Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/34

 gobbled thee up." Then she asked him whence he came and whither he was going.

"Alas! dear little mother," sighed the youth, "such a terrible misfortune has befallen me that I can neither tell thee nor answer thy question."

"Nay, come, out with it, my son," urged the Mother of Devils.

"Well then, my sweet little mother," cried the youth, and he sighed worse than before, "I have fallen violently in love with the three Oranges. If only I might find my way thither!"

"Hush!" cried the Mother of Devils, "it is not lawful to even think of that name, much less pronounce it. I and my sons are its guardians, yet even we don't know the way to it. Forty sons have I, and they go up and down the earth more than I do, perchance they may tell thee something of the matter." So when it began to grow dusk towards evening, ere yet the devil-sons had come home, the old woman gave the King's son a tap, and turned him into a pitcher of water. And she did it not a moment too soon, for immediately afterwards the forty sons of the Mother of Devils knocked at the door and cried: "Mother, we smell man's flesh!"

"Nonsense!" cried the Mother of Devils. "What, I should like to know, have the sons of men to do here? It seems to me you had better all clean your