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NOVEMBER, 1902.)
FOLKLORE IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES.
453
Now the other two princes, who set out in a bragging fashion to fetch the lilies, were at & loss, as they did not know how to cross the vast seas that lay before them, and so in their dilemma they sat down on the sea-beach, and, while they were still sitting, the prince and his wife appeared before them.
"Here he is! He is not dead, and has married yet another princess, and that bunch of flowers are doubtless the cobra-lilies. We had better get them from him," said the brothers to each other, and immediately proffered their services to the prince with great eagerness, and one of them took the bunch of flowers.
The prince did not object, and they travelled with the prince and his wife in an orderly manner as far as their own country, and then disappeared as if by magic with the bunch of cobra-lilies, and showed themselves to the king, who, on receiving the flowers, had declared that in the whole world no one had such brave sons as he. Without losing any time he repaired to the palace of the Nymph of the Wire Hill. She received them from the king, but was more than convinced in her heart that the prince was alive and so she said to her suitor :
"I will now perform tho Devendra vows. Please issue invitations to kings, princes and noblemen."
The invitations were issued, and all the neighbouring kings, princes and nobles, including the king's two sons, came and sat in the Assembly Hall. Their wives, too, including all the blood relatives, such as sisters and daughters, came and sat in the Hall in the places allotted to them. Thither also came the king's younger wife and her maids.
Casting a glance over the assembled crowd, the Wire Nymph said: "I see the younger wife of the king, but nowhere do I see his senior queen or her son in the assembly."
Whereupon the king was confused, and, muitering to himself, "How can she have a son without my knowing it?" sent for her. She came, foilowed by her son and her four daughtersiu-law, all as resplendent as the fall-moon in its glory, and took their seats.
The Wire Nymph now began her harangue: “Do you think, O King, that it was your two sons by the younger queen that brought me from the Wire Hill? Nothing of the sort. It was. your son by the senior queen. We descended the Hill together, and I cried out for my parrot cage, and quick as lightning he ran up the Hill by the wire and was returning with the cage, when the two princes at the foot of the Hill broke the wire and the young man fell headlong from the summit and was killed; but by the merits of his wives he was given a second birth. Do you want to know who brought the cobra-lilies? Your two sons you think! Nothing of the sort. I knew they could not, and that is why I required special flowers for the sham ceremony of the Devendra vows, as a test to find out whether the prince was dead or alive: for I knew that he alone could bring them. And in truth it was your son by the senior queen that had brought the flowers, and your other two sons imposed upon the prince and managed by fraud to palm them off on you as theirs."
The king changed volour, and, calling his two sons from the assembly, cried ont, "Are these things so?” They hung down their heads in shame and confusion, and proved their guilt. The king spat in their faces and bade them begone, and, calling forth the real hero, pressed him to his breast and wept, and soon after the assembly broke up. The king then embraced all his daughters-in-law and his senior wife. She at first upbraided him for his partiality to his younger wife and for forgetting her altogether! Then she unfolded to him how their son, of whom they had so much reason to be prond, was conceived after eating the kernel of the anchorite's mango, how he had at first been a tortoise, how she had nursed the animal nevertheless, and how she, tu her great joy, found one night that the tortoise was a human child under the tortoise covering. The king listened to everything in silence and astonishment.
