King's daughter, and changes himself into the white dwarf, and she has to live in a small hut with him, and to keep his house, but he does all he can to please her. One day he tells her that three white pigeons will come flying up, and that she must seize the middle one and cut its head off, but it must be the middle one. She does this, and the pigeon is instantly changed into a handsome prince, who says that for the space of seven years he has been deprived of his human form, and has only been able to obtain his deliverance in this way. Other stories are to be found in Müllenhoff, No. 2; Colshorn, No. 20; and in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No. 4. The fraud of the false bride, who is too quick at remembering her father's unkingly trade, has appeared before in the Volsunga sage, chap. 21, comp. Altd. Wälder. 1. 71. The dark and fiery stove in which the King's son is bewitched, doubtless betokens hell, the nether world, Orcus, where dark Death dwells, but where is also the chimney of the forge. This story serves to explain the common forms of speech, "to tell a secret to the stove," "to beg something from the stove." In other sagas people disclose a secret to a stone or a stone pillar (see Büsching's Volkssagen, pp. 66 and 363), or a man digs a hole in the earth, and says it inside that (see Eyering's Sprichwörter, 1. 290; compare Wuk's Servian Tales, p. 227. Thus too the Ancients swore by the nether world where dwell the just judges of the dead and of hell. For this reason the goose-girl speaks to the stove (No. 89, compare The Elves, No. 91), and reveals to it the deed which has been done, which she is not permitted to reveal to any human being. The very word Eisenofen (iron stove) is ancient, and does not so much point to an iron stove as lead us back to the old eitofan, fire-oven, fire-place (from eit, esse, fire). In a Hungarian story a bridge of razor-blades is crossed, in the same way that in our story, sharp swords are passed over; Mailáth, 2. 189.
128.—The Lazy Spinner.
From Zwehrn. There is a similar idea in the Pentamerone (4. 4), and in an old German Story, Die Minne eines Albernen (Altd. Wälder, 3. 160-163; in Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, 2. 141. Compare The Three Spinners (No. 14), and chap. 125, in Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst (1535 fol.). The tree in the forest is a spindle-tree (Spill-Spulbaum); Latin, fusarius; French, fusain, from fuseau, spindle, euonymus (Gerbert's Gloss: theotisca, p. 139. Graff. Sprachsch. 5. 334); it is also a magic tree which prognosticates good or evil fortune; comp. hesputré and hespulägt-tré in Biörn's Icelandic Dictionary.
From the neigbourhood of Paderborn. It is allied to the story of The Three Brothers (No. 124) though the incidents vary. The
