The Boy who could keep a Secret
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The Boy who could keep a Secret is a Hungarian fairy tale from Folk Tales of Magyars. Andrew Lang included it in The Crimson Fairy Book.
A version of this tale also appears in The Glass Man and the Golden Bird: Hungarian Folk and Fairy Tales by Ruth Manning-Sanders. It is under the title The Secret-Keeping Boy.
[edit] Synopsis
A widow's son had a scabbard at his side, and as he grew, it grew. A sword was stuck in the garden, and every day, the boy would pull out the sword to see if the scabbard was large enough. One day, it was. He decided to keep it secret, but he told his mother he had had a wonderful dream, which he could not tell until it came true. She beat him, but he did not tell.
He sat by the road and cried. The king saw him and sent word to find out the problem, because the king had never cried in his life and could not endure that other people would. Having heard his story, he tried to pry the secret out of him, bringing him to his castle, where the three princesses also tried, but the boy would not tell and threatened to beat anyone who asked, though the king kept him there years. The two older princesses married. The youngest saw the boy as a handsome young man and told him she would marry him if he told her the secret. He beat her as he had said.
The king was going to hang him. His sword clanked, and the king of the Magyars appeared and asked for him: he could pry the secret out of him, or his beautiful daughter could. He took the boy with him and talked with him, but the boy would not tell him. His daughter was taken with his looks and tried to persuade him, but the boy gave her a bloody nose. Her father resolved to starve him and had them make a tower for the boy, but the princess secretly got a mason to put a hole in it, large enough for a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.
The princess kept giving him food, and the king was astounded that he kept healthy.
One day, the Sultan sent him three canes, and demanded to know which grews nearest the root, in the middle, and at the top, or he would declare war. The boy told the princess that if they were cast in warm water, the one that grew nearest the root would sink; the one at the top would rise, and the third state in the middle, and to tell her father that she had dreamed it. This worked.
Then the Sultan sent three colts, and said if the king could not tell which was born in the morning, which at noon, and which in the evening, he would declare war. The princess went to the boy. He told her to scream in the night and then tell her father that she had dreamed that the boy in the tower could tell him. She did, the king took him out, and the boy had them offer the foals oats, wheat and barley: the colt born in the morning ate the oats, the one at noon, the wheat, and the one in the evening, the barley.
The Sultan consulted his aunt, a witch. She told him that the king had not found these, but a poor boy, who would be king of Hungary one day, had. He had to get the boy and kill him to gain that crown. The Sultan demanded the boy. The boy told the king to get two boys who looked exactly like each other, and then he made a mask that made him look like them. The Sultan did not want to kill all three. The aunt told him that the next morning, he should kill the one with a cut in his sleeve, but when she cut the boy's sleeve after midnight, he cut the other boys' sleeves. The Sultan told them that they might go home.
Then the Sultan demanded that he be sent alone. The boy went and fought the fifteen Turkish soldiers that the Sultan greeted him with. In the night, the aunt tried to steal the sword, but it jumped from the scabbard and cut off her iron nose. Then the Sultan sent his army against the boy, who defeated them all.
The king decided to marry him to his daughter and make him his heir. The boy said he must see his mother first, and the king sent him. He told her that his secret was that he would be king of Hungary one day, but if the king had known that, he would have killed him, and if she had not beaten him, it would not have happened.
