Reading Notes: "Goblins: The Three Lovers"

Her Husband Slept on a Bed of Ashes
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"Goblins:The Three Lovers" is a paradox of a beautiful young women who cannot decide which of three suitors to marry. The young women becomes ill and dies before the three mens eyes. Each one mourns her death differently, but one of the men found a spell that could return her to life. Once the beautiful girl was among the living once again the men argued as to whose wife she should be. The man who found the spell acted as a father, the man who set her bones in the river acted as a son, but the man who slept with her ashes acted as a lover. He would be the young womens husband and she is wife.

The Three Lovers  translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl (1917).