„Are you the King’s daughter, whose beauty the whole world praises?“ cried he. She had an ashen-gray face full of wrinkles, blear eyes, and red hair. He entered and went through all the rooms, until in the last he found the King’s daughter. At length he sighed from the very bottom of his heart, and cried, „Ah, if I were but at the Castle of the Golden Sun,“ and hardly had the words passed his lips than he was standing on a high mountain before the gate of the castle. „Thou dost not know what properties it has! It is a wishing-cap whosoever puts it on, can wish himself away wherever he likes, and in an instant he will be there.“ – „Give me the cap,“ said the youth, „I will go a short distance off, and when I call you, you must run a race, and the cap shall belong to the one who gets first to me.“ He put it on and went away, and thought of the King’s daughter, forgot the giants, and walked continually onward.
The small men are cleverer than we are, so we will leave the decision to thee.“ – „How can you dispute about an old cap?“ said the youth. All at once he saw in the distance two giants, who made a sign to him with their hands, and when he came to them they said, „We are quarrelling about a cap, and which of us it is to belong to, and as we are equally strong, neither of us can get the better of the other. He had already travelled about for a long time without being able to find it, when he came by chance into a great forest, and did not know the way out of it. And as his heart was without fear, he caught at the idea of seeking out the Castle of the Golden Sun. Those, however, who tried to free her risked their lives three-and-twenty youths had already died a miserable death, and now only one other might make the attempt, after which no more must come. He had heard that a King’s daughter who was bewitched, was imprisoned in the Castle of the Golden Sun, and was waiting for deliverance. The third son, who was afraid she might change him into a raging wild beast a bear perhaps, or a wolf, went secretly away. Each of them only bore his human form for only two hours daily. The second, she changed into a whale, which lived in the deep sea, and all that was seen of it was that it sometimes spouted up a great jet of water in the air.
So she changed the eldest into an eagle, which was forced to dwell in the rocky mountains, and was often seen sweeping in great circles in the sky.
There was once an enchantress, who had three sons who loved each other as brothers, but the old woman did not trust them, and thought they wanted to steal her power from her.
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