to the castle, between eleven and twelve o'clock, for then only can the castle be seen, after which time it sinks into the water. The north wind also tells him all that will happen, and what he is to do. He enters a magnificent room wherein a princess lies sleeping, and then one which is still more splendid in which likewise a beautiful maiden is sleeping, and lastly into a third and still more splendid room, in which the most beautiful maiden of all is sleeping. Then he writes his name and the day of the month and the year, on a sheet of paper, and lies down beside her in the bed, and when he awakes again he takes three keys which are under her pillow, and goes down into the cellar and fills three bottles with the water. Then he ascends in great haste, and just as he is outside the door, twelve o'clock strikes, and the castle vanishes. The north wind which has waited for him carries him back to the old fox, and the fox carries him back to his horse which is with the first giant. And now the King's son rides into the town and wants to see the thieves hanged, but recognizes his own brothers and buys them off. Then follows the exactly-corresponding treachery of the brothers. The King's daughter writes a letter and asks in marriage the one who has been with her. The two others present themselves one after the other, but she sees by their discourse that neither of them is the right one. She repeatedly asks about the youngest, and it comes to light that he is still living. He goes in the rags which he has been forced to wear, to the beautiful princess, who has given birth to a son, and she receives him with joy.
The affinity between our previous stories, No. 96, No. 57, and the Arabian and Italian stories and the above, strikes us at once. This is the purest form of the story so far as regards the point that the Water of Life is sought to cure an aged king, who is ill. In Der trojanische Krieg, by Konrad von Würtzburg, Medea uses water from Paradise to rejuvenate Jason's father (verse 10,651), "lieht von golde rôt" (10,658), wherein she boils the magic drink. Being turned into stone is in the Paderborn, as well as in the Arabian story, the punishment of him who does not win the victory. In the Low German story it does not appear; but the black dog (there are black stones in The Thousand and One Nights), which also no one was to turn round to look at, clearly points to it. The dog afterwards becomes a handsome prince; just as the stones in the other story are transformed. Moreover, this being turned to stone and in The Thousand and One Nights the fact that the brothers leave a token with their sister when they go (the eldest leaves a knife which will look bright as long as he lives, and bloody when he dies), shows a radical similarity and connection with No. 60. The story of Queen Wilowitte, p. 54, in Wolf's Hausmärchen; The King's Daughter in the Mountains of Muntserrat; a
