The Science of Fairy Tales / An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology

A man who was in the habit of meeting in a certain wood an adder, which always sneezed thrice as he passed, consulted his parish priest on the subject. The priest advised him to say the next time, 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 necessary trial; but on receiving the first blow he could not forbear crying aloud: ?Jesus! Mary! thou hast given it me!? Another old castle in Bohemia has twelve ladies enchanted by day as fish in the fountain of the castle garden, and appearing only at night in their true shape. They can not be disenchanted unless by twelve men who will remain in the castle for twelve months without once going outside the walls.[180]