IN the olden time there was once a sultan whose days were joyless because he had no son. Once he was out walking with his vizier, and they passed out of the city and went on and on until they came to a wild, craggy valley. In this valley they sat down to rest. Suddenly the ground was shaken as if by an earthquake, there was a clap of thunder, and a yellow-robed, yellow-slippered, white-bearded dervish stood before them. The emperor and the vizier were so frightened they could not stir, but when the dervish addressed them with the words, “Peace be unto you,” they took heart and responded courteously, “Unto you be peace.”
“What is your errand here, my lord sultan?” asked the dervish.
“If you know that I am a sultan, you must also know my errand,” the emperor replied.
Then the dervish took from his bosom an apple, presented it to the sultan, and said, “Let the sultana eat half of this, and eat the other half yourself.” So saying, he disappeared.
The sultan went home, and he and the sultana each ate half the apple, and within a year a little prince was born to them. So joyful was the sultan over this event, that he scattered gold coins among the poor, restored to freedom his slaves, and gave a magnificent banquet to his courtiers.
The years passed until the prince had reached the age of fourteen, and still his parents fondled him and treated him like a child. One day he said to his father, “I want you to make me a little marble palace, and let there be two fountains in it, one of which shall run with honey, and the other with butter.”
So dearly did the sultan love his son, that he had the little marble palace made with the two fountains in it just as the lad had desired. When the sultan’s son went into his completed palace and sat looking at the bubbling fountains of butter and honey, an old woman came with a pitcher in her hand and would have filled it at one of the fountains. But the sultan’s son threw a stone at the old woman’s pitcher and broke it in pieces. Then the old woman went away without saying a word.
Next day she was there again with a pitcher, which she was about to fill when the prince threw a stone and shattered it. Then the old woman silently departed. On the third day also she came to fill a pitcher, and the prince threw a stone that broke the pitcher to fragments. “O youth!” said she, “’tis the will of God that you shall fall in love with an orange fairy.” With these words she quitted him.
From that time on the prince gradually became pale and thin. The sultan observed this and sent for the wise men and the doctors, but they could not cure the prince of his illness. At last the youth said to his father: “My dear daddy, these wise men of yours labor in vain to help me. I am in love with an orange fairy, and I shall never be better till I find her.”
“You are the only child I have in the wide world,” groaned the sultan. “If you leave me to search for this fairy, perchance you would never return, and my happiness would be destroyed.”
Time went on and the prince continued to slowly wither away, and he became so listless that most of the time he lay with closed eyes as if in a heavy sleep. So his father saw it would be best for the youth to go and, if possible, find the orange fairy. As soon as he had the sultan’s permission, the prince went away over the mountains and through the valleys. After traveling for many days he came to a vast plain, and in the midst of it met a giantess as tall as a church spire. She was chewing gum, and the sound of her chewing could be heard a half-hour’s journey off.
“Good day, madam,” said the youth.
“Good day, little sonny,” she responded. “If you had not spoken so politely, I would have gobbled you up. Whither are you going?”
The youth heaved a sigh, and said, “I have fallen violently in love with an orange fairy, but I don’t know where to find her.”
“Neither do I know,” said the giantess. “But I have forty sons, and they go up and down the earth more than I do. Perhaps they can tell you something of the matter.”
So the giantess took the prince to her home, and toward evening, when it began to grow dusk, she gave him a tap on the head and turned him into a broom and placed him beside the door. Immediately afterward the forty sons arrived, and as they came in they said, “Mother, we smell man’s flesh.”
“Nonsense!” said the mother. “Sit down to supper.”
They were busy eating and drinking when she said to them, “If a man should come to our dwelling as my guest, how would you treat him?”
“Like a brother, of course,” they replied.
Then their mother tapped the broom, and there stood the sultan’s son. “This is my guest,” said she.
They greeted him cordially, inquired after his health, and asked him to sit down and eat with them. “But he does not care for your sort of food,” said the giantess. “He eats fowls, beef, mutton, and such things.”
So one of the sons jumped up and went out and slew a sheep, and brought it in and laid it before the prince. “That won’t do,” said the giantess. “Men do not eat mutton until it is cooked.”
They therefore skinned the sheep, roasted it, and again placed it before him. He ate enough to satisfy his hunger, and stopped, but the sons exclaimed, “Why, that’s nothing!” and urged him to eat more.
“No, my sons,” said their mother, “he has eaten all he needs.”
“Let me see what this roasted sheep-meat is like,” said one of the sons. So he took it up and devoured the whole of it in a couple of mouthfuls.
The prince stayed with the giants over night, and in the morning the giantess said to her sons: “Our guest is greatly troubled because he has fallen in love with an orange fairy and knows not where to find her. Can you show him the way?”
Then the youngest of the forty sons leaped up with a shout of joy and said, “I know where she is!”
“Very well,” said his mother, “take this youth to his fairy that his heart may be at rest.”
So the youngest of the giant brothers took charge of the prince, and they went merrily away together and traveled until at last the giant said: “We shall come presently to a large garden in which there is a spring. Stand beside the spring and do as I tell you, and then lay hold of what you see in the water.”
Soon they came to the garden, and the prince went and stood at the margin of the spring. “Shut your eyes and open your eyes,” said the giant.
The prince obeyed, and then he saw an orange bobbing up and down on the surface of the water. He at once reached down and grasped it. “Now,” said the giant, “take care not to cut open the orange in any place where there is no water, or things will go badly with you. That orange contains your fairy.”
Then they parted, one to go to the right and the other to the left. The sultan’s son went on and on and on, and in the course of time came to a clear spring beneath the wide-spreading branches of a big tree. He drank of the water and said to himself, “Here is a good place to cut open my orange.”
Scarcely had he cut through the peel when out popped a lovely damsel. Not even the full moon could be more beautiful. She immediately called for water, and he gave her some from the spring. After talking together for a time he told her he would go to a town that was near and hire a carriage to take them to his father’s palace.
He had not been gone long when she observed some one coming, and she climbed into the tree and concealed herself in the leafage on a branch directly over the spring. The person she saw approaching was a negro maidservant, who came to fill a jar with water. As this servant looked into the spring she saw the reflection of the damsel in the watery mirror. “Why!” said she in surprise, “I did not know I looked like that. I am much more beautiful than my mistress. She ought to fetch water for me, and not I for her.”
So saying, she gave the jar a bang that broke it to bits, and then she went home. Her mistress asked where the jar of water was, and the servant replied, “I am much more beautiful than you, and you must do the water-fetching in future.”
Her mistress picked up a mirror and held it before the maid. “Look in this,” she said. “I think you must have taken leave of your senses.”
The negress looked into the mirror and saw that she was as black as ever. Without another word she got a jar and went again to the spring. But there she saw the reflection of the face of the damsel who was in the tree, and again she fancied it was her own. “I was right after all,” said she. “I am ever so much more beautiful than my mistress.”
So she smashed the jar and went home. Her mistress asked her why she had not brought the water. “Because I am ever so much more beautiful than you,” said the maid. “Therefore you must fetch the water for me.”
“You are downright crazy,” declared her mistress, and once more produced the mirror.
When the negress saw her face in it she took another jar and for the third time went to the spring. But there the damsel’s face appeared, and the negress was about to break the jar when the fairy addressed her from the tree, saying: “It is my face you see in the water.”
The negress looked up and saw the wondrously beautiful damsel. “Who are you and why are you there?” she asked.
“I am a fairy,” replied the damsel, “and I am waiting for a prince who has gone to the town near by after a carriage. When he returns we shall ride away to his father’s palace.”
The negress climbed up beside the maiden, and said: “Dear lady, you will get a cramp from crouching here. Rest your head against me.”
So the damsel rested her head on the shoulder of the negress, who took a needle from her dress and slyly pricked the damsel’s neck. Instantly the orange fairy became a bird, and pr-r-r! she was gone, leaving the negress alone in the tree.
By and by the prince came back with a fine coach. He looked up into the tree and saw the black face. “What has happened to you?” he asked.
“That is a nice question,” she retorted. “Why did you leave me here all day till the hot sun turned me black?”
The changed aspect of his fairy was very disconcerting to the prince, but he helped the black damsel descend from the tree and took her in the coach straight to his father’s palace. Every one was eager to see the fairy he had brought home, and when they saw the negress they were amazed that he could have lost his heart to what was apparently an ordinary black servant maid.
“But she is not what she seems,” declared the prince. “I had to leave her in a tree while I went to get a coach, and she was blackened there by the rays of the sun. She will soon grow white again, and then I will marry her.”
A fine garden adjoined the palace, and one day the orange-bird came to it, lit on a tree, and called down to the gardener.
“What do you want with me?” he asked.
“I wish you would tell me what the sultan’s son is doing,” said the bird.
“He is doing no harm that I know of,” replied the gardener.
“And what is the black damsel doing?” the bird asked.
“Oh, I suppose she is sitting with him as usual,” the gardener answered.
Then the bird sang these words:
“Though she sits by his side,
She’ll not long there abide.
She makes a false showing
And trouble is growing.
When I light on a tree
The tree dies, as you’ll see.”
The bird flew away, but the next day it came again and asked about the sultan’s son and the black damsel, and repeated the song it sang before. In like manner it came the third day, and each time the tree it rested on withered and died. The afternoon of the third day the prince walked in the garden, and he observed the withered trees. “You ought to take better care of the trees,” said he to the gardener. “Do you not see that they are withering away?”
“They were all right,” said the gardener, “until a few days ago a little bird began coming here and asking about you and the damsel you brought home in the coach. It said that every tree it lit on should wither.”
“Smear the trees with bird-lime,” ordered the prince, “and if you catch the bird, bring it to me.”
The gardener used the bird-lime, and the next day caught the bird. Then he put it in a cage, and carried it to the prince. The black damsel was with the prince, and as soon as she saw the bird she knew it was the orange fairy. Later in the day she pretended to be very ill, and she declared that she would never get well unless she could have such a bird as was in the gardener’s cage to eat. The prince said she might do as she pleased with the caged bird. So she directed that it should be killed and cooked and brought to her, and that the feathers and whatever she did not eat should be burned.
All was done as she wished, except that one feather slipped unnoticed into a crack in the kitchen hearth. After the black damsel had eaten the flesh of the bird, she arose from her bed completely recovered from her illness.
A certain old woman who had a cottage in the vicinity sometimes came to the palace kitchen to see a daughter who worked there. One day she noticed a bright feather in a crack of the hearth. She poked it out with her knitting-needle, and carried it home and put it on a rafter. The next time she went to the palace, the bird’s feather leaped down from the rafter, shivered a little, and then turned into a lovely damsel. This damsel tidied the room, cooked dinner and set it on the table, and afterward became a feather and leaped back to the rafter. When the old woman came home she was greatly astonished at what she saw, and she searched the house backward and forward to see if she could discover the person who had been helping her, but no one could she find.
It was the same the next time she went to the palace—the feather became a damsel and did all the household work. “I really must find out the secret of this,” thought the old woman when she returned.
So the following morning she went out as if she were going away, but left the door ajar and hid where she could peep through a crack. Soon she perceived there was a damsel in the room putting things in order and cooking the dinner. Then in she dashed and seized hold of her. “Who are you?” she demanded, “and whence do you come?”
The damsel told her sad story, and the old woman said: “Distress yourself no more, my lass. I’ll put your affairs to rights this very day.”
Then off she went to the palace and invited the prince to call on her that evening. He was now so tired of the black damsel that he was glad of any excuse to get away from her, and the evening found him punctually at the old woman’s. They sat down to supper, and presently the damsel brought in the coffee. When the sultan’s son saw her he nearly fainted. As soon as he recovered himself a little, and the maiden had left the room, he turned to the old woman and asked, “Who is that damsel?”
“She is the orange fairy,” replied the old woman.
“I thought she could be no other!” he exclaimed, and he rose from the table and ran to where the damsel was and took her in his arms.
Presently they went to the palace together, and the instant the black slave girl caught sight of them she knew her perfidy had been discovered, and she fled from the palace, never to return. Not long afterward the prince married his beloved, and there was rejoicing throughout the realm. So they at last had the desire of their hearts, and may you have your desire also.
