, as he would to a
human friend who sneezed: "God help thee!" The man did so, whereupon the
adder shot forth before him with fiery body and terrible rattling, so
startling him that he turned and fled. The snake hurried after him,
crying out that it would not hurt him, but that if he would take (not,
however, with naked hands) the bunch of keys that hung about its neck,
it would then lead the way to a great treasure and make him happy. He
turned a deaf ear to these entreaties; and as he ran away he heard the
snake exclaim that now it must remain enchanted until yon little oak
tree had grown great, and a cradle had been made out of the timber: the
first child that lay in that cradle would be able to deliver it. The
same incident reappears in another saga, in which some men passing
through the forest hear a sneeze, and one of them says: "God help thee!"
The sneeze and the blessing are repeated; but when the sneeze was heard
a third time, the man exclaimed: "Oh, go to the devil!" "I believe
somebody is making game of us," said another. But a mannikin stepped
forward and said: "If you had said a third time 'God help thee!' I
should have been saved. Now I must wait until an acorn falls from yonder
tree and becomes an oak, and a cradle is made out of its timber. The
child that comes to lie in that cradle will be able to deliver me." In
this case all that was required was a thrice-repeated blessing. Another
curious means of deliverance is found in a story from Old Strelitz.
There an enchanted princess haunted a bridge a short distance from one
of the gates of the town, on the road to Woldegk. Whoever in going over
this bridge uttered a certain word, could unspell her if he would
afterwards allow her to walk beside him the rest of the way over the
bridge without speaking; but the difficulty was that nobody knew what
the powerful word was.[179]

Two other legends may be noticed on the mode of undoing the spell. The
White Lady who haunts the White Tower on the White Hill at Prague was
married to a king. She betrayed him, and married his enemy, from whom
she subsequently fled with an officer of his army. She was, however,
caught, and walled up in the White Tower. From this she may be delivered
if she can find any one who will allow her to give him three stabs in
the breast with a bayonet without uttering a sound. Once she prevailed
on a young recruit, who was placed as sentinel before the magazine of
the castle, to stand the necess