here was once a poor woman that had three daughters,
and one day the eldest said, “Mother, bake my cake
and kill my cock till I go seek my fortune.” So she did,
and when all was ready, says her mother to her, “Which
will you have—half of these with my blessing, or the
whole with my curse?” “Curse or no curse,” says she,
“the whole is little enough.” So away she set, and if the mother didn’t
give her her curse, she didn’t give her her blessing.
She walked, and she walked, till she was tired and hungry, and then she
sat down to take her dinner. While she was eating it a poor woman came
up, and asked for a bit. “The dickens a bit you’ll get from me,” says she;
“it’s all too little for myself.” And the poor woman walked away very
sorrowful. At nightfall she got lodging at a farmer’s, and the woman of the
house told her that she’d give her a spadeful of gold and a shovelful of
silver if she’d only sit up and watch her son’s corpse that was waking in
the next room. She said she’d do that, and so, when the family were in
their bed, she sat by the fire, and cast an eye from time to time on the
corpse that was lying under the table.
All at once the dead man got up in his shroud, and stood before her, and
said, “All alone, fair maid?” She gave him no answer; when he had said it
the third time he struck her with a switch, and she became a grey flag.
About a week after, the second daughter went to seek her fortune, and
she didn’t care for her mother’s blessing no more nor her sister, and the
very same thing happened to her. She was left a grey flag by the side of
the other.

t last the youngest went off in search of the other two, and she took care to carry her mother’s blessing with her. She shared her dinner with the poor woman on the road, and she told her that she would watch over her.

Well, she got lodging in the same place as the others, and agreed to mind the corpse. She sat up by the fire, with the dog and cat, and amused herself with some apples and nuts the mistress had given her. She thought it a pity that the man under the table was a corpse, he was so handsome.

But at last he got up, and, says he, “All alone, fair maid?” and she wasn’t long about an answer:

All alone I am not,
I’ve little dog Douse, and Pussy, my cat;
I’ve apples to roast and nuts to crack,
And all alone I am not.

“Ho, ho!” says he, “you’re a girl of courage, though you wouldn’t have enough to follow me. I am now going to cross the quaking bog, and go through the burning forest. I must then enter the cave of terror and climb the hill of glass, and drop from the top of it into the Dead Sea.” “I’ll follow you,” says she, “for I engaged to mind you.” He thought to prevent her, but she was stiff as he was stout.