Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/136

 112 and gave (victory) to the son of a certain king over a certain philosopher." Whereupon the king says to her: "How was this?" She replies: "There was a king who had a son, whom he engaged to the daughter of a king; the latter king sent after the son of the former king, saying: 'Send me my son-in-law, that I may make a banquet in his honour, and when he pleases, we shall give him his wife and he may depart.' The king accordingly bade his son go, bidding also his tutor to accompany him. Now, while the prince and his tutor were travelling, they were in quest of water, and found but one spring (which had this property), that the man who drank of it became a woman. Now the tutor knew the secret of the spring, without revealing it to the prince, and said to the prince: 'Wait for me at this spring, while I look whether there is a path here or no.' He left the youth by the spring, and returned to the king and said to him: 'Thy son has been devoured by a lion.' The youth was waiting for the tutor, and his thirst having grown upon him, he drank of that spring and became a woman. As he was standing and not knowing what to do, a man came by and said to him: 'Whence art thou, and who brought thee hither?' To whom he replied: 'I am a king's son, and was about to go to such-and-such a king, who was about to make a banquet in my honour. I proceeded with my companions, but I have got lost from them, and came hither and drank of this water, and now have I become a woman.' And the man had compassion upon him, and addressed him, saying: 'I will be a woman in your stead for four months, until you shall have taken part in the banquet; nevertheless, swear to me by God, that at the expiration of the four months you will return to me.' And the prince swore to that man: 'I will return to thee!' That man became a woman in his place, and pointed out to the king's son the road by which he should go, in order to celebrate the marriage-banquet. Now, after the four months, he (the prince) remembered the oath which he did