Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/167

 THE FORTY PRINCES AND THE SEVEN-HEADED DRAGON

There was once upon a time a Padishah, and this Padishah had forty sons. All day long they disported themselves in the forest, snaring birds and hunting beasts, but when the youngest of them was fourteen years old their father wished to marry them. So he sent for them all and told them his desire. "We will marry," said the forty brothers, "but only when we find forty sisters who are the daughters of the same father and the same mother." Then the Padishah searched the whole realm through to find forty such sisters, but though he found families of thirty-nine sisters, families of forty sisters he could never find.

"Let the fortieth of you take another wife," said the Padishah to his sons. But the forty brothers would not agree thereto, and they begged their father to allow them to go and search if haply they might