Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

“ So he fell to telling how the king came to him, and about the white horse down on the marsh, and how, if the king was to have the pipe, he must—"Yes, your majesty, if the vat is ever to be full I must go on and lie hard," said Osborn Boots.
"Hold! hold, lad! It's full to the brim," roared out the king; "don't you see how it is foaming over?"
So both the king and the queen thought it best he should have the princess to wife and half the kingdom. There was no help for it.
"That was something like a pipe," said Osborn Boots. ”

“ He thought it would be just the right work for him to go into the woods and fields, and along the wild strawberry brakes, and to drag a flock of hares with him, and between whiles to lie and sleep and warm himself on the sunny hillsides.
The gaffer thought there might be work which suited him better; if it didn't go worse, it was sure not to go better with him than with his two brothers. The man to keep the king's hares must not dawdle about like a lazy-bones with leaden soles to his stockings, or like a fly in a tar-pot ”

“ So when she had got the pipe, she both bound it fast, and looked after it well; but she was not a hair better off than the others, for when she was going to pull it out at home, the pipe was gone; and at even down came Osborn Boots, driving the king's hares home for all the world like a flock of tame sheep.
"It is all stuff," said the king; "I see I must set off myself, if we are to get this wretched pipe from him; there's no other help for it, I can see." ”