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By Root 2210 0

went to the King and told him how the prisoner was always crying: “Ah! if I had but listened to my daughter!” and would neither eat nor drink. So he commanded the servants to bring the prisoner before him, and then the King asked the peasant why he was always crying: “Ah! if I had but listened to my daughter!” and what it was that his daughter had said. “She told me that I ought not to take the mortar to you, for I should have to produce the pestle as well.” “If you have a daughter who is as wise as that, let her come here.” She was therefore obliged to appear before the King, who asked her if she really was so wise, and said he would set her a riddle, and if she could guess that, he would marry her. She at once said yes, she would guess it. Then said the King: “Come to me not clothed, not naked, not riding, not walking, not in the road, and not off the road, and if you can do that I will marry you.” So she went away, put off everything she had on, and then she was not clothed, and took a great fishing net, and seated herself in it and wrapped it entirely round and round her, so that she was not naked, and she hired an ass, and tied the fisherman’s net to its tail, so that it was forced to drag her along, and that was neither riding nor walking. The ass had also to drag her in the ruts, so that she only touched the ground with her big toe, and that was neither being in the road nor off the road. And when she arrived in that fashion, the King said she had guessed the riddle and fulfilled all the conditions. Then he ordered her father to be released from the prison, took her to wife, and gave into her care all the royal possessions.

Now when some years had passed, the King was once reviewing his troops on parade, when it happened that some peasants who had been selling wood stopped with their waggons before the palace; some of them had oxen yoked to them, and some horses. There was one peasant who had three horses, one of which was delivered of a young foal, and it ran away and lay down between two oxen which were in front of the waggon. When the peasants came together, they began to dispute, to beat each other and make a disturbance, and the peasant with the oxen wanted to keep the foal, and said one of the oxen had given birth to it, and the other said his horse had had it, and that it was his. The quarrel came before the King, and he gave the verdict that the foal should stay where it had been found, and so the peasant with the oxen, to whom it did not belong, got it. Then the other went away, and wept and lamented over his foal. Now he had heard how gracious his lady the Queen was because she herself had sprung from poor peasant folks, so he went to her and begged her to see if she could not help him to get his foal back again. Said she: “Yes, I will tell you what to do, if you will promise me not to betray me. Early to-morrow morning, when the King parades the guard, place yourself there in the middle of the road by which he must pass, take a great fishing-net and pretend to be fishing; go on fishing, and empty out the net as if you had got it full”—and then she told him also what he was to say if he was questioned by the King. The next day, therefore, the peasant stood there, and fished on dry ground. When the King passed by, and saw that, he sent his messenger to ask what the stupid man was about. He answered: “I am fishing.” The messenger asked how he could fish when there was no water there. The peasant said: “It is as easy for me to fish on dry land as it is for an ox to have a foal.” The messenger went back and took the answer to the King, who ordered the peasant to be brought to him and told him that this was not his own idea, and he wanted to know whose it was. The peasant, said the King, must confess this at once. The peasant, however, would not do so, and said always, God forbid he should! the idea was his own. So they laid him on a heap of straw, and beat him and tormented him so long that at last he admitted that he had got the idea from the Queen.

When the King reached home again, he said to his wife: