agreement, and returning together to their father’s house, they satisfied the old man with a display of their abilities Soon after this the king’s daughter was carried off by a dragon, and the king proclaimed that whoever brought her back should have her to wife.  This the four clever brothers thought was a fine chance for them, and they resolved to liberate the king’s daughter.  The astronomer looked through his telescope and saw the princess far away on a rock in the sea and the dragon watching beside her.  Then they went and got a ship from the king, and sailed over the sea till they came to the rock, where the princess was sitting and the dragon was asleep with his head in her lap.  The hunter feared to shoot lest he should kill the princess.  Then the thief crept up the rock and stole her from under the dragon so cleverly that the monster did not awake.  Full of joy, they hurried off with her and sailed away.  But presently the dragon awoke and missing the princess flew after them through the air.  Just as he was hovering above the ship to swoop down upon it, the hunter shot him through the heart and he tumbled down dead, but falling on the vessel his carcase smashed it into pieces.  They laid hold of two planks and drifted about till the tailor with his wonderful needle sewed the planks together, and then they collected the fragments of the ship which the tailor also sewed together so skilfully that their ship was again sea-worthy, and they soon got home in safety.  The king was right glad to see his daughter and told the four brothers they must settle among themselves which of them should have her to wife.  Upon this they began to wrangle with one another.  The astronomer said, “If I had not seen the princess, all your arts would have been useless, so she is mine.”  The thief claimed her, because he had rescued her from the dragon; the hunter, because he had shot the monster; and the tailor, because he had sewn the ship together and saved them all from drowning.  Then the king decreed:  “Each of you has an equal right, and as all of you cannot have her, none of you shall; but I will give to each as a reward half a kingdom,” with which the four clever brothers were well contented.

The story has assumed a droll form among the Albanians, in which no fewer than seven remarkably endowed youths play their parts in rescuing a king’s daughter from the Devil, who had stolen her out of the palace.  One of the heroes could hear far off; the second could make the earth open; the third could steal from any one without his knowing it; the fourth could throw an object to the end of the world; the fifth could erect an impregnable tower; the sixth could bring down anything however high it might be in the air and the seventh could catch whatever fell from any height.  So they set off together, and after travelling along way, the first lays his ear to the ground.  “I hear him,” he says.  Then the second causes the earth to open, and down they go, and find the Devil