Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/434

392 handed the milk to the physician, who at once pronounced that it was nothing but goat's milk, and the king laughed the nine rajas' sons to scorn.

Indra Bangsāwan having played this trick on the rajas' sons, used the talisman and wished himself at the magician's house, and having told the magician of the princess' sickness and that the physician had said that the cure must be tiger's milk, his grandfather begged him to sit down and rest, and at once went away and returned bringing with him true milk from a tiger which had newly had young, and he put it into a joint of bamboo and stoppered it with leaves, and gave it to Indra Bangsāwan. Then Indra Bangsāwan thanked the magician, put on his magic dress, and in an instant was conveyed back to the palace.

Now the princess had newly returned to herself, and immediately inquired for her boy of the woods, and they searched high and low, and when at last her maidens found him they soundly rated him and dragged him into the king's presence. Then the king asked what he had in the bamboo, and he said that he didn't know, but that he found it hanging on a tree. The king, seeing that it looked like milk, handed it to his physician, who was greatly amazed, and at once said that this was really tiger's milk at last, and having squeezed it into the eyes of the princess, she straightway opened her eyes, which were healed—and she loved the boy of the woods all the more that he had been the means of curing her.

Now when the time approached that the griffin should come for the princess, the king built a palace in the middle of the plain so that the griffin should not come into the city; and he placed below the stairs a large iron vessel, which was to be filled with water so that the griffin might drink when he arrived. And the king and the queen conducted the princess to the palace with great grief, and the queen wept and said, "Where is Indra Bangsāwan? for it has been foretold that he should come and slay the griffin," but the king replied, "We must trust in God and wait." And they returned home.

The nine rajas' sons encamped at a distance from the palace, and boasted that they were going to slay the griffin, but they shook in their shoes and were in mortal terror.

Then Indra Bangsāwan, using the talisman, wished himself at the magician's house, and on telling him that he desired to rescue