Keloglan and the Sultan's Daughter

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a sultan's daughter famous for her cleverness. She was both beautiful and learned; there was no book she had not read and no riddle she had not solved. When her father wanted her to marry, she set a condition: "I will ask forty questions. I will marry whoever gives forty right answers to forty questions."

The sultan sent out criers. Lords, princes and scholars came from every corner. Some lasted until the tenth question, some until the twentieth, but none of them reached forty. The palace gate filled and emptied with suitors going home in shame.

The news reached Keloglan in his village. "Mother, let me go too," he said. His mother laughed: "Son, the princes didn't know the answers. How will you?" "If I don't know, I'll learn, Mother. The road is a school too," said Keloglan. He put a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese in his saddlebag and set off.

On the way he first came to a stream. On the bank an old man could not get across. Keloglan carried him across on his back. "Thank you, my boy," said the old man. "Let me give you a piece of advice: the answer to every question is inside the question." A little further on, Keloglan saw an anthill in the middle of the road; the caravans would crush it. He scooped the ants into a piece of bark and carried them to the edge of a field. Finally he came to a fountain whose spout was blocked, so the birds could not drink. Keloglan cleared the spout, and the birds chirped with joy.

When he reached the palace, the guards laughed at him: "The princes have come and gone. Were we missing a bald boy?" But a condition is a condition, and they let him in. From behind a curtain, the sultan's daughter began to ask her questions.

"What is the fastest thing in the world?" "Thought, which goes everywhere in the blink of an eye," said Keloglan. "What is the sweetest thing?" "The sleep of a tired person." "What has no mouth but speaks?" "A book." "What has no feet but runs?" "A stream." The questions followed one after another. Keloglan remembered the old man's words; he looked for a clue inside every question, and he found it.

Thirty-nine questions went by like this. The whole palace held its breath. Then the princess asked the fortieth question: "What am I thinking right now?" The palace fell silent. This was the question that had beaten even the cleverest princes, because each time the princess thought of something different.

Keloglan thought for a moment, then smiled: "My princess, you are thinking: this bald boy will not be able to answer the fortieth question. If that is true, my answer is right. If it is wrong, then I have failed, and what you were thinking turns out to be true after all."

The princess came out from behind the curtain, laughing out loud. The whole palace was astonished. "You beat forty questions with a single sentence," said the princess. But the sultan's vizier objected: "This bald boy is not worthy of the palace! Let there be one more condition. Tonight we'll mix a sack of millet with a sack of rice in the garden. Let him sort them by morning."

That night, as Keloglan sat in the garden thinking over the sacks, he saw thousands of ants marching in lines. The ants he had saved! Until morning they carried the millet to one side and the rice to the other. This time the vizier said, "Another condition! Let him bring forty jugs of water to the palace before sunrise." When Keloglan reached the fountain, the birds came; each of them helped to carry the jugs with its beak and its wings.

Now the sultan could say nothing. "The hand that did so many kindnesses will be kind to my daughter too," he said. The wedding lasted forty days and forty nights. Keloglan brought his mother to the palace too. Every morning his mother looked out of the palace window towards her village and smiled: "My son said if he didn't know, he would learn. And he did."

They had their wish come true; may we have ours too.