Free Tatterhood by Margrete Lamond

princess, ‘but you can have them if you’ll let me visit my sweetheart tonight.’
    â€˜Ech! If you agree to let me put him to sleep first,’ said the troll, ‘and wake him again in the morning.’
    The princess agreed, and when the prince went to his room, the troll-hag went with him. But she gave him a sleeping potion so strong that he stayed asleep the whole night through, no matter how the princess shouted and shook him.
    Next day, the king’s daughter sat herself outside the troll-hag’s window again, and set to pouring from the flask. It gushed like a stream with mead and wine, and never once ran empty.
    Well, no sooner did she see it than the troll-hag wanted the flask as well.
    Once again, the princess said she’d swap it for permission to visit her sweetheart, and the troll-hag agreed – except that she herself would see him to sleep and wake him again in the morning. So, when he went to his room, the prince was given another sleeping potion, and it went no better that night either; the prince was in no state to wake up, no matter how the king’s daughter pummelled and yelled.
    It happened, however, that one of the workers overheard the crying and commotion in the prince’s room. He guessed what was happening and, the following morning, told the prince that the king’s daughter might have turned up to rescue him.
    That day, it went with the cloth exactly as it had with the shears and flask. The king’s daughter went outside the castle, spread the cloth and told it to serve her with food. It dished up enough for a hundred hungry workers and, when the troll-hag looked out and saw it, she wanted the cloth as well.
    Once more the princess bargained for a night beside her sweetheart, and once again the troll agreed – on condition, of course, that she herself would put the prince to sleep, and that she herself would wake him.
    When the prince went to his room, along came the troll with her sleeping potion as usual. But this time the prince kept his wits about him. He asked the troll-hag to fetch honey to sweeten the drink, and when she had gone, he poured out the potion, then pretended he had drunk it down without the honey after all.
    Well, the troll didn’t trust anyone, not even herself. So, when the prince lay down to sleep, she fished out a darning needle and jabbed it clean through his arm – just to be sure. But the prince watched through his eyelashes, saw the needle coming and – no matter how it hurt – didn’t so much as twitch.
    Then the troll was satisfied and let the princess in.
    Of course, the prince was nothing like asleep. In fact, with his princess encircled in one arm and a hole straight through the other, he was more awake than he had been for a long time.
    â€˜If only we could be rid of the troll,’ he said, ‘then we’d be free – both of her and her enchantment.’
    It happened that the princess had a few ideas. She had been listening at windows and knew that, in troll tradition, the bride always rode foremost in the wedding procession.
    â€˜You pretend to go ahead with the marriage,’ she said to the prince, ‘and I’ll ask the carpenters to build a swivel in the first bridge along the way. When the troll-hag rides onto it, the bridge will tip and dump her onto the boulders below.’
    Which is exactly what happened.
    Then the king’s daughter and the prince gathered together as much troll-gold as they could carry, and hurried home to where they belonged.
    But what of those three little girls, living in the woods with their aunts – each one a year older than the next, each as sweet as a sunny day, and all of them as like the princess as beads on a string?
    Well, the prince ducked in at each of the cottages as they passed, scooped up the girls, all three, and handed them back to their mother.
    Which wasn’t such a bad old trick, now, was it?

The Squire’s