So the girl asked, "What, father, are you crying for to-day also?"

Then the Gamarala says, "Ane! Daughter, the King is coming to-morrow to

summon you in marriage, and return. Owing to it, the King said to me,

'Having built inner sheds and outer sheds, having milked milk from

oxen and caused it to curdle, and having expressed oil from sand,

place them [ready].' Now, then, how shall I do those things? It is

through being unable that I am weeping."

Then the girl says, "Father, no matter for that. Simply stay

[here]. Please build the [usual] sorts of inner sheds and outer

sheds. How are you to milk milk from oxen and curdle it? How are you

to express oil from sand?" Afterwards the Gamarala indeed built the

inner sheds and outer sheds.

On the very day on which the King said he is coming, the girl, with

another girl, taking a bundle of cloth, went along the road to meet

the King. On the road there is a sesame chena. By the chena they met

the King.

When coming very far away, the Ministers said at the hand of the King,

"That one coming in front is the Gamarala's daughter herself." The

Gamarala's daughter, too, did go in front.

Then the King asked at the hand of the Gamarala's daughter, "Where,

girl, art thou going?"

The Gamarala's daughter replied, "We are going [because] our father

has become of age [in the same manner as women]. On account of it

[we are going] to the washermen."

Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Volume 2 (of 3) · 第 21 / 347 题