After that, the King’s youngest Princess, for the sake of sending the Prince away from the post of looking after the horse, went to the King, and wept while saying thus: “Anē! Father,[2] because of this youth who looks after them, my sheep are nearly finished. On that account, taking the horse-keeper who came with that Seṭṭiyārē, to look after my sheep, let us send the youth who looks after the sheep to look after the horse.”
The King replied, “Having asked the Seṭṭiyārē we can do it.”
The King having asked the Seṭṭiyārē the thing she told him, “You can do it,” he said; and after he had thus spoken to the Seṭṭiyārē it was done. So the horse-keeper went to look after the sheep. Having gone there, while he was looking after them for a long time, the sheep increased in number by hundreds of thousands.
One day, when the King had gone for hunting sport into the midst of the forest, he was seized there by a Yakā. After being seized, he undertook to give the Yakā the King’s three Princesses, and having escaped by undertaking this charge he came back.
Next day he made a proclamation through the whole city by beat of tom-toms. What was it? “Having been seized yesterday in the forest by a Yakā, I only escaped by promising to give him my three Princesses. To-morrow a Princess, on the day after to-morrow a Princess, on the day after that a Princess; in this manner in three days I am giving the three Princesses. If a person who is able to do it should deliver them, having married that person to them, I will appoint him to the kingdom.”
Then Mānikka Seṭṭiyārē said, “I can do it.”
On that day, that Prince who was looking after the sheep went to look after them. While he was there, a man, taking a sheep, ran off into the chena jungle. While bounding after him in order to recover it, having gone very far, the Prince saw him go down the hole of a polangā snake.
After going near the polangā’s hole, and looking down it, and seeing that the hole descended into the earth, the Prince went along that tunnel. Having gone on from there it became dark, and going on in the darkness he saw a very great light. Having gone to the light, when he looked about there was a man asleep, wearing very many clothes.
Then it was in the mind of this shepherd to go away, and in his mind not to go. If you should say, “Who was sleeping there?” it was the Yakā who had formerly been in that iron house, and had left it. That Yakā at that very time saw in a dream that the Prince who had sent him out of that house had come to him, and was there. While seeing him in the dream, the sleeping Yakā awoke, and when he looked up the Prince was beside him.
The Yakā, getting up from there, went to the Prince, and while he was embracing him the Prince became afraid. Then the Yakā said, “Lord, let not Your Majesty be afraid. The Yakā whom you sent away from that house is I indeed.”