The First Old Man’s Tale

“This hind that you see,” said the first old man, telling his story to the Genie, the merchant and the others, “is my wife.” His story ran as follows:
The man and his wife were happy but had no children. So, he adopted the son of a favourite slave. But his wife was extremely jealous of both the mother and the son. When the boy was about ten years old, the man had to go out for some work. He was to be away for a year, so he told his wife to take care of the boy and his mother.
His wife learnt magic in his absence and one day, she took the boy far from the house and turned him into a calf. She turned his mother into a cow and gave both of them to one of the farmers on the man’s farm and told him to care for them.

When the man returned from his travels, she told him that the slave had died.
“What about our son?” asked the man.
“He has been missing for the last two months,” said his wife, “I don’t know what has happened to him.”
The man grieved for his son and the slave, but could do nothing.
Some months later, there was a festival at which a feast was to be held. The man told his farmer to bring a fat cow for sacrifice. The cow he brought was the slave. It looked at the master so piteously, with tears in its eyes, that he could not sacrifice her. He asked his farmer to do so.
On sacrificing the cow, she was found to be just skin and bones. So, the man asked his farmer to bring a fat calf for the sacrifice.
The calf happened to be his son. It flung itself at the man’s feet and wept. He was so moved that he refused to sacrifice this calf, despite all the persuasion of his wife. Another calf was sacrificed instead.

A few days later, the farmer came and spoke quietly to the man.
“My daughter knows magic, sir,” said the farmer, “Yesterday when I took the calf back she smiled and then she wept. When I asked her why she did so, she told me that she was happy that the calf was safe, but wept for his dead mother.”
The man went to the farmer’s house and learnt how his wife had turned the slave and the son into a cow and a calf respectively and got the cow killed. He met the calf who was loving towards him.
“Can you turn him back into my son?” the man asked the farmer’s daughter.
“Yes, I can,” she replied, “But you must promise two things. Your son will marry me and I will punish the one who has harmed him.”

The man agreed. The farmer’s daughter changed the calf back into the young boy. In due time they were married. The farmer’s daughter changed the man’s wife into a hind.
“Now my son has gone away and I am going to look for him. I cannot leave her behind,” said the old man completing his tale, “So I am taking her with me on my travels.”
This was the remarkable tale which made the genie pardon one-third of the merchant’s offence.

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