Meanwhile the old woman had gone up into the loft of the house, saying she was going to fetch the spade, but in reality to watch the young woman to see what she was doing.
When she was left alone, she took the hand and threw it under the hearth. Then came a voice from the loft crying. “Hand, hand, where art thou?” and from under the hearth the hand replied, “Here I am under the hearth.” So she turned on the young woman and said, “You eat this or something worse will happen to you; I am going to eat you.” She was very frightened; so she took it and put it in her bosom under her girdle. And again the old woman cried, “Hand, hand, where art thou?” and the hand replied, “I am under her heart.” The old witch thought that she had eaten it, and coming down, she brought the sword and gave it to her together with the threads. Before she left, the old witch asked her to give her back the hand; so she put her hand in her bosom, and drew out the dead hand and gave it back to her. And so she had to let her go in peace, as she had retained nothing.
Then, coming to the other sister, this one said to her, “Give me back my lamb.” The young woman heaved, and out came the little lamb quite alive and started frolicking through the house. It was because she had kept the first bite under her tongue. She therefore had to let her go unharmed. Then she came to the eldest one. And she said to her, “Give me back my cock,” and then the young woman spat, and out came the cock, running and crowing through the house. And so she came back to her own house with the sword and the threads.
Shortly before she had come, some fishermen had caught a large number of fish, among them a huge fish which her husband had bought. When he opened that fish, he found the ring which his wife had cast into the sea. So, full of joy, he ran out to meet her and to give her the ring. He embraced her with one hand, and with the other, which was full of the blood of the fish, he stroked her chin gently, saying to her, “O my dear little girl, here is thy ring.” No sooner had he spoken these words, when the woman was changed into a bird with a red breast, the mark of the blood stains on her chin; then, breaking a pane of the window (lit. an eye of the window), she flew away. Her husband tried to catch hold of her, but he only got hold of the middle feathers of the tail, which remained in his hand. The bird flew away. The young woman had become a swallow. For that reason the tail looks like two prongs of a fork, for the middle part was plucked out by the husband in his attempt to catch her.
In this legend we have a combination of many tales. The central incident of the magical ring recovered from the depth of the sea inside the fish, upon which the whole future depended, is somewhat obscure in this tale. It is part of the Polykrates tale, but still more so of the Solomonic legend, where the recovery of the ring means the recovery of power by King Solomon. It is a curious romance, in which Solomon is married as a poor man, i.e. in disguise, to a princess, for his ring by which he was able to rule all the spirits and demons had been cast into the sea by a demon and swallowed by a fish. From that fish Solomon recovered it later on, and with it his kingdom and power. The incident of the sword and the threads is an obscure episode. No doubt it is a magical sword, by which the power of the ogre is to be broken, and the threads are magical threads, by which he is to be tied and made powerless.
LXXXVIII.
WHY DOES THE SWALLOW LIVE IN HOT PLACES?
The Story of the Swallow and Holy Mother Sunday.