‘I am sure you can’t,’ said they, much too surprised to be polite.
Then the maid sprang off the stake and left the room, and instantly the new wife took her place. But the sharp stake ran through, and she was dead in a moment. So they sent to the prince and said, ‘Come quickly, and bury your wife.’
‘Bury her yourselves,’ he answered. ‘What did she do it for? It was not by my orders that she impaled herself on the stake.’
So they buried her; and in the evening the prince came to the daughter of Buk Ettemsuch, and said to her, ‘Speak to me, or I shall have to take another wife.’ But she was afraid to speak to him.
The following day the prince hid himself in the room and watched. And soon the maiden woke, and said to the pitcher and to the water-jug, ‘Quick! go down to the spring and bring me some water; I am thirsty.’
And they went. But as they were filling themselves at the spring, the water-jug knocked against the pitcher and broke off its spout. And the pitcher burst into tears, and ran to the maiden, and said: ‘Mistress, beat the water-jug, for he has broken my spout!’
‘By the head of Buk Ettemsuch, I implore you not to beat me!’
‘Ah,’ she replied, ‘if only my husband had sworn by that oath, I could have spoken to him from the beginning, and he need never have taken another wife. But now he will never say it, and he will have to go on marrying fresh ones.’
And the prince, from his hiding-place, heard her words, and he jumped up and ran to her and said, ‘By the head of Buk Ettemsuch, speak to me.’
So she spoke to him, and they lived happily to the end of their days, because the girl kept the promise she had made to the ogre.