East O the Sun and West O the Moon | Page 6

to try to make
the Princess laugh.
"All very well, my man," said the King, "but it's sure to be of no use,
for so many have been here and tried. My daughter is so sorrowful it's
no use trying, and it's not my wish that anyone should come to grief."
But the lad thought he would like to try. It couldn't be such a very hard
thing for him to get the Princess to laugh, for so many had laughed at
him, both gentle and simple, when he enlisted for a soldier and was
drilled by Corporal Jack.
So he went off to the courtyard, under the Princess's window, and
began to go through his drill as Corporal Jack had taught him. But it
was no good, the Princess was just as sad and serious and did not so
much as smile at him once. So they took him and thrashed him well,
and sent him home again.
Well, he had hardly got home before his second brother wanted to set

off. He was a schoolmaster, and the funniest figure one ever laid eyes
upon; he was lopsided, for he had one leg shorter than the other, and
one moment he was as little as a boy, and in another, when he stood on
his long leg, he was as tall and long as a Troll. Besides this he was a
powerful preacher.
So when he came to the king's palace, and said he wished to make the
Princess laugh, the King thought it might not be so unlikely after all.
"But mercy on you," he said, "if you don't make her laugh. We are for
laying it on harder and harder for every one that fails."
Then the schoolmaster strode off to the courtyard, and put himself
before the Princess's window, and read and preached like seven parsons,
and sang and chanted like seven clerks, as loud as all the parsons and
clerks in the country round.
The King laughed loud at him, and the Princess almost smiled a little,
but then became as sad and serious as ever, and so it fared no better
with Paul, the schoolmaster, than with Peter the soldier--for you must
know one was called Peter and the other Paul. So they took him and
flogged him well, and then they sent him home again.
Then the youngest, whose name was Taper Tom, was all for setting out.
But his brothers laughed and jeered at him, and showed him their sore
backs, and his father said it was no use for him to go for he had no
sense. Was it not true that he neither knew anything nor could do
anything? There he sat in the hearth, like a cat, and grubbed in the
ashes and split tapers. That was why they called him "Taper Tom." But
Taper Tom would not give in, and so they got tired of his growling; and
at last he, too, got leave to go to the king's palace to try his luck.
When he got there he did not say that he wished to try to make the
Princess laugh, but asked if he could get work there. No, they had no
place for him, but for all that Taper Tom would not give up. In such a
big palace they must want someone to carry wood and water for the
kitchen maid,--that was what he said. And the king thought it might
very well be, for he, too, got tired of his teasing. In the end Taper Tom
stayed there to carry wood and water for the kitchen maid.
So one day, when he was going to fetch water from the brook, he set
eyes upon a big fish which lay under an old fir stump, where the water
had eaten into the bank, and he put his bucket softly under the fish and
caught it. But as he was gong home to the grange he met an old woman

who led a golden goose by a string.
"Good-day, godmother," said Taper Tom, "that's a pretty bird you have,
and what fine feathers! If one only had such feathers one might leave
off splitting fir tapers."
The goody was just as pleased with the fish Tom had in his bucket and
said, if he would give her the fish, he might have the golden goose.
And it was such a curious goose. When any one touched it he stuck fast
to it, if Tom only said, "If you want to come along, hang on." Of course,
Taper Tom was willing enough to make the exchange. "A bird is as
good as a fish any day," he said to himself, "and, if it's such a bird as
you say, I can use it as a fish hook." That