the girls had been chattering about could hardly be of much importance.  The king did not heed this, however, but declared that they would all go to the girls and have a talk with them.  This they did.  The king then asked what they had been talking about a moment ago, when he and his men passed them.  The sisters were unwilling to tell the truth, but being pressed hard by the king, did so at last.  Now as the damsels pleased the king, and he saw that they were both handsome and fair-spoken particularly the youngest of them, he said that all should be as they had wished it.  The sisters were amazed at this, but the king’s will must be done.

So the three sisters were married, each to the husband she had chosen.  But when the youngest sister had become queen, the others began to cast on her looks of envy and hatred, and would have her, at any cost, dragged down from her lofty position.  And they laid a plot for the accomplishment of this their will.  When the queen was going to be confined for the first time, her sisters got leave to act as her midwives.  But as soon as the child was born they hid it away, and ordered it to be thrown into a slough into which all the filth was cast.  But the man to whom they had entrusted this task could not bring himself to do it, so put the child on the bank of the slough, thinking that some one might find it and save its life.  And so it fell out; for an old man chanced to pass the slough soon afterwards and finding a crying child on the bank, thought it a strange find, took it up and brought it to his home, cherishing it as he could.  The queen’s sisters took a whelp and showed it to the king as his queen’s offspring.  The king was grieved at this tale, but, being as fond of the queen as of his own life, he restrained his anger and punished her not.

At the second and third confinement of the queen her sisters played the same trick:  they exposed the queen’s children in order to have them drowned in the slough.  The man however, always left them on the bank, and it so happened that the same old earl always passed by and took up the children, and carried them home, and brought them up as best he could.  The queen’s sisters said that the second time the queen was confined she had given birth to a kitten, and the third time, to a log of wood.  At this the king waxed furiously wroth, and ordered the queen to be thrown into the house where he kept a lion as he did not wish this monster to fill his kingdom with deformities.  And the sisters thought that they had managed their boat well and were proud of their success.  The lion, however, did not devour the queen, but even gave her part of his food and was friendly towards her and thus the queen lived with the lion, a wretched enough life without anybody’s knowing anything about it.