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.