hey would hold a review in
his honour, for they would celebrate the wedding in the square before
the castle. Then they conducted him thither, and the soldiers were
already going to let fly at him. But George said to the man who held his
thumb in the bottle in the place of a stopper: "You said, if you pulled
your thumb out, you could besprinkle everything. Pull it out--quick!"
"Oh, sir, I'll easily perform that." So he pulled out his thumb and gave
them all such a sprinkling that they were all blind, and not one could
see.

So, when they perceived that nothing else was to be done, they told him
to go, for they would give him the damsel. Then they gave him a handsome
royal robe, and the wedding took place. I, too, was at the wedding; they
had music there, sang, ate, and drank; there was meat, there were
cheesecakes, and baskets full of everything, and buckets full of strong
waters. To-day I went, yesterday I came; I found an egg among the
tree-stumps; I knocked it against somebody's head, and gave him a bald
place, and he's got it still.

XIII

THE WONDERFUL HAIR

There was a man who was very poor, but so well supplied with children
that he was utterly unable to maintain them, and one morning more than
once prepared to kill them, in order not to see their misery in dying of
hunger, but his wife prevented him. One night a child came to him in his
sleep, and said to him: "Man! I see that you are making up your mind to
destroy and to kill your poor little children, and I know that you are
distressed there at; but in the morning you will find under your pillow
a mirror, a red kerchief, and an embroidered pocket-handkerchief; take
all three secretly and tell nobody; then go to such a hill; by it you
will find a stream; go along it till you come to its fountain-head;
there you will find a damsel as bright as the sun, with her hair hanging
down over her back. Be on your guard, that the ferocious she-dragon do
not coil round you; do not converse with her if she speaks; for if you
converse with her, she will poison you, and turn you into a fish or
something else, and will then devour you but if she bids you examine her
head, examine it, and as you turn over her hair, look, and you will find
one hair as red as blood; pull it out and run back again; then, if she
suspects and begins to run after you, throw her first the embroidered
pocket-handkerchief, then the kerchief, and, lastly, the mirror; then
she will find occupa