"Well," she cried and laughed,
"he has a chin like a thrush's beak!" and from that time he got the name
of King Thrushbeard.
But the old King, when he saw that his daugher did nothing but mock the
people, and despised all the suitors who were gathered there, was very
angry, and swore that she should have for her husband the very first
beggar that came to his doors.
A few days afterwards a fiddler came and sang beneath the windows,
trying to earn a small alms. When the King heard him he said, "Let him
come up." So the fiddler came in, in his dirty, ragged clothes, and sang
before the King and his daughter, and when he had ended he asked for a
trifling gift. The King said, "Your song has pleased me so well that I
will give you my daughter there, to wife."
The King's daughter shuddered, but the King said, "I have taken an oath
to give you to the very first beggar-man, and I will keep it." All she
could say was in vain; the priest was brought, and she had to let herself
be wedded to the fiddler on the spot. When that was done the King said,
"Now it is not proper for you, a beggar-woman, to stay any longer in my
palace, you may just go away with your husband.
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