he next day, when his master and the other people were gone, he went to the castle of the three giants again, and he took out another steed and another suit of valour (i.e., armour), and he brought with him the second giant’s sword, and he went to the place where the dragon was to come.
The King’s daughter was bound to a post on the shore, waiting for him, and the eyes going out on her head looking would she see the champion coming who fought the dragon the day before. There were twice as many people in it as there were on the first day, and they were all waiting till they would see the champion coming. When the dragon came the lad went in face of him, and the dragon was half confused and sickened after the fight that he had made the day before. They were beating one another till the evening, and then he drove away the dragon. The people tried to keep him, but they were not able. He went from them.
When his master came home that evening the lad was in the house before him. The master told him that another champion came that day, and that he had turned the dragon into the sea. But no doubt the lad knew the story better himself than he did.
On the next day, when the gentleman was gone, he went to the caher of the giants, and he took with him another steed and another suit and the sword of the third giant, and when he came to fight with the dragon the people thought it was another champion who was in it.
He himself and the dragon were beating each other, then, and the sorra such a fight you ever saw. There were wings on the dragon, and when he was getting it tight he rose up in the air, and he was thrusting and beating the boy in his skull till he was nearly destroyed. He remembered the black thong then, and said, “Black thong, bind that one so hard that they’ll be listening to his screeching in the two divisions of the world with the squeezing that you’ll give him.” The black thong leapt away, and she bound him, and then the lad took the head off him, and the sea was red with his blood, and the waves of blood were going on the top of the water.
The lad came to the land, then, and they tried to keep him; but he went from them, and as he was riding by the lady snatched the shoe off him.
He went away, then, and he left the horse and the sword and the suit of armour in the place where he found them, and when the gentleman and the other people came home he was sitting before them at the fire. He asked them how the fight went, and they told him that the champion killed the fiery dragon, but that he was gone away, and that no one at all knew who he was.
When the King’s daughter came home she said that she would never marry a man but the man whom that shoe would fit.
There were sons of kings, and great people among them, and they saying that it was themselves who killed the dragon; but she said it was not they, unless the shoe would fit them. Some of them were cutting the toes off their feet, and some of them taking off a piece of the heel, and more of them cutting the big toe off themselves, trying would the shoe fit them. There was no good for them in it. The King’s daughter said that she would not marry one man of them.
She sent out soldiers, then, and the shoe with them, to try would it fit anyone at all. Every person, poor and rich, no matter where he was from, must try the shoe on him.