s father's crops on three successive St. John's Nights.

In a Celtic story,[348] a king promises his daughter, and two-thirds
of his kingdom, to anyone who can get her out of a turret which "was
aloft, on the top of four carraghan towers." The hero Conall kicks
"one of the posts that was keeping the turret aloft," the post breaks,
and the turret falls, but Conall catches it in his hands before it
reaches the ground, a door opens, and out comes the Princess Sunbeam,
and throws her arms about Conall's neck.

In most of these stories the wife-gaining leap is so vaguely described
that it is allowable to suppose that the original idea has been
greatly obscured in the course of travel. In some Eastern stories it
is set in a much plainer light; in one modern collection for
instance,[349] it occurs four times. A princess is so fond of her
marble bath, which is "like a little sea," with high spiked walls all
around it, that she vows she will marry no one who cannot jump across
it on horseback. Another princess determines to marry him only who can
leap into the glass palace in which she dwells, surrounded by a wide
river; and many kings and princes perish miserably in attempting to
perform the feat. A third king's daughter lives in a garden "hedged
round with seven hedges made of bayonets," by which her suitors are
generally transfixed. A fourth "has vowed to marry no man who cannot
jump on foot over the seven hedges made of spears, and across the
seven great ditches that surround her house;" and "hundreds of
thousands of Rajahs have tried to do it, and died in the attempt."

The secluded princess of these stories may have been primarily akin
to the heroine of the "Sleeping Beauty" tales, but no special
significance appears now to be attributable to her isolation. The
original idea seems to have been best preserved in the two legends of
the wooing of Brynhild by Sigurd, in the first of which he awakens her
from her magic sleep, while in the second he gains her hand (for
Gunnar) by a daring and difficult ride--for "him only would she have
who should ride through the flaming fire that was drawn about her
hall." Gunnar fails to do so, but Sigurd succeeds; his horse leaps
into the fire, "and a mighty roar arose as the fire burned ever
madder, and the earth trembled, and the flames went up even unto the
heavens, nor had any dared to ride as he rode, even as it were through
the deep murk."[350]

We will take next a story which is a