Accordingly, after the two young men had taken the refreshment provided for them, the servants took them into the king’s presence, and they began to sing this ballad:—
“The pretty bird, the swallow, built her nest with care in the palace of the king. In the nest she reared up happily two of her little ones. A black, ugly-looking bird, however came to the swallow’s nest to mar her happiness and to kill her two little ones. And the ugly black bird succeeded in destroying the happiness of the poor little swallow; the little ones, however, although yet weak and unfledged were saved, and, when they were grown up and able to fly, they came to look at the palace where their mother, the pretty swallow, had built her nest.”
This strange song the two minstrels sung so very sweetly that the king was quite charmed, and asked them the meaning of the words.
Whereupon the two meanly dressed young men took off their hats, so that the rich tresses of their golden hair fell down over their shoulders, and the light glanced so brightly upon it that the whole hall was illuminated by the shining. They then stepped forward together, and told the king all that had happened to them and to their mother, and convinced him that they were really his own sons.
The king was exceedingly angry when he heard all the cruel things his stepmother had done, and he gave orders that she should be burnt to death. He then went with the two golden-haired princes to the miserable dungeon wherein his unfortunate wife had been confined so many years, and brought her once more into her beautiful palace. There, looking on her golden-haired sons, and seeing how much the king, their father, loved them, she soon forgot all her long years of misery. As to the king, he felt that he could never do enough to make amends for all the misfortunes his queen had lived through, and all the dangers to which his twin sons had been exposed. He felt that he had too easily believed the stories of the old queen, because he would not trouble himself to inquire more particularly into the truth or falsehood of the strange things she had told him.
After all this mortification, and trouble, and misery, everything came right at last. So the king and his wife, with their golden-haired twins, lived together long and happily.
[1] This legend was written and contributed to Vouk St. Karadgitch by Prince Michel Obrenovitch III, who had heard it in his childhood from the lips of his nurse.
[2] The Christians of the Balkans usually make the sign of the cross before and after every meal.
[3] A golden coin worth about 10s.