case it should not be all right, and he ought to have said good-bye to me." With this he went on with his dinner, and said, "Little Marleen, why do you weep? Brother will soon be back." Then he asked his wife for more pudding, and as he ate, he threw the bones under the table.
Little Marleen went upstairs and took her best silk handkerchief out of her bottom drawer, and in it she wrapped all the bones from under the table and carried them outside, and all the time she did nothing but weep. Then she laid them in the green grass under the juniper tree, and she had no sooner done so, than all her sadness seemed to leave her, and she wept no more. And now the juniper tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, first away from one another, and then together again, as it might be someone clapping their hands for joy. After this a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it could no more be seen, the juniper tree stood there as before, and the silk handkerchief and the bones were gone.
Little Marleen now felt as light-hearted and happy as if her brother were still alive, and she went back to the house and sat down cheerfully to the table and ate.
The bird flew away and alighted on the house of a goldsmith, and began to sing—
"My mother killed her little son;
My father grieved when I was gone;
My sister loved me best of all;
She laid her kerchief over me,
