If the Yellow Rose was in a rage on the two days before, she was in a far greater rage now. She said she wouldn’t sit there to listen. She told Jack that Hookedy-Crookedy was in her eyes a far more handsome and beautiful man than he or than any king’s son she had ever seen. She said to Jack, that if he were ten times as handsome and a hundred times as wealthy, she wouldn’t give Hookedy-Crookedy’s little finger for himself, or for all his wealth and possessions, and then she got up to leave the room.
“Well,” says Jack, says he, “I admire your spirit very much, and,” says he, “I would like to make you a little present. Here is a comb,” he said, “and it will comb out of your hair a bushel of gold and a bushel of silver every time you comb with it, and, besides,” says he, “it will make handsome the ugliest man that ever was.”
When the other sisters heard this they rushed to snatch the comb from her, but Jack threw them backwards so very roughly that their husbands sprang at him. With a back switch of his two hands Jack knocked the husbands down senseless. The King flew into a rage, and said, “How dare you do that to the two finest and bravest men of this world ?”
“Fine and brave, indeed!” said Jack. “One and the other they are worthless creatures, and not even your lawful sons-in-law.”
“How dare you say that ?” says the King.
“Strip their backs where they lie and see far yourself.” And there the King saw written, “An unlawfully married man.”
“What is the meaning of this?” says the King. “They were lawfully married to my two daughters, and they have the golden tokens of the marriage.”
Jack drew out from his pocket the golden balls and handed them to the King, and said, “It is I who have the tokens.”
The Yellow Rose had gone off to the garden in the middle of all this. Jack made the King sit down, and told him all his story, and how he came by the golden balls. He told him how he was Hookedy-Crookedy, and that it reflected a great deal of honor on his youngest daughter that she whom the King thought so worthless should refuse to give up Hookedy-Crookedy for the one she thought a wealthy prince. The King, you may be sure, was now highly delighted to grant him all he desired. A couple of drops of loca brought the King’s two sons to their senses again, and at Jack’s request, they were ordered to go and live elsewhere. Jack went off, left his mare in the wood, and came into the garden as Hookedy-Crookedy. He told the Yellow Rose he had been gathering bilberries.
“Oh,” says she, “I have something grand for you. Let me comb your hair with this comb.”
Hookedy-Crookedy put his head in her lap, and she combed out a bushel of gold and silver and when he stood up again, she saw Hookedy-Crookedy no more, but instead the beautiful prince that had been trying to win her in her father’s drawing-room for the last three days; and then and there to her Jack told his whole story, and it’s Yellow Rose who is the delighted girl.
With little delay they were married. The wedding lasted a year and a day, and there were five hundred fiddlers, five hundred fluters and a thousand fifers at it, and the last day was better than the first.
Shortly after the marriage, Jack and his bride were out walking one day. A beautiful young woman crossed their path. Jack addressed her, but she gave him a very curt reply.
“Your manners are not so handsome as your looks,” said Jack to her.
“And bad as they are, they are better than your memory, Hookedy-Crookedy,” says she.
“What do you mean?” says Jack.
She led Jack aside, and she told him, “I am the mare who was so good to you. I was condemned to that shape for a number of years, and now my enchantment is over. I had a brother who was enchanted into a bear, and whose enchantment is over now also. I had hopes,” she says, “that some day you would be my husband, but I see,” she says, “that you quickly forgot all about me. No matter now,” she says; “I couldn’t wish you a better and handsomer wife than you have got. Go home to your castle, and be happy and live prosperous. I shall never see you, and you will never see me again.”
Donal That Was Rich and Jack That Was Poor
ONCE there were two brothers named Donal and Jack. Donal was hired by a rich man who had one daughter, and when his master died, he married the daughter.
Jack, he lived close by, with his wife and a big family of children, and he was very poor; but Donal, he was no way good to Jack, and would never reach his hand to him with a thing. And when the hunger would come into Jack’s house, Jack, he used to think it little harm to steal a bullock out of Donal’s big flock, and kill it for his family.
At length Donal began to suspect that Jack was taking his bullocks, but he didn’t know how he would find out for sure. Donal’s old mother-in-law proposed a plan by which she could catch Jack. She made Donal put her into a big chest that had little spy-holes in it, and put in with her beef and brandy enough to last her nine days. Then Donal was to take the chest to Jack’s, and have it left there on some excuse.
Donal went to Jack, and said he had a big chest of things that was in his way, and asked Jack if he would be so good as to allow him to leave it in his kitchen for a week or so. Jack said he was very welcome to put in ten chests if he liked. So Donal had the chest with the mother-in-law and her provisions in it, carried to Jack’s, and planted in a good place in the kitchen.
On the very first night that the chest and the mother-in-law were at Jack’s, he stole and killed and brought in another bullock, and the old woman was watching it all through the spy-holes of the chest. And after Jack and his wife and children had eaten a hearty supper off the bullock, he and his wife began talking over one thing and another, and says he: “I’d like to know what Donal has in that chest.”
So off he went to a locksmith, and he got the loan of a whole bundle of keys, and he came and tried them all in the chest till he got one that opened it.
When Jack found what was in the chest, he lost little time taking away the beef and the brandy, and he put in their place empty bottles and clean-picked bones, and locked the old woman up with these again.
At the end of nine days, Donal came for the chest. He thanked Jack for giving him house room for it for so long, and said he had now room for it himself and so he had come to take it home. And behold you, when Donal and his wife opened the chest at home, there was the old woman dead of starvation, and a lot of bones and empty bottles in the chest.
Says Donaclass="underline" “She got greedy, and ate and drank the whole of the provisions the first day, and this is her deserving.”
Well, Donal and the wife waked her and buried her, with a purse of money under her head to pay her way in the next world, as they used to do in those days.
Jack, of course, he went to the wake and to the funeral, and sympathized sore with Donal and Donal’s wife both. But the very next night after the funeral, Jack dug up the corpse to get the money, as it was so useful to him. Then he took the old woman’s body on his shoulder and carried it off to Donal’s, and went down into Donal’s wine cellar. He put it sitting in a chair by a puncheon there, and put a glass into its hand, and turned on the wine.
In the morning Donal’s first race was always to the cellar to have a drink, and when he came down this morning he fell over and fainted with the fright when he saw his old mother-in-law sitting by the puncheon drinking. When he came to himself he had her taken up and laid out in the wake-room again.