,” says the little red man, “such a handsome young fellow as you won’t have to go far.”
“Far enough,” says Jack, “because the girl I want must have hair as black as the blackest crow, cheeks as red as the reddest blood, and skin as white as the whitest snow.”
“Then,” said the little red man, “there’s only one such woman in the world, and she is the Princess of the East. There’s many a brave young man went there before you to court her, but none of them ever came back alive again.”
“For life or for death,” says Jack, “I’ll never rest until I reach the Princess of the East and court her.”
“Well,” said the little red man, “you’ll want a boy with you. Let me be your boy.”