Queens: S

Serc, Searc, Sercq (Love)

Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I clomb for thee,
Thy bloody sark I wrang for thee;
And wilt thou not waken and turn to me?

To wilder measures now they turn,
The black black Bull of Norroway;
Suddenly the tapers cease to burn,
The minstrels cease to play.

– The Black Bull of Norroway

(pron. SARK, SHARK) Her area is Sercq, France. In the Black Bull of Norroway, she is the youngest of three daughters who rides a bull to the bull’s brother’s palace and receives an apple. At the second brother’s castle she receives a pear. At the third brother’s castle she receives a plum. At a dark glen the bull places her on a stone and tells her not to move. He is fighting the Old Fellow. If the landscape turns blue he will have won and if it turns red he will have lost. She sits on the stone and the landscape turns blue. In joy she crosses her feet and the bull can’t find her. She then wanders and tries to climb a glass hill. A smith promises her iron shoes to climb the hill if she will work for seven years. She agrees and climbs the hill to discover a witch washerwoman and her daughter cleaning blood-stained shirts. They can’t get the stains out and whoever does will marry the shirt’s owner– a handsome young man. She washes the stains out, but the old-witch tells him the daughter did it instead. She breaks the apple and it is filled with gold and jewels. She gives them to the daughter in exchange for one night with the young man. He is fast asleep with a sleeping potion and hears nothing. The next day she breaks the pear and the same thing happens. The third day she breaks the plum, a shepherd tells the young man of what he heard, the young man, the Duke of Norroway, throws out the sleeping drink and marries her. The two witches are burnt. [In another story it is three nuts: a walnut, a filbert (a large hazel nut), and a hazel nut] (80, 201, 202)

[French Ministry of Education Site: Centre national de documentation pédagogique]