Note 5 — The Enchanted Ring.

So the old woman dragged herself to the royal palace. She went into the royal courtyard, and without being announced she went right up to the very staircase of the King. The guards shook their arms at her as a sign that nobody was allowed to go there, but she didn’t trouble her head about that one bit, but kept on creeping up. Then all the royal lacqueys came running up, and took the old woman under the arms and would have quite gently led her down again; but the old woman made such a to-do and fell a-shrieking so loudly that it pierced through everything, and the King himself in his lofty carved palace heard the noise, and looked out of his little window into the courtyard, and saw his servants dragging an old woman down the staircase, and preventing her from entering the royal apartments, while the old woman was resisting and shrieking with all her might. “I won’t go out! I have come to the King on a good errand!” The King commanded them to admit the old woman. The old woman entered the carved palace, and saw sitting in the front corner, on the high carved throne, on cushions of purple velvet, the King in state, holding a council in the midst of his grandees and his councillors. The old woman invoked the aid of the holy ikons,5 and bowed very low before the King. “What hast thou to say, old woman?” asked the King.—“Now, lo! I have come to your Majesty—be not wroth at my words—I have come to your Majesty as a matchmaker!”—“Art thou in thy senses, old woman?” cried the King, and his brow was wrinkled with a frown.—“Nay, O father-king! pray do not be angry; pray give me an answer. You have the wares—a little daughter, a beauty; I have the purchaser—a young man, so wise, so cunning, a master of every trade, so that you could not find a better son-in-law. Tell me, therefore, straight out, won’t you give your daughter to my son?” The King listened and listened to the old woman, and at first his frown was blacker than night, but he thought to himself, “Does it become me, a king, to be wroth with a silly old woman?” And the royal councillors were amazed, for they saw the wrinkles on the King’s forehead smoothing out, and the King looked at the old woman with a smile. “If thy son is so cunning, and a master of every trade, let him build me within twenty-four hours a palace more gorgeous than my own, and let him hang a crystal bridge between this palace and my palace, and let luxuriant apple trees grow up all along this bridge, and let them bear silver and golden pippins, and let birds of paradise sing within these apple trees. And on the right-hand side of this crystal bridge let him build a cathedral five storeys high, with golden pinnacles, where he may receive the wedding crown with my daughter, and where the marriage may be celebrated. But if thy son fulfil not all this, then for thy and his presumption I will have you both smeared with tar and rolled in feathers and down, and hanged up in cages in the market-place as a laughing-stock to all good people.” And the King condescended to smile still more pleasantly, and his grandees and his councillors held their sides, and rolled about the floor for laughter, and they began with one voice to praise his wisdom and thought amongst themselves, “What fun it will be to see the old woman and her son hung up in cages! ’Tis as plain as daylight; a beard will sooner grow out of the palm of his hand than he be able to accomplish so shrewd a task.” The poor old woman was near to swooning. “What!” said she to the King, “is this thy final sovereign word? Is this what I must say to my son?”—“Yes, thus must thou say: if he accomplish this task, I will give him my daughter; if he does not accomplish it, I will put you both into cages.”