The Peasant’s Wise Daughter
There was once upon a time a poor Peasant, who had no land, but merely a little cottage, and an only Daughter, who one day said to him, “We must ask the King for a piece of waste land.”
Now, when the King heard of their poverty, he presented them with a corner of a field, which the man and his daughter tilled, and prepared to sow in it corn and seeds. As they turned the land about they found a mortar of pure gold, and the Peasant said to his Daughter, “Since his Majesty the King has been so gracious to us to present us with this acre, we ought to give him this treasure.”
But to this the Daughter would not agree, saying, “If we have the mortar, and not the pestle, we must procure the pestle for it; therefore be silent.”
However, the Father would not obey her, but took the mortar to the King, and said he had found it while tilling the ground, and asked the King if he would accept the offering. The King took it, and asked if he had found nothing more. “No,” replied the Peasant. “Then,” said the King, “you must procure the pestle for it.” The Peasant said they had not found that; but it was of no use, he might as well have spoken to the wind, and he was ordered to be put in prison until he discovered it. The keepers had to bring him daily bread and water, which is all one gets in prison, and when they did so they heard the man always lamenting, “Had I but obeyed my daughter! had I obeyed my daughter!” So these keepers went and told the King that the man was always crying, “Had I obeyed my daughter!” and would neither eat nor drink. His Majesty commanded them to bring the prisoner before him, and then he asked him why he was always crying out in this manner, and what his Daughter had said.
“She told me,” said the man, “not to bring the mortar to you before I had found the pestle.”
“What! have you such a wise daughter? let her come hither at once!” said the King. So the girl came, and the King asked her if she were so wise as was said, for he would propose a riddle, which if she solved, he would then marry her. “What is that which is unclothed and yet is not naked, that moves along and yet neither rides nor walks, and that goes not in the road nor out of it?”
The girl said she would do her best, and went away and pulled off all her clothes, so that she was not clothed; then she took a large fishing-net and set herself in it, and wrapped it round her, so she was not naked; then she bought an ass, and bound the net to its tail, so it dragged her along, and thus she neither rode nor walked. The ass, too, had to trail her along in a rut, so that she was neither in the road nor out of it, for only her big toes touched the ground. Now, as the King saw her coming towards him, he said she had solved the riddle, and fulfilled all the conditions. Then he let her father out of prison, and made the Daughter his bride, and committed to her all the royal possessions.
Several years had passed away, when once, as the King was walking on parade, it happened that several peasants, who had sold wood, stopped before the palace with their waggons: some of them had oxen yoked and some horses, and one peasant had three horses, one of which was a young foal, which ran away, and laid itself down between two oxen who were in front of a waggon. Soon the peasants grouped together and began to quarrel, wrangle, and dispute with each other: the peasant with the oxen would keep the foal, saying that it belonged to him, while the peasant with the horses denied it, and said the foal was his, for his horses went with it. The quarrel was brought before the King, and he gave judgment that the foal should keep where it was, and so it passed into possession of the man with the oxen, to whom it did not belong. So the other went away weeping and lamenting for his foal; but he had heard that the Queen was a very kind woman, because she had herself been born of peasant folk, so he went to her and asked her to help him that he might regain his own foal. The Queen said she would do so, and if he would promise not to betray her she would tell him how. Early in the morning when the King was on the watch-parade he was to place himself in the midst of the path by which he must pass, and take a large fish-net, and pretend to fish and shake the net about over the terrace as if it were full of fish. She told him, also, what to answer if the King asked any questions; and the next day, accordingly, he stood there fishing in a dry place. When the King came by, and saw him, he sent his page to ask who the simpleton was, and what he was about. The peasant merely replied, “I am fishing.”
The page asked how he could fish where there was no water; and the man replied, “So well as two oxen can bear a foal, so well can I fish in a dry place.”
With this answer the page left him, and told it to the King, who bade the peasant come before him and asked him from whom he had the answer he made, for it could not be from himself. The man refused to tell, and replied to every question, “God forbid! I had it from myself.” At last they laid him upon a heap of straw, and beat him and tortured him so long till at last he confessed that he had the answer from the Queen. As soon as the King returned home afterwards, he said to his wife, “Why are you so false to me? I will no longer have you about me; your time is over: go away to whence you came—to your peasant’s hut.”
He gave her leave, however, to take with her what she considered dearest and best to herself, and the Queen said, “Yes, dearest husband, I will do as you bid me,” and she fell upon his breast and kissed him, and said she would take her leave. But first she made a strong sleeping-mixture to pledge him in, and the King took a long draught, but she drank only a little. Soon he fell into a deep sleep, and when she perceived it was so, she called a servant, and, wrapping a fine white linen napkin over her lord’s face, she caused him to be laid in a carriage, and drawn to the cottage from whence she first came. There she laid him in a bed, where he slept a night and day, and when he awoke he looked round him amazed, and called for a servant, but none answered the call. At last came his wife to the bed, and said, “My dear Lord and King, you commanded me to take out of the castle whatever I thought dearest and best, and because I had nothing dearer or better than you, I have brought you with me here.”
At these words tears came into the King’s eyes, and he said, “Dear wife, you shall be mine and I will be thine!” and so he took her back again to the palace; and there they are living still in the full enjoyment of health and happiness, for aught I know to the contrary.
