She was just about to destroy herself when a voice near by said: “Daughter, do not hurt yourself. The heads alone are off, but if you take them and place them beside the bodies, they will unite again.”
The delighted girl immediately did as she was directed, and the two heads were united to the bodies, so that she once again saw her husband and father alive.
But no sooner did they begin to speak than she found that she had made a terrible mistake, for, in her eagerness to restore the heads to their bodies again, she had not noticed that she had united her husband’s head to his father’s body, and Barbil’s head to her husband’s body.
While the two men quarrelled over this mistake, the poor girl, greatly distressed, appealed to the Gods to help her. They bade her cease weeping.
“The head is the principal thing,” said they; “do not mind the body: if you were the daughter of a poor man and married a Prince, Barbil, having taken the form of the Prince, is also of royal blood, so it matters not. Let him that has the head of your husband be your husband again, and he who has the head of the King be the King.”
Thus they settled the matter, and returned home.
Moral.—The head ruleth the body, and not the body the head!