Set a bride as the stake of a contest, and let the winner carry her off: the shape turns wooing into a trial of craft or strength, with a woman as the prize. Two witnesses hold it — a duel of song and a duel of arms.

In the Kalevala (the Finnish epic compiled from oral song 1835–1849), the brash young Lapp Youkahainen rides south "as bard to vie in battle" with old Wainamoinen. "Let us sing our ancient legends," he demands, "In a war of wizard sayings." It is a singing-match, and he loses it utterly: Wainamoinen's song "Sings him into deeps of quick-sand", swallowing him inch by inch. Drowning in the mire, the boy ransoms himself with his sister — "I will give thee sister, Aino," "Fairest daughter of my mother," "Bride of thine to be forever". The duel was undertaken "For the glory of a contest"; its forfeit is a bride.

The Chinese witness trades song for a severed head. In Myths & Legends of China (a compilation published 1922), a hard-pressed chief, unable to rouse his beaten army, "issued a proclamation promising his daughter in marriage" "to anyone who would bring him the head of his enemy". A great white dog overhears, slips into the enemy camp by night, lays the severed head at his master's feet, then "reminded the Chief of his promise" and claims the bride. The chief balks — "marry my daughter to a dog?" — but bargains that the dog first turn into a man; the change half-fails, leaving a dog-headed groom, and still "the wedding duly took place".

Both contests are won by an outsider the community never expected to answer the call — a wandering singer, a general's dog. When a bride is set up as a public prize, does the tale care who wins her, or only that the impossible thing be done?