When seven years have gone by, the blacksmith, true to his word, makes the girl—now a young woman—a pair of iron shoes, and nails them to her feet.

The young woman eventually wanders back to the home of the witch, who offers her shelter if she will wash some bloody shirts that both she and her daughter have been unable to clean.

But the witch gives her daughter a sleeping-drink to offer the knight, so the young woman cannot wake him, though she sobs and sings: She is in the second great need of her life, so she tries the pear, and finds it full of jewelry richer than that of the apple, but the second night goes as before.

[9] According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband".

[10] In fact, when he developed his revision of Aarne-Thompson's system, Uther remarked that an "essential" trait of the tale type ATU 425A was the "wife's quest and gifts" and "nights bought".

Despite the commonplace status of magical shirts in folktales, this particular detail is so unusual as to point as a source in a fairy tale such as this or The Feather of Finist the Falcon.

[14][15] In this tale, titled The Red Bull of Norroway, which he sourced from Dumfriesshire, a king has three daughters, the elder two ugly and the youngest beautiful and kind.

Instructed by an old woman, the princess burns the bull skin and the husband tells her they must go to his father's castle, beyond the sea and up a crystal mountain named Hill of Forgetfulness.

Abandoned by her husband, she finds work nearby with a local lord, where she serves for seven years before gaining enough provisions to climb the Hill of Forgetfulness.

After doing so, she meets an old woman up the Hill, who asks her to fetch three pears from a tree, in return she will give the girl three eggs for her hour of need.

She trades the wheel and the reel on the first two days with the local Princess for a night in the Prince's chambers, and tries to wake him, but he is under a spell by a powder and enchanted bedclothes.

The third son is also taken by the mysterious hand, as the bull husband enters a frenzied state and takes her back to their island palace.

She then meets a princess by the side of a river who tells her the prince will only marry the one who can wash a stain of blood out of his three white shirts.

On the road, she stops to rest by three old women's huts; inside each, she sees each of their children, who gives them a pair of scissors, a comb and a skein of thread.

Their husbands of choice come to take them as their brides and, to Maeve's surprise, the Cally Coo-Coo, a bull, appears to marry her.

Maeve succeeds, but a "coarse, big girl" named Eiver takes the credit and is set to marry the Prince of the East.

The next day, the three men appear at the castle to fetch their respective wives, but on the Roarin’ Bull of Orange's turn, the king tries to trick him with another girl.

Later, continuing on her quest, the princess meets three old women in three huts, who are taking care of her children, and each give her a gift (a rack in the first, scissors in the second, and a needle in the third).

The princess uses the scissors, the rack and the needle to bribe the old witch for three nights with her husband, The Roarin’ Bull of Orange.

The Bull of Orange, now human, wakes up and tells the princess he will find out about the witch's external life, so they break the curse once and for all.

Naïvely, the witch tells the human Bull of Orange her life is hidden in an egg, in a bird's nest, atop a tree.

The Bull of Orange and a servant find the egg and throw it at the witch's forehead, killing her and undoing her enchantments.

The maiden arrives at last at the foot of the titular Glass Mountain, where lies another house with an elderly couple with her daughter.

[24] Mabel Peacock wrote down another variant of The Glass Mountain from County Leitrim, which she claimed was "imperfect" and told to her when she was a child.

[26] In a tale from the Wisconsin Chippewa, collected in 1944 in Lac du Flambeau, from teller Maggie Christensen and titled The Girl Who Married an Ox, an old woman lives with her three daughters.

At last, after a round of prize fighting, Bully Bornes soils his shirt with drops of his blood and declares he shall marry the woman that can wash it off.

[29] Roberts sourced the tale from an informant named Fae Chadwell Gibson, in Knox County, Kentucky, who learned it from her grandmother.

[30] In a tale from Newfoundland from teller Alice Lannon, titled The Big Black Bull of Hollow Tree, three sisters, Dinah, Marie and Kitty, live with their grandmother, who forbids them from entering a certain part of the garden.

After some time into their marriage, Kitty's grandmother sees her granddaughter in the arms of the man, while his bull skin lay strewn in the floor near the bed.

[33] Mrs. Caroline Alathea Creevey, in her autobiography, published a version she claimed she heard in her childhood from a Julia Congden, her mother's hired girl.