s Garm, the watch-dog of
Helheim, precedes the cataclysms of Ragnaroek.]

[Footnote 147: This is the usual condition attached to such gifts, as in
the Swiss story of a chamois-hunter who received an inexhaustible cheese
from a mountain-spirit. But in the case of the magic saddlebags of the
Moor in the story of Joodar (_Thousand and One Nights_), it was a
condition that all the dishes should be put back empty. The Jews, too,
were forbidden to leave anything over from the Passover Feast.]

[Footnote 148: Or frog: the word is the same.]

[Footnote 149: Either the extinct urus or the nearly extinct aurochs
must be here intended.]

THE EGG-BORN PRINCESS.

(KREUTZWALD.)

Like many others, this story begins with a childless queen whose husband
is absent at the wars. She is visited by an old woman on crutches, who
gives her a little box of birch-bark containing a bird's egg, and tells
her to foster it in her bosom for three months, till a live doll like a
human infant is hatched from it. This was to be kept in a woollen
basket till it had grown to the size of a new-born child. It would not
require food or drink, but the basket must be kept in a warm place. Nine
months after the doll's birth, the queen herself would give birth to a
son, and the king was to proclaim that God had sent the royal parents a
son and daughter. The queen was to suckle the prince herself, but to
procure a nurse for the princess; and when the children were christened,
the old woman wished to be their godmother, and gave the queen a bird's
feather with which to summon her. The matter was to be kept secret. Then
the old woman departed, but as she went, she grew suddenly young, and
seemed to fly rather than to walk.

A fortnight afterwards the king returned victorious, and the queen was
encouraged to hope for the best. In three months' time, a doll, half a
finger long, was hatched from the egg, and all came to pass as the old
woman had foretold. On the christening day, the queen opened one of the
windows and cast out the feather.

When all the guests were assembled, a grand carriage drove up, drawn by
six yolk-coloured horses, and a young lady stepped out in rose-coloured
gold-embroidered silken robes, which shone with sunlike radiance, though
the face of the lady was concealed by a fine veil. She removed it on
entering, when all agreed that she was the fairest maiden they had ever
seen in their lives. She took the princess in her arms, and