“There is a fool of a man who accompanied me on this journey.” The farmer told his daughter looking thoroughly vexed. “I do not know what to make of him. Now he wants to know whether the beam in our house will support him. He has been asking such foolish questions from the very morning.”
The daughter came forward and was shocked. “All he wants to know is whether you can afford to entertain him in your home, father. He is a very wise man.”
The farmer looked shocked. “He also said many other things. Do you know what it means? What did he mean when he said whether we can both give each other a lift as soon as the journey started?”
“He just wanted you to tell stories to each other to pass the time.” The daughter replied.
The farmer nodded slowly. “When we were passing through a corn field, he asked me whether it was eaten or not.”
His daughter shook her head. “He just wanted to know whether the owner of the farm was in debt or not. Because if the owner was in debt, then all the things that were produced in the farm were already eaten and it was no good to the farmer himself.”
The farmer looked steadily shocked as he continued, “When we were about to enter a village. He gave me his knife and asked me to get two horses with it and to be careful with the knife.”
The daughter shrugged. “Aren't sticks good enough as horses to help walking through the road? Je wanted you to cut two sticks and use them as horses to navigate through the village.”
“I see,” the farmer looked stunned. “When we were walking over the city, nobody there gave us any food. He called the city a cemetery but when we were walking through a cemetery and people gave us food there he called the cemetery a charming city.”
The daughter nodded. “In a place where everybody is cold and uncaring about each other, that city is worse than dead. It was the other way round in this military where you met people who cared about you and gave you food. This man whom you have met is a very wise man. Please bring him inside. Tell him that our beams are strong enough and he can come in.”
The farmer's daughter packed enough food and gave it to a servant to be given to the minister's son with these words. “The moon is full. Twelve months make a year and the sea is overflowing with water.”
The servant gave the food to the minister's son and repeated what he had been told.
However the minister's son replied to the servant “Tell your mistress that the moon is new and I can find only eleven months in a year and the sea is not full.”
The servant did not understand what those words meant and he repeated the same to the farmer's daughter.
That was how the servant’s theft was brought to light. The servant had stolen some of the food that had to be given to the minister's son.
The minister’s son realised that the farmer's daughter was very intelligent and told her everything.
The daughter knew the meaning of the laughing fish. “It just means that there is a man disguised as a woman, plotting to kill the king.”
The minister's son rushed back to his kingdom to tell the king the real reason for the laughter of the fish.
After the minister's son told the king everything he had learnt, the king gathered all the maids in his palace and asked them to jump over a pit which he had dug.
All of them tried but only one of them succeeded. This was found to be a man. This man had actually joined the services in the palace pretending to be a woman to kill the king.
The queen was very happy and the minister was grateful that his son had found the truth.
The minister's son married the old farmer's daughter and they were very happy.
Adapted from Indian folk tales
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