Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/48



Once upon a time in the old old days when straws were sieves, and the camel a chapman, and the mouse a barber, and the cuckoo a tailor, and the donkey ran errands, and the tortoise baked bread, and I was only fifteen years old, but my father rocked my cradle, and there was a miller in the land who had a black cat—in those olden times, I say, there was a King who had three daughters, and the first daughter was forty, and the second was thirty, and the third was twenty. One day the youngest daughter wrote this letter to her father: "My lord father! my eldest sister is forty and my second sister is thirty, and still thou hast given neither of them a husband. I have no desire to grow grey in waiting for a husband."

The King read the letter, sent for his three daughters, and addressed them in these words: "Look now! let each one of you shoot an arrow from a bow and seek her sweetheart wherever her arrow falls!" So