“You have taken good care whom you have killed? I am not at all satisfied that you have not done some donkey-trick.”
The witch goes, and sees her three daughters dead. She was terribly angry,[3] and there was no help for it.
Malbrouk and his brothers come to a place where a king lives, and he remarks that everything is sad. He asks what it is? They tell him that the king has lost his three daughters, and that nobody can find them. Malbrouk says to them:
“I will find them.”
They tell that quickly to the king, and bring them before him, and Malbrouk tells him, too, that he will find them. All three set out. When they have gone a little way they find an old woman, who says to them:
“Where are you going to in that fashion?”
“To look for the king’s three daughters.”
This old woman says to them:
“Go to the king, and ask him for three hundred fathoms of new rope, a bucket, and a bell.”
They go, and the king gives to them immediately what they ask for. They go, then, to the woman, and she says to them, pointing to a well, that they are in that well.[4] The eldest put himself into the bucket, and says to them: