water, and then she too went away, for now she was freed.  The others, however, went to the old fisherman, and all were glad that they had found each other again, and they hung the bird in its cage on the wall.  But the second son could not settle at home, and took his cross-bow and went a-hunting.  When he was tired he took his flute and played on it.  The king happened to be also hunting, and hearing the music went up to the youth and said, “Who has given thee leave to hunt here?” “O. no one.”  “To whom dost thou belong, then?” “I am the fisherman’s son.”  “But he has no children.”  “If thou wilt not believe it, come with me.”  The king did so, and questioned the fisherman, who told the whole story, and the little bird on the wall began to sing: 

“The mother sits alone
There in the prison small;
O King of the royal blood,
These are thy children all.

The sisters twain, so false,
They wrought the children woe,
There in the waters deep,
Where the fishers come and go.”

Then the king took the fisherman, the three little children, and the bird back with him to the castle, and ordered his wife to be taken out of prison and brought before him.  She had become very ill and weak, but her daughter gave her some of the water of the fountain to drink and she became strong and healthy.  But the two false sisters were burnt, and the maiden was married to the Prince.

Even in Iceland, as already stated, the same tale has long cheered the hardy peasant’s fire-side circle, while the “wind without did roar and rustle.”  That it should have reached that out-of-the-way country through Galland’s version is surely inconceivable, notwithstanding the general resemblance which it bears to the “Histoire des Soeurs jalouses de leur Cadette.”  It is found in Powell and Magnusson’s “Legends of Iceland,” second series, and as that excellent work is not often met with (and why so, I cannot understand), moreover, as the story is told with much naivete, I give it here in full: 

Icelandicversion.

Not very far from a town where dwelt the king lived once upon a time a farmer.  He was well to do and had three daughters; the eldest was twenty years of age, the two others younger, but both marriageable.  Once, when they were walking outside their father’s farm, they saw the king coming riding on horseback with two followers, his secretary and his bootmaker.  The king was unmarried, as were also those two men.  When they saw him, the eldest of the sisters said, “I do not wish anything higher than to be the wife of the king’s shoemaker.”  Said the second, “And I of the king’s secretary.”  Then the youngest said?  “I wish that I were the wife of the king himself.”  Now the king heard that they were talking together, and said to his followers, “I will go to the girls yonder and know what it is they were talking about.  It seemed to me that I heard one of them say, ‘The king himself."’ His followers said that what