Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

“ Then the king bade them go and fetch a barber, and scrape the bristles off him, and trim him, and a tailor with a new court dress, and then the king went into the bridal hall, and asked the bridegroom, that emperor's son, what doom should be passed on one who had robbed a man both of life and honour.
He answered, "Such a scoundrel should be first hanged on a gallows, and then his body should be burnt quick."
So he was taken at his word, and suffered the doom that he uttered over himself, and the shopboy was wedded to the king's daughter, and lived both long and luckily. ”

“ To-day your true love is to be married. They have not got a kind word out of her these seven years, since you parted; but for all that the emperor's son wants to marry her, for that he knows she is wise and witty, and for that she is so rich. ”

“ The Shopboy and his Cheese
ONCE on a time there was a shopboy who was so well liked by all who knew him, that they thought him too good to stand behind the counter with a yard measure, and weights and scales. So they made up their minds to send him out with a venture to foreign parts, and they let him choose what he would take out. He chose old cheese, and set off with it to Turkey. There he sold his cheeses very well; but as he was on his way home, he met two who had slain a man, and it was not enough that they had slain him in this life, but they ill-treated his body after he was dead. ”