A king left his queen because they were childless and told her if she did not have a child by the time he returned, in a year, he would part with her.
The king had his choice of a pestilence, a long and bloody war, or putting her body in a wooden coffin and setting a sentinel over it every day for a year.
When the drink wore off, he tried to flee, but a little man stopped him and told him to stay in the pulpit until the coffin lid slammed.
He tried to flee, and the little man stopped him again, telling him to stay in front of the altar and hold the prayer book there.
The princess rushed up to the pulpit that night; when she did not find him, she shrieked that war and pestilence would begin, but then she saw him and could not reach him.
If not, she would go to a convent and he could never marry another as long as she lived (for the service he'd heard was a marriage ceremony of the dead).
[4] These tales are, according to scholarship, more commonly collected among East European populations,[5] especially in Russia.
[6] German scholar Kurt Ranke supposed that the tale type originated from Eastern European legends about vampirism.