Magic and Witchcraft., part 4 · page 21 2101By this mark, after he has disappeared for some time, he is eventually recognized, and the princess is obliged to marry him.102[343] In a third story,[344] the conditions of winning the princely bride are easier, for "he who takes a leap on horseback, and kisses the king's daughter on the balcony, to him will they give her to wife."103In a fourth, the princess is to marry the man "who, on horseback, bounds up to her on the third floor."104At the first trial, the _Durak_, or Fool, reaches the first floor, at the next, the second; and the third time, "he bounds right up to the princess, and carries off from her a ring."105[345]106In the Norse story of "Dapplegrim,"[346] a younger brother saves a princess who had been stolen by a Troll, and hidden in a cave above a steep wall of rock as smooth as glass.107Twice his magic horse tries in vain to surmount it, but the third time it succeeds, and the youth carries off the princess, who ultimately becomes his wife.108Another Norse story still more closely resembles the Russian tales.109In "The Princess on the Glass Hill"[347] the hero gains a Princess as his wife by riding up a hill of glass, on the top of which she sits with three golden apples in her lap, and by carrying off these precious fruits.110He is enabled to perform this feat by a magic horse, which he obtains by watching his father's crops on three successive St. John's Nights.111In 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."112The 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.113In 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.114In some Eastern stories it is set in a much plainer light; in one modern collection for instance,[349] it occurs four times.115A 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.116Another 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.117A third king's daughter lives in a garden "hedged round with seven hedges made of bayonets," by which her suitors are generally transfixed.118A 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."119The 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.120The 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."121Gunnar 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."122[350]1 2← previousMagic and Witchcraft., part 3next →Magic and Witchcraft., part 5↑ back to Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-loreThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/45/page/2/