Description
The Olive Fairy Book
MADSCHUN
Once upon a time there lived, in a small cottage among some hills, a
woman with her son, and, to her great grief, the young man, though
hardly more than twenty years of age, had not as much hair on his head
as a baby. But, old as he looked, the youth was very idle, and
whatever trade his mother put him to he refused to work, and in a few
days always came home again.
On a fine summer morning he was lying as usual half asleep in the
little garden in front of the cottage when the sultan’s daughter came
riding by, followed by a number of gaily dressed ladies. The youth
lazily raised himself on his elbow to look at her, and that one glance
changed his whole nature.
‘I will marry her and nobody else,’ he thought. And jumping up, he
went to find his mother.
‘You must go at once to the sultan, and tell him that I want his
daughter for my wife,’ he said.
‘WHAT?’ shouted the old woman, shrinking back into a corner, for
nothing but sudden madness could explain such an amazing errand.