The Prince, collecting it and taking it to the city said to the Princess, “After collecting the mun̥ that I sowed in the chena I have come back.”
“Then measure it,” she said. When he was measuring it there was one mun̥ seed less. As she said this a turtle-dove dropped it at the measuring place.
After that, the father of the Princess put that Princess and seven widow women in a dark room. Having put them [there] the King said, “Unless you select and take out the Princess, or if you take out any other person, I shall behead you.”
When the Prince had gone into the room [he thought], “Will the fire-flies that I freed by giving a hundred masuran render an assistance?” Then all the fire-flies having come, fastened on the body of the Princess, as a lamp. After that, the Prince took the Princess out into the light.
[As he had performed all the tasks, the Prince was married to the Princess]. Afterwards the Prince, calling the Princess, went to the house of that widow woman.
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
In a variant of the first part of this story, a youth whose father was dead, and whose mother, finding him in the way, wanted to get rid of him in order to marry another man, was sent by his mother to bring some milk, to be used medicinally for curing a pretended illness of hers.
He was sent first to the Aet-Kanda Lihiniyā (Lēniyā is an alternative spelling), and had the same experiences at its nest, before he got the milk. The young birds told their mother that he was their elder brother, the son of their Puñci-Ammā.[4] When he stated that he had come to ask for the milk, the Lihinī (the female Rukh) said, “Andō! Son, when did any one get milk from me, and cure a sick person with it? She has done that to kill you, not through want of it. However, since you have come I will give you a little milk.” One of the young birds accompanied him to his home. After his mother had drunk the milk she pretended to be still ill, and sent him for the milk of the Demon Hound,[5] which lived in a cave in a forest. I translate this part:—
The woman cooked and gave him a packet of rice. This youth, taking the packet of cooked rice and his sword, and making the little one of the Aet-Kanda Lihinī stay at the house, went to the cave where the Demon Hound was. When he arrived, the Demon Hound was not there; only the little ones of the Demon Hound were there.