The sky-spirits enter at the bottom of a pit. Strong Hans — born in a robbers' cave, grown so mighty that a hundredweight walking-stick suits his hand — is let down on a rope into a chamber underground, kills the dwarf who guards a captive maiden "lovely as any picture", and sends her up first. His treacherous fellows drop the empty basket and strand him below. Turning a ring he has drawn from the dead dwarf's finger, he hears a rustling overhead: "spirits of the air hovering above", "who told him he was their master", and "asked what his desire might be".

At his word they carry him up "as if he had flown up himself", and when his companions flee across the sea with the maiden, "the spirits of the air came" again and "bore him as swift as lightning into the boat", where he settles the account and sails home to marry her. The whole marvel hangs on a turned ring — a band that makes a man lord of the air. The witness is the tale the shelf keeps as Strong Hans, in the Grimms' Household Tales (collected 1812–1857; this English translation 1884).

Beside it the record lists an Indian authority and a Warrau telling from South America, but neither is wired to served text; only the German tale can be read here. If the air answers a ring and not a name, what exactly do the spirits obey — the man, or the object on his hand?