“Is it not strange to receive a king like this?”
And the bird, hopping out of its cage, begins, “It is not more strange than to see this young woman pass for a cat. Is she a cat?”
In the same way it points to the elder brother, “Is this a dog, this young man? Is not this a thing more astonishing?”
The king is confounded. And the same thing for the third time, pointing to the second son, “Is this a bear, this one? Is this not an astonishing thing?”
The king, in his amazement, does not know what to answer to the bird; but it continues:
“Is it not a shame to leave one’s wife, and make her live eighteen years in a dungeon underground?”
The king is terribly frightened, and off he goes with his sons and his daughter, intending to free their mother; but they did not forget the precious water, and they wash this princess in it, and she becomes as young as at eighteen years old. Judge of the joy of the king, of the queen, and of their children! The king fell into a great rage, and condemns the queen’s sisters to be burnt alive in the midst of the market-place, with shirts of sulphur on them.
Catherine Elizondo.
We have also the more common version of this story—of an aged king with three sons. He reads of this water, and the three sons successively set out to fetch it. The two first fail, and stop, drinking, &c., in a certain city. The youngest meets an old woman, who tells him how to charm all the beasts in a forest he has to pass through, and how to get the water, but he is not to take anything else. But he steals the bird, and the magic horse as well, and when he gets to the forest finds all the animals awake. The old woman appears again, and gives him a magic stick, with the aid of which he passes. He finds his brothers against the advice of the old lady, and they throw him into a pit and take away the water, the horse, and the bird; but the water has no effect in their hands. The old woman appears, and sends a fox to help him out of the pit. He comes home, the horse neighs, the bird sings, he gives the water to his father, and from one hundred years old he becomes twenty.