A king was once sitting upon his throne when an embassador from
a distant country approached, drew a line around the throne, and
sat down without speaking a word. The King did not understand this
mystery. He called his ministers. They also did not understand it. It
was a disgrace to the King that he did not have a man wise enough to
understand the symbolical message of a neighboring sovereign. The
King was very angry, and ordered his ministers to solve the riddle
themselves, or to find some one in the city to solve it immediately;
otherwise he would put them all to death. Thereupon the ministers
began to search through the realm for a wise man. After a long quest
they came to a certain house, which they entered. There was no one in
the first room but a baby sleeping in a cradle. And strange to say,
the cradle was rocking without any visible cause. They entered the
adjacent room, and lo! there also was a baby sleeping in a cradle,
which was rocking, though no one was in the room. They walked out
into the back yard, where they saw wheat washed and spread to dry;
there was a cane moving to and fro, driving away the sparrows, in
order that they might not eat the wheat. The ministers of the King
were surprised, and going down into the cellar they found a weaver
weaving cloth. As his wife had died soon, after giving birth to twins,
he had both to weave for his living and do a housewife's work and
nurse his children. He therefore had connected the two cradles and
the sparrow driver to his loom and shuttle with cords; and so, in
this manner, by virtue of his cleverness he was performing all his
duties without much trouble. The ministers thought that this man might
solve the King's riddle, and so they told him what had happened. The
weaver thought a while and then taking a couple of marbles and a
chicken, went with the ministers. Entering the presence of the King,
he looked the foreign embassador in the face, and threw before him
the marbles. The embassador took from his pocket a handful of grain
and spread it on the floor. The weaver put down the chicken, which
in a few minutes ate all the grain. Thereupon the embassador put on
his sandals and ran away speedily.
"What was all this?" asked the King.
"By drawing the line around the throne," answered the weaver, "the
embassador wished to say that their King was coming to besiege us,
if we did not humiliate ourselves and pay tribute. To this I answered
by dropping marbles, which meant that they were children compared to
ourselves and that they would better go and play marbles, rather than
to undertake a war which would result in their utter ruin. By spreading
the handful of grain he meant that their forces were innumerable. By
the chicken which ate all the grain, I meant that a company of ours
was enough to destroy a legion of theirs."
The King was pleased with the weaver, and gave him costly presents,
but the weaver took only a little to enable him to bring up his
beloved twins. The King wanted to make him his prime minister, but
the weaver declined, saying:
"Let me continue to be a weaver; only I beg you to remember, that
wisdom and understanding are not distributed according to rank and
that the common tradesmen are entitled to be treated as humanely as
your peers and noblemen."