THE SHEPHERD WHO WON THE KING’S DAUGHTER BY A SINGLE WORD

A TALE OF LOWER BRITANNY

ONCE upon a time there was a king who never told a single lie in his life. As he heard the people about his court constantly saying to each other, “That is not true! You are a liar,” he was very much displeased; so much so that he said one day,—

“I am astonished at you; a stranger who should hear you speak in this way would not fail to say that I am the king of liars. I do not wish to hear any more such language in my palace. He who hears me say to any one, no matter who he may be, ‘You are a liar!’—well, I will give him the hand of my daughter.”

A young shepherd, who was present at the time, having heard these words of the king, said to himself, “Good! we will see about this.”

The old king loved to hear the old Giverziou and the new Soniou sung, and marvelous tales told. Often after supper he came into the kitchen, and took pleasure in listening to the songs and stories of his footmen. Each one sang or related something in turn.

“And you, young shepherd, do you know nothing?” said the king one evening.

“Oh, yes! my king,” answered the shepherd.

“Let us see what you know, then.”

And the shepherd told what follows:—

“One day, as I was going through a wood, I saw an enormous hare coming. I had in my hand a ball of wax; I threw it at the hare, and struck it just in the middle of the forehead, where it stuck. Then the hare ran faster than ever with the ball of wax on its forehead. He met another hare which was coming from an opposite direction; they struck against each other’s foreheads and stuck together so that they could not get apart, and thus I caught them very easily. How do you like that, sire?”

“Very much,” answered the king; “but go on.”

“Before coming to your court as a shepherd, sire, I was a miller’s boy in my father’s mill, and I went every day with an ass to carry the flour to the customers. One day I had such a load on my ass that, upon my word, his spine broke!”

“Poor beast!” said the king.

“Then I went to a hedge nearby, and with my knife I cut a hazel-stick, which I stuffed into the body of my ass to take the place of its spine. Then the animal got up and carried its load gently along to its destination as if no harm had happened to it. What do you say to that, sire?”

“That is very good; and what next?”

“The next morning I was very much astonished (for it was then the month of December) to see that branches, leaves, and even hazel-nuts had grown upon the hazel-stick; and when I took my ass out of the stable, the branches continued to grow up so very, very high that they reached up to the sky.”

“That is first-rate!” said the king; “but what happened after that?”

“Seeing that, I began to climb from branch to branch on the hazel-tree, so high and so safely that at last I reached the moon.”

“That is first-rate, first-rate! but go on.”

“There I saw some old women who were winnowing oats from the chaff and straw, and I stopped to look at them. But I soon got tired of looking at these old women, and wanted to descend to the earth again. But my ass had gone away, and I could no longer find the hazel-tree by which I had climbed up. What was to be done? Then I went to work to tie the oat straw together, head to head, so as to make a cord by which I could go down.”

“This is certainly first-rate!” said the king; “and what next?”

“Unfortunately my cord was not long enough; it was too short by thirty or forty feet, so that I fell on a rock head-foremost, and so heavily that my head sank down into the rock as far as my shoulders.”

“That is first-rate, first-rate; and what next?”

“I struggled so vigorously and successfully that my body became detached from my head, which latter remained buried in the rock. I ran at once to the mill to find an iron crow-bar, with which to pry my head out of the rock.”

“Better and better!” said the king; “but what next?”

“When I returned, there was an enormous wolf that also wished to pull my head out of the rock, in order to eat it! I gave him a blow on the back with my crow-bar, but such a very, very heavy one, that a letter flew out of him!”

“Oh! a better one than that could not be told!” cried the king; “but what was written on that letter?”

“On that letter, my king, with all due respect to you, was written that your father had formerly been mill boy at my grandfather’s mill.”

“It’s a lie, you young rascal!” cried the king, immediately rising up, furious.

“Holloa, sire; I have won!” said the shepherd quietly.

“How is that? What have you won?”

“Did not you say, my king, that you would willingly give the hand of the princess, your daughter, to the first one who would make you say, ‘That is a lie,’ or ‘You are a liar’?”

“It is true,” replied the king, growing calmer; “I did say so. A king should always keep his word; therefore your betrothal to my only daughter shall be celebrated to-morrow, and the wedding in a week!”

And thus it was that the shepherd won the king’s daughter by a single word.

F. M. Luzel, “Archives des Missions Scientifiques.”

“I GAVE HIM A BLOW ON THE BACK WITH MY CROW-BAR.”