"Fitcher's Feathered Bird.” The Juniper Tree, and other Tales from Grimm, Brothers Grimm, translated by Lore Segal, Randall Jarrell, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973, pp. 71-79.

Tale Summary

There was once upon a time a sorcerer who disguised himself as a beggar, and would go door to door abducting pretty girls. He knocked on the door of a man who had three pretty daughters, and when the eldest handed him a bite of food he touched her and she magically jumped into his basket. When they got home to his splendid house in the forest, he promised that she would be happy with him and would have anything her heart desired, but that he had to leave for a few days. He gave her a set of keys and told her that she may go anywhere she liked except for one specific room. He also gave her an egg that she must look after, and told her that if she disobeyed him with either of these tasks the punishment would be death. The girl amused herself for some time before she could not help but look in the forbidden room. She was horrified to see a basin full of dead people hacked into pieces, and dropped the egg out of panic into the blood. She tried as hard as she could to wipe the blood off, but it would not budge, and when the man came home he knew what she had done by looking at it. He dragged her to the room and chopped her into pieces. The sorcerer went to fetch the second daughter, and the same fate befell her exactly as it did her sister. When the third daughter, who was cunning, was captured and given the same rules, she hid the egg away and made her way to the forbidden room. She found her sisters and put them back together again, and once they regained their life they hid away. When the man returned and found no blood on the egg he told her that she had passed the test and that she would be his bride. His power over her was gone and he had to do whatever she wanted. She told him to take a basketful of gold to her parents, and that he must carry it on his back and not rest the whole way because she would be watching him. She snuck her two sisters into the basket and told them to send help when they arrived home before covering them with gold coins. The sorcerer walked off with the basket, and each time he stopped to rest one of the sisters would pretend to be his bride and warn that she was watching him and he could not rest. At the sorcerer’s house, the girl sent out wedding invitations to all of her bridegroom’s friends, and decorated a skill with jewels and flowers and placed it in the attic facing out of a window. She then covered herself in honey and feathers as a disguise and made her way home to her parents, and passed some of the wedding guests on the way. She told them that they could see the young bride from the attic window. She also met the sorcerer on the way and told him the same, and so he and all of his friends went into the house. The girl’s brothers and other relatives arrived and locked the doors and set the house on fire, killing all who were inside.