The Dog in the Sea

[1][2] The common plot thread in all variants collected by German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther begins with an unhappy sailor trying to commit suicide by drowning, and meeting a talking dog that offers him help instead.

Warned by the dog, the sailor kills the woman and accomplishes three challenging tasks through three nights in the castle.

[3] Variants of the tale exist in Danish, Finnish, Frisian, German and Dutch languages and have been transcribed by Nikolaj Christian Christensen [Wikidata],[4] Oskar Hackman,[5] Jens Kamp,[6] Jurjen van der Kooi[7][8][9] and Pirkko-Liisa Rausmaa [Wikidata].

In his work, Nikolaj Petrovič Andreev [ru] claimed that type 540 existed in Russian language, but did not provide an example.

In both Christensen and Kamp versions, not only the prince is released from the curse, but also his father, who has been turned into a lion and is held prisoner in chains in the castle, whose head and tail have to be cut off and attached vice versa again, or whose animal skin is to be cut open with a knife.