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."
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 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, considering that every animal ought to run to
its mother, decided that a gelding had had a foal.
The farmer who owned the mare went down the stairs, saying over and
over again: "The gelding has foaled! the gelding has foaled!"