Once upon a time there was a shepherd. He used to pasture his sheep upon a hill, and one day he saw something glittering on the opposite hill. So he went there to see what it was. It was a golden mortar. He took it up and said to his daughter: “I will give this mortar to our king.”

But she said: “Don’t do that. If you give him the mortar, you won’t have the pestle, and he is sure to ask for it, and then you will get into trouble.”

But the shepherd thought that she was only a silly girl. He took the mortar, and, when he came before the king, he said: “Begging your pardon, Mr. King, I want to give you this mortar.”

The king answered him roughly: “If you give me the mortar, I must have the pestle as well. Unless the pestle is here within three days, your life will be forfeit.” [166]

The shepherd began to lament: “My daughter was right when she said that when you had got the mortar you would want the pestle too. I wouldn’t listen to her, so it serves me right.”

“Have you such a clever daughter as that?” asked the king.

“Indeed I have,” said the shepherd.

“Then tell your daughter that I will marry her, if she comes neither walking nor riding, clothed nor unclothed, neither by day nor by night, neither at noon nor in the morning. And I won’t ask for the pestle either.”

The shepherd went home and said: “You can get me out of this, if you go to Mr. King neither clothed nor unclothed,” and the rest of it.

But the daughter wasn’t a bit frightened. She came with the fall of dusk (and that was neither at noon nor in the morning); she dressed herself in fishing-nets; she took a goat, and she partly rode on the goat and partly she walked.

And when the king saw that she had only a fishing-net on, that she came with the approach of dusk, and that she was partly walking, partly riding on the goat, he was [167]bound to marry her. But he said to her: “You will be my wife so long as you don’t give advice to anybody; but if you do, you must part with me.”

Well, she didn’t give advice to anybody until one day there was a market in the town, and a farmer’s mare had a foal at the market. The foal ran away to another farmer, who was there with a gelding, and the farmer said: “This foal belongs to me.”

They went to law about it, and at last the matter came before the king. And the king, considerin............