Apr 25, 2018
In
olden times, when the camel was a horse-dealer, the mouse a barber,
the cuckoo a tailor, the tortoise a baker, and the ass still a
servant, there was a miller who had a black cat. Besides this
miller, there was a Padishah who had three daughters, aged
respectively forty, thirty, and twenty years. The eldest went to
the youngest and made her write a letter to her father in these
terms:
“Dear
father, one of my sisters is forty, the other thirty, and they have
not yet married. Take notice that I will not wait so long before I
get a husband.”
The
Padishah on reading the letter sent for his daughters and thus
addressed them: “Here are a bow and arrow for each of you; go and
shoot, and wherever your arrows fall, there you will find your
future husbands.”
Taking the weapons from their father, the three maidens
went forth. The eldest shot first, and her arrow fell in the palace
of the Vezir’s son; she was accordingly united to him. The second
daughter’s arrow fell in the palace of the son of the
Sheikh-ul-Islam, and him she got for a husband. When the youngest
shot, however, her arrow fell into the hut of a wood-cutter. “That
doesn’t count,” cried everybody; and she shot again. The second
time the arrow fell in the same spot; and a third attempt met no
better success.