“The mother sits alone
There in the prison small;
O King of the royal blood,
These are thy children all.
The sisters twain, so false,
They wrought the children woe,
There in the waters deep,
Where the fishers come and go.”
Then the king took the fisherman, the three little children, and the bird back with him to the castle, and ordered his wife to be taken out of prison and brought before him. She had become very ill and weak, but her daughter gave her some of the water of the fountain to drink and she became strong and healthy. But the two false sisters were burnt, and the maiden was married to the Prince.
Even in Iceland, as already stated, the same tale has long cheered the hardy peasant’s fire-side circle, while the “wind without did roar and rustle.” That it should have reached that out-of-the-way country through Galland’s version is surely inconceivable, notwithstanding the general resemblance which it bears to the “Histoire des Deux Sœurs jalouses de leur Cadette.” It is found in Powell and Magnússon’s “Legends of Iceland,” second series, and as that excellent work is not often met with (and why so, I cannot understand), moreover, as the story is told with much naïveté, I give it here in full: