A shepherd was grazing his sheep in a mountain when he saw something glittering in the far side. The shepherd was shocked to see that it was a golden mortar. He brought the mortar to his home and showed it to his daughter.
“This is pure gold. I am going to present the mortar to the king tomorrow.” The shepherd told his daughter.
His daughter objected to this. “Don’t do it, father. You have found only the mortar. If you give this to the king, he will immediately ask for the pestle too. You will not be able to produce it. That will annoy the king.”
The shepherd looked disbelievingly at his daughter. “No daughter, I do not think that you are right. The king will appreciate that I gave him this gift.”
The daughter tried her level best to dissuade her father. But her father was adamant.
The next day the shepherd went to the king and presented him with the golden mortar.
“This is a golden mortar!” The king said with a surprise as he took the shepherd’s gift. The shepherd smiled and that was when the king frowned. “Where is the pestle that goes with it?”
“I…” The shepherd was shocked. “I… did not find it.”
But the king refused to believe the shepherd. “You found the mortar and the pestle. But you have given me only one of it. I will throw you in prison for this!”
The numb shepherd looked at the king as the king’s guards caught the poor shepherd. “My daughter told me of this.” He murmured to himself. The guards were pulling away the shepherd as the shepherd kept murmuring to himself. “I am a fool for not listening to my daughter.”
The king heard this. He asked his guards to stop. “What do you mean by that?” The king asked the shepherd.
“My daughter told me not to present the mortar to the king; because she told me that the king would ask for the pestle next.” The shepherd told the king and he shook his head. “I did not heed to her wise words.”
The king studied the shepherd for a few seconds. “I will forgive your mistake. But for that your daughter needs to come and meet me.”
The shepherd panicked as he stared at the king. But the king was not yet done. “Tell your daughter that when she comes to meet me, she must neither be clothed, nor be naked; she must neither come riding nor walking and she has to meet him, neither at day nor at night.” The king shrugged looking very proud of himself. “If she comes that way, I will marry her.”
The shepherd was sent home and the man was terrified. He just did not know what to do. Slowly he told his daughter all that had happened in the king’s court.
The daughter shrugged and she smiled. “I will take care of it.”
The shepherd would not believe it.
But the next day, at dusk, when it was neither day nor night, she took a fishing net and wrapped herself in it. She tied fresh reins to a goat and stood on it. She walked the goat to the king’s palace half sitting on it and half riding it and she reached the king’s palace when it was still dusk.
The king studied the shepherd’s daughter for a few seconds and he was numb with shock. Then he remembered that he was bound by his promise to the shepherd, because he had promised to marry the shepherd’s daughter if she fulfilled his condition – which she had.
“I shall marry you!” The king told the girl immediately. “But henceforth you should never give advice to anyone. If I ever find that you have advised someone then you will have to leave the castle and never return again.”
The shepherd’s daughter agreed to this and she married the king and lived as the queen of the land.
************
One day, the queen was traveling through the kingdom, when she saw a peasant looked thoroughly vexed as he was lying on the road.
“What has happened?” The queen asked the peasant.
“Yesterday, my mare gave birth to a foal. Immediately after birth, the foal ran away and sat next to an ox. When I went to take the foal, the owner of the ox told me that the foal was his, because he had found it!” The peasant looked miserable. “We went to the king. The king has decided that the foal belongs to the person who found it and not to the person who owns the mare.”
The queen stared at the man for a hard second and then she sighed. She turned to the man with a grin. “Do you have a fishing net with you?”
********
The king was driving through the streets when a strange sight met his eyes. A man was throwing his fishing net on the streets and looking like he was trying to catch fish… on dry land.
“What are you trying to do?” The king demanded from the man.
“Trying to catch fish.” The man said shrugging as he turned back to his net.
The king was exasperated. “You are not going to catch any fish in dry land. You need to go to the waters for that.”
The man did not even stop what he was doing as he heard the king. “The king of the land yesterday has decided that a foal belongs to an ox instead of the mare which birthed the foal. When an ox can give birth to a foal, why can I not catch fish on dry land?”
The king stared at the man. He realized his foolishness and he reversed his previous decision. The foal was given to the man owning the mare.
But however, the king also knew that this man was incapable of thinking up this plan.
“Who gave you this, idea?” The king demanded.
At first, the man did not want to reveal the secret to the king. Finally, when the king threatened him, the man told him that this was the queen’s idea.
********
“You have disobeyed me.” The angry king told the queen. “You gave advise to another. For that, I order that you should leave the castle immediately.”
The queen looked sad on hearing the king.
However the king relented on one point. “Because you are the queen of the land, you can take one thing from the palace – one thing that you value the most.”
The queen stared at the king for a few seconds. Then she smiled.
She pulled a bottle of drinks from the cabinet.
“Shall we drink to that, your majesty?” She asked the king with innocent eyes.
*********
The king woke up from a deep sleep and felt that his eyes just would not open. With great difficulty he opened his eyes and looked around.
For a few seconds, he was shocked. He was more than shocked because this was not his palace. A few seconds later, the king looked around and he realized that this was a shepherd’s house.
Surprised the king searched for someone there and that was when he found his wife.
“Where am I?” The king demanded.
“My house.” The queen told the king. “I fed you sleeping draught which I had mixed in the drinks. And I brought you here when you were asleep.”
“Why did you bring me here?” The king asked looking around.
The queen smiled. “You said I could bring what I valued the most with me, when I left the castle. I valued you the most. So I brought you here.”
Needless to say the king realized his mistake and took the queen back to his palace and she ruled the kingdom with him and they lived happily ever after.
- Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tales
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