“Seven with One Blow!.” The Turnip Princess: and other newly discovered fairy tales, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, New York: Penguin Books, 2015, pp. 55-57.

Tale Summary

There was once a tailor who used his sword to kill some flies that were annoying him.  Impressed that he had killed seven at once, he wrote with chalk on his hat: “Seven with One Blow!”. A kitchen boy read the words and rushed to tell his master, a count, about him, and soon the tailor was requested to have an audience with him. The count told him that there were three giants terrorizing his lands, and if he was able to defeat them, he would win the count's castle, his lands, and the hand of his daughter. The tailor was brought into the forest and left to do his work. He was terrified and climbed up a tree to look around, when the giants gathered right beneath him and went to sleep. The tailor dropped a stone on the chest of all three, and they started arguing amongst themselves, until the tallest killed the other two. The tailor climbed down and chopped the heads off of all three and brought the prizes to the count. The count's daughter was insulted at the thought of marrying a tailor so she persuaded her father to send him to the woods again to battle a dangerous unicorn, and again the tailor was left alone in the wilderness. He hid behind a tree, and when the unicorn found him and charged, its horn got stuck in the trunk, and the tailor returned to let everyone know that he had captured it. Still, the woman didn't want anything to do with him, and so the count told the tailor that he must fight his enemies which were making rapid advances on his territory. The tailor chose an old nag from the stables, which went straight for the music playing from the enemy camp. On their way was a field cross, which broke off when the tailor grabbed it, and so the heathen enemies sped off believing that Christ himself was headed towards them. The wedding was finally set, but a servant revealed to the tailor that his bride was planning to kill him on their wedding night. He got in bed with the lady and pretended to be asleep, and when he saw assassins walk into the bedroom, he started mumbling that he had killed seven with one blow, slain three giants, caught a dangerous unicorn and made infidels flee. The assassins were terrified and begged for mercy and the bride asked him to forgive her and promised to love him forever.