The White Dove

The White Dove (Danish: Den hvide Due) is a Danish fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in The Pink Fairy Book. A version of the tale also appears in A Book of Witches, by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Synopsis Two princes were caught in a storm at sea when the sky had no sun. An old woman rowed up in a dough-trough and said she could save them in return for the next returning son their mother bore. They said they could not trade him, and the woman said that their mother might prefer the sons she had to the one she did not, and rowed off. They shouted after her that they agreed, and the storm ended. They told no one what had happened, even when their younger brother was born and grew up. But a witch came to him one day in a storm and told him his brothers had promised him in return for their lives. He said if she had saved them, he would go with her. She sailed away with him over the sea to her residence. In her service, the witch set him to sort a great mass of feathers in one day. He had all but finished when a whirlwind mixed them together again, with only an hour left. A white dove tapped on the window and offered to help him. He let it in and it sorted the feathers.