The Princess Liar

There once was a king who had a daughter that was such a liar that no one in his kingdom could compare to her. So he made it known that the one who could lie so well that he made her say, "You're a liar!" would get both her and half the kingdom. There were many who tried, but all of them fared badly.

Then there were three brothers who were bent upon trying their luck. The two eldest set out first, but they fared no better that the others. Finally set out, and he met the princess in the stable. "Good day, it's a pleasure to meet you," he said. "Good day," she said, "It's nice to meet you, too! I bet you don't have as big a barn as we do," she said. "For when a shepherd stands at each end and blows on a ram's horn, one can't hear the other!"

"Oh, yes indeed!" said . "Ours is much bigger. When a cow gets pregnant in one end, she won't give birth before she comes out at the other end.

"You don't say so!” said the princess. "Well, you haven't such a big Bull as we do. There you can see it! When a man sits on each horn, one can't reach the other with a twelve-foot pole!"

"Pooh!" said the boy. "We have a Bull so big that, when someone is sitting on each horn blowing a *lure, one can't hear the other."

"Oh, indeed?" said the princess. "But you don't get as much milk as we do,” she said. "For we milk into enormous troughs, and carry them inside where we pour them into big cauldrons, and curdle the biggest cheese!"

"Oh, we milk into huge tubs that we have to drive inside, pouring it into brewery vats to make cheese as large as houses. Then we have an old mare to stomp on the cheese, but once I saw it foaling into the cheese, and when we had eaten the cheese for seven years, we found a full grown horse inside it. I was going to put a saddle on it, but it's back broke immediately. Lucky thing I knew what to do, I took a branch from a spruce and put it into the horse as a new back, and it never had another any problems after that. Problem is that the spruce grew and became so large that I came all the way to Heaven on it, and when I came there, the Virgin Mary was spinning rope from grain. Suddenly, the spruce broke, and I couldn't get down again, but the Virgin Mary lowered me on one of her ropes. I then came to a fox's den and my mother and your father were sitting there mending shoes when suddenly, my mother hit your dad so hard that all his skin disease fell straight off him."

"You're a liar!" said the princess. "My father never had any skin disease in his life!" Being even a bigger liar then the princess, he  won the princess and half the kingdom.


*Traditional instrument, making deep sounds meant to carry 
"across the valley".