The Pink Fairy Book, part 32 · page 21 2101These you must carefully peel and eat, and in time your wish will be fulfilled.’102The queen did as the poor woman told her; and after she had bathed she found the two onions under the bath.103They were both alike in size and appearance.checked by a teacher104When she saw these she knew that the woman had been something more than she seemed to be, and in her delight she ate up one of the onions, skin and all.105When she had done so she remembered that the woman had told her to peel them carefully before she ate them.106It was now too late for the one of them, but she peeled the other and then ate it too.107In due time it happened as the woman had said; but the first that the queen gave birth to was a hideous lindorm, or serpent.108No one saw this but her waiting-woman, who threw it out of the window into the forest beside the castle.109The next that came into the world was the most beautiful little prince, and he was shown to the king and queen, who knew nothing about his brother the lindorm.110There was now joy in all the palace and over the whole country on account of the beautiful prince; but no one knew that the queen’s first-born was a lindorm, and lay in the wild forest.111Time passed with the king, the queen, and the young prince in all happiness and prosperity, until he was twenty years of his age.112Then his parents said to him that he should journey to another kingdom and seek for himself a bride, for they were beginning to grow old, and would fain see their son married. before they were laid in their grave.113The prince obeyed, had his horses harnessed to his gilded chariot, and set out to woo his bride.114But when he came to the first cross-ways there lay a huge and terrible lindorm right across the road, so that his horses had to come to a standstill.115‘Where are you driving to?116‘ asked the lindorm with a hideous voice.117‘That does not concern you,’ said the prince.118‘I am the prince, and can drive where I please.’119‘Turn back,’ said the lindorm.120‘I know your errand, but you shall get no bride until I have got a mate and slept by her side.’121The prince turned home again, and told the king and the queen what he had met at the cross-roads; but they thought that he should try again on the following day, and see whether he could not get past it, so that he might seek a bride in another kingdom.122The prince did so, but got no further than the first cross-roads; there lay the lindorm again, who stopped him in the same way as before.123The same thing happened on the third day when the prince tried to get past: the lindorm said, with a threatening voice, that before the prince could get a bride he himself must find a mate.124When the king and queen heard this for the third time they could think of no better plan than to invite the lindorm to the palace, and they should find him a mate.125They thought that a lindorm would be quite well satisfied with anyone that they might give him, and so they would get some slave-woman to marry the monster.126The lindorm came to the palace and received a bride of this kind, but in the morning she lay torn in pieces.127So it happened every time that the king and queen compelled any woman to be his bride.1 2← previousThe Pink Fairy Book, part 31next →The Pink Fairy Book, part 33↑ back to The Pink Fairy BookThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/32/page/2/