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Updated: June 22, 2025
Now these incidents really belong to another formula, that of the Master-Maid, in which an ogre's or giant's daughter, helps the hero to perform tasks, flees away with him, is pursued by the ogre, loses her beloved through an Oblivion Kiss and has to win him again from his False Bride by purchasing the right of spending three nights with him.
And when they took him to the Queen, his mother, she rushed to him and kissed him before he could say nay. No sooner had his mother kissed him than all memory of the Master-Maid disappeared from his mind. And when he told his mother and his father what he had done in the giant's castle and how he had escaped, he said nothing of the help given him by the Master-Maid.
After much persuasion the Prince agreed to do what the Master-Maid had told him, and made a ladder out of her bones and climbed up to the top of the tree and took the birds' nest with the six eggs in it, and then he put the bones together, but forgot to put one little bone in its proper place.
Then the giant knew that the voice was outside the bedroom, and rushed up to find Edgar and his bride, but found they were gone. He rushed to the stable and chose his great horse Dapplegrim and rode after Prince Edgar and the Master-Maid.
She bent over him and cried: "I grew the forest for thee, I made the glass mount for thee, For thee a stream flowed from my magic flask, And yet thou'lt not wake and speak to me." But this time Prince Edgar rose up in bed and recognized the Master-Maid, and called in his father and his mother and told them all that had happened, which had now come back to him.
At the same time the story as a whole is found spread from America to Samoa, from India to Scotland, with indubitable signs of being the same story dressed up according to local requirements. The Master-Maid is, accordingly, one of the most instructive of all folk-tales, from the point of view of the problem of diffusion.
So when he had sprinkled the water over the bones the Master-Maid stood up before him just as before, but the little finger of her left hand was not there. She cried and said: "Ah, why did you not do what I told you put all my bones together in their place? You forgot my little finger; I shall never have one all the days of my life."
Now the Master-Maid had put on that day a beautiful dress of rich silk, and when the Prince's wife saw it she went to the Master-Maid and said: "I should like that dress. Will you not sell it to me?" "Yes," said the Master-Maid, "but at a price you are not likely to give." "What do you want for it?" said the Princess. "I want to spend one night in the room of your bridegroom, Prince Edgar."
But when the giant had gone out for the day he went at once to the Master-Maid and told her of his new task. "That is the hardest of all," said the Master-Maid. "There is only one way to do the task. You must cut me up into small pieces and take out my bones, and out of the bones you must make a ladder, and with that ladder you can reach the top." "That I will never do," said the Prince.
This is one of the oldest and widest spread tales of the world, and the resultant formula was, therefore, more than usually difficult to reconstruct. The essence of the tale consists in the Menial Hero Three Tasks Master-Maid Help Obstacles to Pursuit Oblivion Kiss False Bride Sale of Bed Happy Marriage.
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