Mirígy tries to steal the golden apple tree and is captured by the little devils

Mirígy’s attempt to steal the golden apple tree turns her private scheme into a public defeat: while she digs at its roots, the little devils identify her and bind her for confinement inside a linden. The episode makes the tree a contested object of power and turns Mirígy’s habitual deception back upon her, as the beings she has tried to frighten become the agents of her capture.

Setting and Stakes

The action unfolds in an open space in the middle of a wild garden. Tünde and Ilma are present but concealed, so the confrontation first plays out without their intervention. The tree is more than something Mirígy hopes to carry away: it is identified as the heavenly tree belonging to a fairy, and is associated with youth. Her effort to uproot it therefore threatens a prized and enchanted possession, not simply a tree in the landscape.

The scene follows Tünde’s account of a journey’s end and of what fate has taken from desire and from the heart. Against that language of loss, the rooted tree offers an image of continuing life and youth. Mirígy’s plan to dig it out gives the episode its immediate danger, while the hidden presence of Tünde and Ilma makes the eventual change in power visible: the threatened tree and its rightful fairy are in the same garden, though the fairy does not yet step forward.

The Attempt to Uproot the Tree

When Mirígy arrives, the little devils have already left the scene. She asks what became of the noisy band and observes that she frightened them so badly they forgot their play. Taking their departure as an opportunity, she tells the golden tree to come with her, calling it the precious tree of youth and hoping that age’s darkness might fall away. Her words make the theft an attempt to appropriate the promise attached to the tree, even as the action itself remains brutally physical.

Mirígy begins to dig at the tree’s base with her claws, vowing to keep at it until she has pried it free. The gesture exposes the gap between her desired prize and the labor required to obtain it: she must attack the roots of a living, enchanted object with her own hands. The little devils return from three directions while she is digging. Their arrival turns the moment from an apparently private theft into a confrontation, with Mirígy still at the tree and unable to conceal what she is doing.

Recognition and Capture

Kurrah identifies the tree as a fairy’s heavenly tree and names the one clawing at it as Mirígy, the old wicked woman. This recognition is decisive: the devils do not treat the digging as an unexplained act or mistake their opponent for someone else. Kurrah proposes that they seize her, bind her with linden rope, and fasten her in a hollow linden. The others agree and hurry off to carry out the plan.

Mirígy sees them approaching and tries to redirect their attack toward a crooked branch, offering to dig through it for them instead. The ruse fails. The devils laugh, and Mirígy recognizes that she cannot get free that way. She considers another familiar tactic—asking them to release her and promising to divide the prize—then admits the flaw in the bargain: she could promise and not give. The exchange shows her reaching for deception even when she understands that her word has no force against her captors.

Kurrah answers that another trick has only made her plight worse and declares that there will be no mercy. The little devils drag Mirígy away, warning that she will cool her heels in the hollow of the linden, shut in and held there. The promised confinement is described as an age-long hiding place, where she will go on lamenting her fate. The scene thus ends not with the tree uprooted but with its would-be thief removed from it and placed under guard.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Mirígy’s capture clears the immediate danger to the golden apple tree, but the scene also changes the position of the little devils. Tünde and Ilma, who have remained hidden, come forward after the devils have departed with their prisoner. Tünde says she has heard everything. When the little devils return, they kneel before her; she tells them to rise, says that she has seen and knows what happened, and welcomes them as people of her court, promising rich rewards. The arrest is therefore not an isolated act of comic punishment: it leads directly to a new relation between Tünde and the devils, whose actions have defended the tree.

The episode reverses Mirígy’s customary advantage. She has relied on threats and deception, and even in danger tries to bargain with a promise she admits she might break. Here the little devils see through the performance, act together, and use the very kind of confinement that makes escape difficult. Her attempt to seize the tree associated with youth ends in a threatened, age-long imprisonment; the contrast gives the capture its sharpest consequence. At the same time, the scene restores the tree to the orbit of Tünde’s authority and brings the hidden witnesses into the open, moving the action from sabotage toward recognition and reward.