The Serpent Peri and the Magic Mirror

Once there was a poor woodcutter who had one son. One day the man fell ill and said to his son: "If I die, carry on my trade and go to the forest every day. You may cut down any tree you find there, but at the edge of the forest there is a cypress tree; never touch it." Two days later the man died and was buried. His son went to the forest and cut down trees, but the cypress he left alone.

One day the young man stood beside the cypress tree and thought: "What is it about this tree that I'm not allowed to lay a hand on it?" He looked at the tree, examined it curiously, and at last took his axe and walked towards it. But he had hardly lifted his foot when the cypress moved away from him. The woodcutter mounted his donkey and chased the tree but could not catch it, and evening came. He got off his donkey, tied it to a tree and climbed to the top of the tree himself to wait for morning.

In the morning, when the sky turned red, he climbed down, but the donkey had broken its rope and run off; it was nowhere to be seen. "Never mind, I'll go on foot," said the woodcutter, and he kept chasing the cypress; the tree went ahead and he followed. All day he chased it but could not catch it. On the third day, as he was chasing the tree with his axe on his shoulder, he suddenly came upon an elephant and a serpent wrestling with each other.

Believe it or not, the serpent wanted to swallow the elephant, but the elephant's great tusk had got stuck in the serpent's throat, and neither could get free of the other. When the two animals saw the young man looking at them, they both asked him for help. Without angering either of them, the young man cut off the tip of the elephant's tusk with his axe. The tusk came out of the serpent's throat; the elephant went one way and the serpent the other. The elephant swung its trunk and plunged into the forest. The serpent thanked the young man and said it would give him the reward it had promised.

On the way the serpent stopped at a spring: "Wait while I bathe in this water, and whatever happens, don't be afraid!" As soon as the serpent dived into the water, such a terrible storm and hurricane broke out, with lightning upon lightning and thunderbolt upon thunderbolt, that the end of the world could not have been worse. After a while the serpent came out of the bath and everything grew calm again. The serpent was really of the peri race.

They went a long way and a short way; they drank coffee, smoked their pipes and picked violets along the road. At last they came near a house. The Serpent Peri said: "Soon we'll reach my mother's house. When she opens the door, say you are my kinsman, and she will let you in. She will offer you coffee; don't drink it. She will offer you food; don't eat it. But in the corner by the door hangs a little piece of mirror; ask my mother for that!"

They reached the house, and as soon as the Serpent Peri knocked, his mother opened the door. "Come, my brother!" said the Serpent Peri to the young man behind him. "Who is your brother?" asked his mother. "The one who saved my life," said her son, and he told the whole story. They went inside; the woman brought the young man coffee and a pipe, but he would not take them. "I'm in a hurry, I can't stay long," he said. "At least rest a little; we don't send our guests away empty-handed," said the woman. "I want nothing, but if you'll give me that piece of mirror in the corner by the door, I'll take it," said the young man. The woman did not want to give it, but the young man insisted that perhaps his life depended on that piece of mirror, and at last the woman gave it to him, very unwillingly.

The young man went on his way with the piece of mirror. As he looked into it, wondering what use it could be, suddenly there appeared before him a jinni so huge that one of his lips touched the sky and the other the earth. The poor young man was so frightened that if the jinni had not said, "What is your command, my sultan?" he would have run for the rest of his life. As it was, all he could manage was to ask for something to eat, and at once a rich table appeared before him, the like of which he had never seen in his father's house.

The young man grew even more curious about the mirror and looked into it again. Again the jinni appeared before him: "What is your command, my sultan?" At first nothing came to his mind, but at last his lips murmured the word "Palace," and at once a palace rose before him, more beautiful even than the sultan's. "Open!" said the young man, and the gates of the palace opened before him.

The young man was delighted with the piece of mirror. Then he thought of the sultan's daughter, whose fame had spread through the world. But he did not want to have her brought by force. He asked the jinni for fine clothes and horses, went before the sultan and asked for his daughter's hand in God's name. The sultan demanded hard tasks: a forty-room mansion in a single night, trees with golden fruit in its garden, forty horses at its gate. Each night the young man looked into the mirror, and the jinni made everything ready. The sultan gave him his daughter, and the girl loved the young man's kind heart. The young man took her to his palace across the sea, and there they began to live happily.

But the sultan's vizier wanted the girl for his own son and was not at all pleased with this marriage. One day he said to the sultan, "This young man's power comes from a spell; unless we take that spell from him, your daughter is in danger." He brought a wicked old woman to the palace. The old woman said, "Have a big chest made, lined with zinc; put me in it and throw it into the sea. I'll find the girl." They put the old woman in the chest with food for nine days and threw it into the sea.

The chest was tossed from wave to wave and at last reached the city where the sultan's daughter lived with the young man. The fishermen pulled the chest ashore with ropes and hooks; when they opened it, an old woman crawled out. "Ah, may my enemy be parted from the child who is the light of his eyes," wailed the old woman, "I didn't deserve this!" She wept so much that the men believed every word. "Where is the bey of your city? Perhaps he will pity me and take me in," she said. They showed her the palace.

The old woman went to the palace and knocked, and the sultan's daughter came down. The old woman recognised the girl at once and begged her to take her into service; the girl did not know her. "My lord comes home this evening; I'll ask him," said the girl. The young man agreed, and from the next day the old woman began to serve them. One day, two days, a week, two weeks went by; in the palace there was neither a cook to cook nor a servant to clean, yet every day rich tables were laid and everywhere was spotless.

The old woman went to the girl's room, asked whether she was bored being alone all day and offered to keep her company. One day she asked where all those fine dishes came from. The girl knew nothing of the piece of mirror, so she could say nothing. "Find out from your lord," said the old woman. The girl asked, and the young man, suspecting nothing, showed her the mirror. That was just what the old woman wanted. She waited two days, then told the girl to ask her lord for the mirror so she could play with it and pass the time. The young man, suspecting nothing, gave the mirror to his wife.

The old woman knew where the girl had put the mirror. At night she stole it, and when she looked into it the jinni appeared before her. "What is your command?" "Take me and this girl to her father's palace," said the old woman. With her second command she turned the young man's palace into a heap of ashes. When the young woodcutter came home, he found nothing but the cat mewing among the ashes. There was also a little piece of meat there; the sultan's daughter had thrown it to the cat. The young man picked up the piece of meat and set out to find his wife. Even if he had to roam the whole world, he would find her.

He went and searched high and low, and at last reached the city where his wife lived. He went to the palace and begged the head cook to take him on as a kitchen helper. In a few days he learned that the sultan's daughter had come home. One day the head cook fell ill. The young man told him to rest and said he would cook the food himself. He roasted and stewed, and when he sent the dishes upstairs he put the piece of meat he had found among the ashes on the girl's plate. As soon as the girl saw that little piece of meat, she knew her lord was near.

She called the head cook and asked who was in the kitchen. At first the cook denied it, but at last he admitted that he had taken on a poor young man to help. The girl went to her father and said that there was a young man in the kitchen who made such good coffee that she wanted her coffee from him. So every day the young man made coffee and took it to the girl. They were together again, and the girl told him how everything had happened. They talked about how to get the mirror back.

But one day, as soon as the young man went in to the girl, the old woman appeared. Though she had not seen him for a long time, she recognised him, looked into the mirror and had the poor young man sent back to the ashes of his old palace. There he found the cat still crouching. When the cat was hungry it caught mice, and it had made such a slaughter among them that the King of the Mice had hardly a soldier left. The King of the Mice was very angry, but he did not dare to tackle the cat.

One day he saw the young man, came up to him and asked for his help, because if he waited until tomorrow his whole kingdom would be destroyed. "I'll help you," said the young man, "though I have troubles enough of my own to carry." "What is your trouble?" asked the King of the Mice. The young man told him the story of the piece of mirror, how it had been stolen and whose hands it had fallen into. "Then I can help you!" cried the King of the Mice, and he gathered all the mice in the world.

He asked which of them went in and out of that palace and which of them knew the old woman and the piece of mirror. A lame mouse limped forward, kissed the ground at the king's feet and said that he made a habit of stealing food from the old woman's chest. Through the keyhole he had seen the old woman take out a little piece of mirror every evening and hide it under her pillow. The king ordered him to steal that piece of mirror. The lame mouse asked for two companions, climbed on the back of one of them, and they went to the old woman's room.

When they arrived it was evening, and the old woman was just eating her supper. "We've come just in time," said the lame mouse, "we'll find something to eat." They dashed into the room, filled their bellies and waited for night. When the old woman lay down and fell asleep, the lame mouse jumped onto her bed, went to her face and began tickling her nose with the tip of its tail. "Atchoo! Atchoo!" sneezed the old woman, so hard that her head nearly flew off. While she was sneezing "Atchoo! Atchoo!" again, the other two mice snatched the piece of mirror from under the pillow, put the lame mouse on their backs and ran home.

The young man was overjoyed to see the mirror. As he had promised the King of the Mice, he took the cat with him so that it would never harm the mice again, and every day he fed the cat from his own table. Then he looked into the mirror, and the jinni appeared: "What is your command, my sultan?" The young man asked for a robe embroidered with gold, a fine horse and a great escort. In the blink of an eye everything was ready. He rode into the city and stopped in front of the palace. The sultan was very frightened when he saw the great escort. The young man went into the palace and told the sultan what his vizier and the old woman had done. When the sultan learned the truth he was ashamed; he gave his daughter back to the young man and made him heir to his kingdom. The wicked old woman and the vizier were banished from the land.

The young man and the sultan's daughter lived happily in their splendid kingdom. The magic mirror was always beside them and made all their troubles vanish. And the lame mouse lived comfortably in the palace kitchen to the end of his days. Three apples fell from the sky: one for the one who told the tale, one for the one who listened, and one for the woodcutter's son, who was kind to a serpent, an elephant and the King of the Mice.