The Terrible Head

The Terrible Head

Once upon a time there was a king whose only child was a girl.  Now the King had been very anxious to have a son, or at least a grandson, to come after him, but he was told by a prophet whom he consulted that his own daughter’s son should kill him.  This news terrified him so much that he determined never to let his daughter be married, for he thought it was better to have no grandson at all than to be killed by his grandson.  He therefore called his workmen together, and bade them dig a deep round hole in the earth, and then he had a prison of brass built in the hole, and then, when it was finished, he locked up his daughter.  No man ever saw her, and she never saw even the fields and the sea, but only the sky and the sun, for there was a wide open window i……