"Once on a time there was a farmer's son who dreamt that he was to marry a princess far, far out in the world. She was as red and white as milk and blood, and so rich there was no end to her riches. When he awoke he seemed to see her still standing bright and living before him, and he thought her so sweet and lovely that his life was not worth having unless he had her too. So he sold all he had, and set off into the world to find her out. Well, he went far, and farther than far, and about winter he came to a land where all the high-roads lay right straight on end; there wasn't a bend in any of them. When he had wandered on and on for a quarter of a year he came to a town, and outside the church-door lay a big block of ice, in which there stood a dead body, and the whole parish spat on it as they passed by to church. The lad wondered at this, and when the priest came out of church he asked him what it all meant.
"'It is a great wrong-doer,' said the priest. 'He has been executed for his ungodliness, and set up there to be mocked and spat upon.'
"'But what was his wrong-doing?' asked the lad.
"'When he was alive here he was a vintner,' said the priest, 'and he mixed water with his wine.'
"The lad thought that no such dreadful sin.
"'Well,' he said, 'after he had atoned for it with his life, you might as well have let him have Christian burial and peace after death.'
"But the priest said that could not be in any wise, for there must be folk to break him out of the ice, and money to buy a grave from the church; then the grave-digger must be paid for digging the grave, and the sexton for tolling the bell, and the clerk for singing the hymns, and the priest for sprinkling dust over him.
"'Do you think now there would be any one who would be willing to pay all this for an executed sinner?'
"'Yes,' said the lad. 'If he could only get him buried in Christian earth, he would be sure to pay for his funeral ale out of his scanty means.'
"Even after that the priest hemmed and hawed; but when the lad came with two witnesses, and asked him right out in their hearing if he could refuse to sprinkle dust over the corpse, he was forced to answer that he could not.