Keloglan and the Sorcerer's Apprentice

Once upon a time, Keloglan's mother was very poor. She wanted her son to learn a trade. One day in the market a man with a long robe and a black beard came up to her: "Let this boy be my apprentice, and I'll teach him the most valuable trade in the world. Come back in a year. If you recognise your son, you may take him; if you don't, he stays with me." His mother was a little troubled by this condition, but she agreed so that her son could learn a trade.

The man was really a sorcerer. He took Keloglan to his tower on the mountain. He taught him only how to light the fire, carry water and dust the books. "You are forbidden to look at the books," he said. But Keloglan was curious. Every night, when the sorcerer was asleep, Keloglan opened the books and read them by candlelight. Within a year he had learned how to become a bird, a fish, a horse and a pomegranate. The sorcerer knew nothing about it.

When the year was up, his mother came to the tower. The sorcerer had turned all his apprentices into doves; forty doves stood side by side on a perch. "Go on, find your son," he said. His mother was at a loss. But Keloglan secretly flapped his wing twice. His mother saw it: "That one is my son!" The sorcerer was furious, but a condition is a condition, and he had to let Keloglan go.

When they got home, Keloglan said to his mother: "Mother, tomorrow I'll turn into a horse. Sell me at the market, but don't you dare sell my halter." The next day Keloglan became a fine grey horse. His mother sold him at the market for a good price and kept the halter in her hand. In the evening Keloglan turned back into a boy and came home. In this way they earned money several times.

But the sorcerer heard about it. One day at the market he saw that horse and recognised it at once. He offered the mother a lot of money and said, "I'll buy it with its halter." When the mother saw the money, she was careless and gave him the halter too. The sorcerer led the horse away. Because the halter was on, Keloglan could not turn back into a boy.

The sorcerer tied the horse in front of an inn and went inside. The innkeeper's children felt sorry for the horse: "This horse is thirsty!" They loosened its halter and took it to the stream. The moment the halter was loose, Keloglan turned into a fish and leapt into the stream. The sorcerer noticed and at once became a pike and chased him. Keloglan turned into a bird and shot out of the water; the sorcerer became a falcon and flew after him.

The bird fled to the sultan's garden and fell into the lap of the sultan's daughter as a pomegranate. The falcon disguised itself as a dervish and came to the palace: "My princess, that pomegranate is mine. Give it to me." The princess did not want to give it, but when the dervish insisted, the pomegranate fell to the ground and burst into seeds. At once the dervish turned into a rooster and began pecking up the seeds. But one seed rolled under the princess's slipper. That seed became a fox, and it caught the rooster! Because the sorcerer was stuck as a rooster, he could not cast any more spells, and the fox shut him up in the palace henhouse.

The fox turned back into Keloglan and told the princess everything. The sultan sent men to the sorcerer's tower, and all the doves there, the apprentices the sorcerer had kept prisoner, became people again and went home. The sultan admired Keloglan's cleverness and courage and gave him his daughter.

Keloglan burned the sorcerer's books and kept only one: a book about healing herbs. With that book he became the physician of the land. Three apples fell from the sky: one for the one who told this tale, one for the one who listened, and one for Keloglan, who used knowledge not for evil but for good.