Note 14 — Chapter CXXIV

Then, king, I went at my leisure to the market-place, and roaming about, I saw that boy there selling the bedstead. So I went up to him and said, “For what price will you give me this bedstead?” Then the boy said to me, “You cannot get the bedstead for money, crest-jewel of cunning ones; but you may get it by telling some strange and wonderful story.” When I heard that, I said to him, “Then I will tell you a marvellous tale. And if you understand it and admit that it is really true, you may keep the bedstead; but if you say that it is not true and that you do not believe it,14 you will be illegitimate, and I shall get back the bedstead. On this condition I agree to tell you a marvel; and now listen!—Formerly there was a famine in the kingdom of a certain king; that king himself cultivated the back of the beloved of the boar with great loads of spray from the chariots of the snakes. Enriched with the grain thus produced the king put a stop to the famine among his subjects, and gained the esteem of men.”