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‘Oh, how can I stop it?’ asked he. ‘Will you help me?’

‘Yes, I will,’ replied the ogress.

‘Thank you, thank you!’ cried Halfman, kissing her on the forehead. ‘My wife is dearer to me than anything else in the world, and it is not my brother’s fault that I am not dead long ago.’

‘Very well, I will rid you of him,’ said the ogress, ‘but only on one condition. If a boy is born to you, you must give him to me!’

‘Oh, anything,’ answered Halfman, ‘as long as you deliver me from my brother, and get me my wife.’

‘Mount on my back, then, and in a quarter of an hour we shall be there.’

The ogress was as good as her word, and in a few minutes they arrived at the outskirts of the town where Halfman and his brothers lived. Here she left him, while she went into the town itself, and found the wedding guests just leaving the brother’s house. Unnoticed by anyone, the ogress crept into a curtain, changing herself into a scorpion, and when the brother was going to get into bed, she stung him behind the ear, so that he fell dead where he stood. Then she returned to Halfman and told him to go and claim his bride. He jumped up hastily from his seat, and took the road to his father’s house. As he drew near he heard sounds of weeping and lamentations, and he said to a man he met: ‘What is the matter?’

‘The judge’s eldest son was married yesterday, and died suddenly before night.’

‘Well,’ thought Halfman, ‘my conscience is clear anyway, for it is quite plain he coveted my wife, and that is why he tried to drown me.’ He went at once to his father’s room, and found him sitting in tears on the floor. ‘Dear father,’ said Halfman, ‘are you not glad to see me? You weep for my brother, but I am your son too, and he stole my bride from me and tried to drown me in the brook. If he is dead, I at least am alive.’

‘No, no, he was better than you!’ moaned the father.

‘Why, dear father?’

‘He told me you had behaved very ill,’ said he.

‘Well, call my brothers,’ answered Halfman, ‘as I have a story to tell them.’ So the father called them all into his presence. Then Halfman began: ‘After we were twelve days’ journey from home, we met an ogress, who gave us greeting and said, “Why have you been so long coming? The daughters of your uncle have waited for you in vain,” and she bade us follow her to the house, saying, “Now there need be no more delay; you can marry your cousins as soon as you please, and take them with you to your own home.” But I warned my brothers that the man was not our uncle, but an ogre.

‘When we lay down to sleep, she spread a red cloth over us, and covered her daughters with a white one; but I changed the cloths, and when the ogress came back in the middle of the night, and looked at the cloths, she mistook her own daughters for my brothers, and killed them one by one, all but the youngest. Then I woke my brothers, and we all stole softly from the house, and we rode like the wind to our real uncle.

‘And when he saw us, he bade us welcome, and married us to his twelve daughters, the eldest to the eldest, and so on to me, whose bride was the youngest of all and also the prettiest. And my brothers were filled with envy, and left me to drown in a brook, but I was saved by a fish who showed me how to get out. Now, you are a judge! Who did well, and who did evil–I or my brothers?’

‘Is this story true?’ said the father, turning to his sons.