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forgot what the fox had said, and sat down on the side of the brook: and while he thought of no harm coming to him they crept behind him, and threw him down the bank, and took the princess, the horse, and the bird, and went home to the king their master, and said, “All these we have won by our own skill and strength." Then there was great merriment made, and the king held a feast, and the two brothers were welcomed home; but the horse would not eat, the bird would not sing, and the princess sat by herself in her chamber, and wept bitterly.

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The youngest son fell to the bottom of the bed of the stream. Luckily, it was nearly dry, but his bones were almost broken, and the bank was so steep that he could find no way to get out. As he stood bewailing his fate, and thinking what he should do, to his great joy he spied his old and faithful friend the fox, looking down from the bank upon him. Then Reynard scolded him for not following his advice, which would have saved him from all the troubles that had befallen him. Yet," said he, "silly as you have been, I cannot bear to leave you here; so lay hold of my brush, and hold fast!" Then he pulled him out of the river, and said to him, as he got upon the bank, "Your brothers have set a watch to kill you if they find you making your way back." So he dressed himself as a poor piper, and came playing on his pipe to the king's court. But he was scarcely within the gate when the horse began to eat, and the bird to sing, and the princess left off weeping. And when he got to the great hall, where all the court sat feasting, he went straight up to the king, and told him all his brothers' roguery

Then it made the king very angry to hear what they had done, and they were seized and punished; and the youngest son had the princess given to him again; and he married her; and after the king's death he was chosen king in his stead.

After his marriage he went one day to walk in the wood, and there the old fox met him once more, and besought him, with tears in his eyes, to be so kind as to cut off his head and his brush. At last he did so, though sorely against his will, and in the same moment the fox was changed into a prince, and the princess knew him to be her own brother, who had been lost a great many years; for a spiteful fairy had enchanted him, with a spell that could only be broken by some one getting the golden bird, and by cutting off his head and his brush.

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SONG.

OH! let us be fairies, if fairies are free
From heartless, dull fancies, that plague you and ma :
If labyrinths of fashion ne'er tangle their feet,
Nor pleasure brings sorrow, nor kindness deceit !

The fairies! the fairies! oh, be they indeed
Gay children of nature, whose home is the mead?
Who toil not, and care not; who, blessing and blest,
Just live out their summer, and close it in rest?

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There's wisdom with fairies: I'll visit their school, They'll show me their Order, and teach me their Rule:

And if they adopt me, why fare thee well, earth!

We want not each other, in mourning or airth !

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ROSE-BUD-FRITZ AND HIS FRIENDS-THE ELFIN GROVE.

ROSE-BUD.*

A KING and queen once upon a time reigned in a country a great way off, where there were in those days fairies. Now this king and queen had plenty of money,

* "Dornröschen" of Grimm, a Hessian story. We have, perhaps, in our alteration of the heroine's name, lost one of the links of connexion, which MM. Grimm observe between this fable and that of the ancient tradition of the restoration of Brynhilda, by Sigurd, as narrated in the Edda of Sæmund in Volsunga Saga. enchanted fortifications, and rouses the heroine.

Sigurd pierces the "Who is it," said

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and plenty of fine clothes to wear, and plenty of good things to eat and drink, and a coach to ride out in every day but though they had been married many years they had no children, and this grieved them very much indeed. But one day as the queen was walking by the side of the river, at the bottom of the garden, she saw a poor little fish, that had thrown itself out of the water, and lay gasping and nearly dead on the bank. Then the queen took pity on the little fish, and threw it back again into the river; and before it swam away it lifted its head out of the water and said, "I know what your wish is, and it shall be fulfilled, in return for your kindness to me—you will soon have a daughter." What the little fish had foretold soon came to pass; and the queen had a little girl, so very beautiful that the king could not cease looking on it for joy, and said he would hold a great feast and make merry, and show the child to all the land. So he asked his kinsmen, and nobles, and friends, and neighbours. But the queen said, "I will have the fairies also, that they might be kind and good to our little daughter." Now

she, "of might sufficient to rend my armour and to break my sleep?" She afterwards tells the cause of her trance: "Two kings contended : one hight Hialmgunnar, and he was old but of mickle might, and Odin had promised him the victory. I felled him in fight, but Odin struck my head with the sleepy-thorn [the Thorn-rose or Dog-rose, see Altdeutsche Wälder, i. 135], and said I should never be again victorious, and should be hereafter wedded."-Herbert's Miscell. Poetry, vol. ii. p. 23. Though the allusion to the Sleep-rose is preserved in our heroine's name, she suffers from the wound of a spindle, as in the Pentamerone of G. B. Basile, v. 5. The further progress of Sigurd's, or Siegfried's, adventures will be seen in " Heads Off," another of the stories of Grimm's collection, to be found at the end of our volume.

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