There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of
both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving;
and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting
help to get her out of some far-away castle where she was held in
captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think
that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a
novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials—yes,
and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so
on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense a thing as
that. No, everybody swallowed these people’s lies whole, and never asked
a question of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not
around, one of these people came along—it was a she one, this time—and
told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast
and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful
girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in
that cruel captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of the castle
were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye—the eye
in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not
mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.
Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table were in
raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every knight
of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their
vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked
for it at all.