The King’s Lost Daughter

Once upon a time there were two kings, one German and one Polish, and they always lived in peace.

It happened one day that the daughter of the Polish king disappeared. She was nowhere to be found, and the king had notices put up announcing that whoever could locate his daughter and bring her home could become her husband.

The German king’s son went walking one day with his friend, a fisherman’s son. When they saw the notices, the fisherman’s son said to the German king’s son, “Shall we look for the king’s daughter?”

“Agreed,” said the king’s son, and off they rode.

They rode on and on until suddenly their horses stopped and refused to go any further. They beat them with whips and then with rods, but the horses would not budge. Then they heard a voice from on high saying, “Beat not your horses. They may not go any farther.”

How were they to go on? This was a matter in which God was involved. Heaven itself. So they decided to send for a rabbi. When the rabbi came and learned what had happened, he bade them dig where the horses were standing. They dug and they dug until they uncovered a door. The fisherman’s son and the rabbi opened the door and the youths descended through it into a cellar where they found a man wearing a talis, a prayer shawl, over his head and standing before a pair of black candles.

“What is it you wish, my children?” asked the man.

After hearing their story, the man said, “If you want to know where the king’s lost daughter is, you’ll have to swear by these black candles that you will never tell anyone I am here.”

They swore by the black candles. Then he said, “Refill the hole and drive on until you come to a bridge. Under the bridge you’ll find a golden rod. Swing the rod first to the right and then to the left. A road will appear before you, and you’ll see a glass mountain in the distance. A horse will be standing on the summit of the glass mountain. One of you must mount the steed and shut your eyes. The horse will run so fast that the rider will feel that his flesh is being torn from his body, but he must keep his eyes closed or else he’ll fall down from the mountain.”

The boys ascended from the cellar, refilled the hole, and rode off, along with the rabbi.

They came to the bridge and found the golden rod. The rabbi swung it back and forth, and a road opened before them leading to a glass mountain with a horse standing at the top. When they came close to the horse, the fisherman’s son said to the prince, “You mount the horse.”

But the prince replied, “I’m scared. You do it.”

The fisherman’s son climbed on the horse and shut his eyes, then felt himself flying with the speed of the wind. Finally the horse came to a stop beside a hut, and the youth dismounted. Through the window of the hut he saw the princess tied to a bed, while a red-hot oven glowed. And he saw a witch getting ready to throw the princess into the fiery oven. Without a moment’s thought, he leaped into the room and so surprised the witch that he was able to kill her very quickly with his sword.

He flung the witch’s body out of the hut, and it tumbled down the mountain and fell at the feet of the young prince, who was waiting there. The prince thought that it was the king’s daughter, and that the fisherman’s son had killed her. He grabbed the body, mounted his horse, and flew like the wind back to the Polish king.

Since the bloody corpse was unrecognizable, everyone believed the German prince. So the Polish king sent a troop of soldiers off to find the fisherman’s son and take vengeance for the death of his daughter.

Meanwhile the fisherman’s son untied the Polish princess and rode with her and the rabbi toward her father’s castle. As they approached it, they saw a troop of soldiers coming to meet them. The rabbi said to the fisherman’s son, “The German king’s son must have accused you of killing the princess.”

When the soldiers surrounded him, the fisherman’s son revealed the princess to them and shouted, “This is the real princess!” And when the princess’s face was washed, everyone could see that he told the truth.

The German king’s son said, “She belongs to us both, because we both searched for her.”

So it was decided that all three of them would lie in the same bed that night, and in the morning the princess would marry the youth whom she was found to be facing.

That evening there was a great banquet to celebrate the return of the king’s lost daughter. Everyone ate and drank deeply—everyone but the fisherman’s son, who took various good things and put them into his pockets.

When night fell, both youths and the princess went to sleep in one bed. The scent of chocolate and the other sweet things he had in his pockets wafted from the fisherman’s son. But the German king’s son gave off a fearful smell of drunkenness. Finally the princess couldn’t stand it and turned her face toward the sweet-smelling fisherman’s son. And when morning came, she was found pressed close against him, facing him.

And so they were married, and the German king’s son was killed because he had tried to kill the fisherman’s son.

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Glossary

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Annotations

TELLER: Moyshe Zlotkevitsh, Bialestok (Bialystok), Poland, 13 years old, son of a beggar woman.
COLLECTOR: Berl Verblinski, 1929.
SOURCE: *Yidisher folklor* (1954), vol. I, pp. 13–14.
TALE TYPE: a combination of 530, 850 (II), and 506.
COMMENTS: Culturally specific motifs in this tale include the description of the “helpers” (a rabbi and the mysterious man—a mystic? a *lamedvovnik?*), and the specification that the kings were Polish and German, and not just “any” kings.