She said, ‘Your bidding is fulfilled.’
Then he went in, and, when he saw the lad, his heart was full.
And the time came when the lad grew big, and he looked the very picture of his father. The time came that his father died. By that time he felt himself a man, and he put forth his little finger, and lifted the palace up. Then he came back from hunting, and he lifted the foundation of the palace, and told his mother to place her breast beneath it. Then his mother placed her breast beneath the foundation, and he left it pressing upon her. Then she cried aloud. [[37]]
The lad said to her, ‘Mother, tell me, why was my father’s moustache half white?’
Then she said to him, ‘Why, darling, your father fought nine years to win the Serpent-Maiden, and never won her.’
Then he asked, ‘And have I no brother?’
‘No,’ she said; ‘but you have three sisters, and the Unclean Spirit carried them away.’
And he asked, ‘Whither did he carry them?’
Then she said he had carried them to the Land of the Setting Sun.
Then he took his father’s saddle and his bridle and likewise his father’s colt, and set out in quest of his sisters, and arrived at his sister’s house, and hurled his mace, and smashed the plum-trees.