would woo her must first execute a difficult task, and if he does not succeed he must be content to forfeit his life.’ Many had risked their lives, but in vain. When the youth saw the King’s daughter, he was so dazzled by her beauty, that he forgot all idea of danger, and went to the King to announce himself a suitor.
On this he was led out to a large lake, and a gold ring was thrown into it before his eyes. The King desired him to dive after it, adding, ‘If you return without it you will be thrown back into the lake time after time, till you are drowned in its depths.’
Everyone felt sorry for the handsome young fellow, and left him alone on the shore. There he stood thinking and wondering what he could do, when all of a sudden he saw three fishes swimming along, and recognised them as the very same whose lives he had saved. The middle fish held a mussel in its mouth, which it laid at the young man’s feet, and when he picked it up and opened it, there was the golden ring inside.
Full of delight he brought it to the King’s daughter, expecting to receive his promised reward. The haughty Princess, however, on hearing that he was not her equal by birth despised him, and exacted the fulfilment of a second task.
She went into the garden, and with her own hands she strewed ten sacks full of millet all over the grass. ‘He must pick all that up to-morrow morning before sunrise,’ she said; ‘not a grain must be lost.’
The youth sat down in the garden and wondered how it would be possible for him to accomplish such a task, but he could think of no expedient, and sat there sadly expecting to meet his death at daybreak.
But when the first rays of the rising sun fell on the garden, he saw the ten sacks all completely filled, standing there in a row, and not a single grain missing. The Ant-King, with his thousands and thousands of followers, had come during the night, and the grateful creatures had industriously gathered all the millet together and put it in the sacks.
The King’s daughter came down to the garden herself, and saw to her amazement that her suitor had accomplished the task she had given him. But even now she could not bend her proud heart, and she said, ‘Though he has executed these two tasks, yet he shall not be my husband till he springs me an apple from the tree of life.’
The young man did not even know where the tree of life grew,
