“Ho, ho,” they cried, “does Pan think that he can match such melody as this?”
But King Midas was faithful to his friend, and, unconvinced by Apollo’s wondrous music, he declared that Pan was the better player of the two.
Apollo, wearing the laurel wreath as his crown of victory, declared that the ears of King Midas must be depraved, and, that they should thereafter take on a form more in keeping with the taste of their owner.
King Midas had no sooner reached his castle than he felt a strange sensation about his ears; and the strange feeling increased until at length, putting his hands to the sides of his head, he found with terror that his ears had grown long and were covered inside and outside with hair, and he could move them about, just as a donkey moves his. In fact, he found that they had become exactly like the ears of a donkey, or an ass.
King Midas was overcome with shame and rage, and he kept himself hidden from all the people.
After a time it occurred to him that he could have a turban or head-dress made which would cover his monstrous deformity. So he summoned a hair-dresser, of great skill in his trade, and when the hair-dresser had finished his task, King Midas was ready to go forth among his people again, for his ears were quite hidden from sight under the ample folds of his head-dress.
Only the hair-dresser knew his secret, and he had promised never to tell it to a living being.
But as the days went by, the secret began to burn in the hair-dresser’s mind, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he kept from repeating it. At last he could keep still no longer, yet he dared not disobey the King and break his promise. So he went into a vacant field and dug a deep hole in the ground. Then, kneeling down, he breathed into the hole these words: “King Midas has the ears of an ass; King Midas has the ears of an ass.”
Rising, he covered the hole with earth and hastened away.
But what do you suppose happened?