went, one after the other, in quest of these things, and the sorceress took very good care that they should never return.  Nor would they have returned, if their sister had not succeeded in delivering them after great toil and trouble.”  As the bird ended his story, the king became unconscious, and when he revived he went himself to fetch the queen from the tower.  He soon returned with her to the festive chamber, holding her by the hand.  She was beautiful and gracious as ever, and having ate and drank a little, she died on the spot.  The king, distraught with grief and anger, ordered a furnace to be heated, and threw into it his sister-in-law and the midwife—­“ce tison de l’enfer!” As to the princess and her two brothers, I think they made good marriages all three, and as to the bird, they do not say if it continues still to speak the truth;—­“mats je presume que oui, puisque ce n’etait pas un homme!”

It would indeed be surprising did we not find our story popularly known throughout Germany in various forms.  Under the title of “The Three Little Birds” a version is given in Grimm’s K. u.  H. M. (No. 96, vol. i. of Mrs. Hunt’s English translation), which reproduces the chief particulars of Galland’s tale with at least one characteristic German addition;

Germanversion.

A king, who dwelt on the Keuterberg, was out hunting one day, when he was seen by three young girls who were watching their cows on the mountain, and the eldest, pointing to him, calls out to the two others, “If I do not get that one, I’ll have none;” the second, from another part of the hill, pointing to the one who was on the king’s right hand, cries “If I don’t get that one, I’ll have none;” and the youngest, pointing to the one who was on the king’s left hand, shouts, “And if I don’t get him, I’ll have none.”  When the king has returned home he sends for the three girls, and after questioning them as to what they had said to each other about himself and his two ministers, he takes the eldest girl for his own wife and marries the two others to the ministers.  The king was very fond of his wife, for she was fair and beautiful of face, and when he had to go abroad for a season he left her in charge of the two sisters who were the wives of his ministers, as she was about to become a mother.  Now the two sisters had no children, and when the queen gave birth to a boy who “brought a red star into the world with him,” they threw him into the river, whereupon a little bird flew up into the air, singing: 

          “To thy death art thou sped,
          Until God’s word be said. 
          In the white lily bloom,
          Brave boy, is thy tomb.”