At the end of seven years she was given the iron shoes. She climbed the glass hill, and came to an old washerwoman's cottage. The washerwoman told of a gallant young knight who had given her some blood stained shirts to be washed. He said that she who washed his shirts clean would be his bride.
The old wife had washed and washed until she was tired, and then she had et her daughter to it. They had both washed, and washed, and washed, in hope of winning the young knight: but do what they might, they had not been able to take out a single stain.
So they set the stranger lass to work and, as soon as she began, the stains came out, leaving the shirts clean and white. But the old wife told the knight that her daughter had washed the shirts.
So the young knight and the washer-woman's daughter were to be married. The stranger lass was distracted by the thought of it, for she had recognized the knight at once. It was he she had known as the Black Bull. Then she remembered her apple, and breaking it open, she found it full of precious gold and precious jewelry, the richest she had ever seen.
"All these," she said to the washer-woman's daughter, "I will give you, if you put off your marriage for one day, and allow me to go into his room alone tonight.' |
