Bros. Grimm "The Gnome"

A king who was a lover of the variety of his trees forbids anyone from eating of any of them, lest they be buried 100 fathoms deep.  His three beautiful daughters gaze at the trees at harvest time, and especially one, heavily laden with blood-red fruit.  She takes one and advertising its deliciousness, gets the others to eat of it too, and they disappear below.  The king comes and calls after them, and when he is befuddled by the lack of a reply, he sends word throughout the kingdom.  

Three hunters, on the eighth day of their search, come upon a large castle full of beautiful apartments.  In one is laid a smoking hot meal, but the castle is unoccupied by any soul.  After half a day and starving, they decide to eat, and further, to live in the castle.  One will stay while the others go out to search for the daughters.  The eldest stays first, and a manikin comes to beg for bread, but drops it when he receives it and orders the hunter to pick it up.  When he does the little man grabs him by the hair and beats him.  The next day the same thing happened to the second brother, but they conspired not to tell the third, whom they called Stupid Hans because he was not exactly of the forest.  

When it’s the third brother’s turn, he refuses, saying the man doesn’t deserve it, and the mannikin starts to repeat his performance but the brother seizes the initiative and beats him until he was told him he knew where the King’s daughters were.  The mannikin told him he was a gnome, and there were a thousand like him.  He took the hunter to a waterless well and told him the daughters were there, combing the heads of many-headed dragons.  He also informed him to be wary of his comrades.

The third brother goes with his brothers to the well and draw lots, and the first goes down but rings the bell after a short time; the same happens with the second.  The third boldly goes all the way down, where he sees each of the daughters in chambers combing dragon’s heads.  He decapitates the serpents and has the daughters hoisted up, but puts a stone in place of himself when it is his turn.  He sees the gnome’s prophecy come true when the stone is dropped.  The two brothers take the daughters to the King, having them swear to not tell the truth.

The brother in the well, in the meantime, paces and paces.  He sees a flute but does not know what to do with it.  By and by, he plays it, and gnomes appear and fill the chamber.  They seize him by each hair and float him up.  When he arrives at the chamber where the king and the three daughters are waiting for the wedding to start, the ladies faint and the king orders the man seized.  When they come to they say they cannot tell the truth, but the king tells them to tell it to the stove, and he listens outside the room.  He sentences the two brothers to the gallows, gives the third in marriage to the intrepid hunter, and on that occasion I wore glass shoes that went “Klink” as I struck them against a stone.

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