It so happened that on that very day the queen lost her loveliest ring, and suspicion fell on the trusted servant who had privileged access to every corner of the castle. The king called for him, and giving him a good tongue-lashing, threatened that if he could not find the thief by the following morning, then he himself would bear the guilt and be executed. It did the servant no good to swear to his innocence, the die was cast. In his angst and distress, he went walking up and down the castle grounds pondering how to get out of the mess he was in. He noticed a flock of ducks bobbing peacefully side by side in a bubbling brook, polishing their beaks, engaged in an intimate conversation. The servant stood still and listened in. They told each other where they had been waddling that morning and what tasty morsels they had managed to snap up, whereupon one remarked grumpily, “I’ve got something hard stuck in my gut. While nibbling away, in my haste I gobbled up and swallowed a ring lying under the queen’s window.”
Thereupon the servant grabbed the duck by the neck, carried her into the kitchen, and said to the cook, “Slaughter this one, she’s good and fat.”
“Right,” said the cook, “she’s good and fat and ready to be roasted.” He cut the duck by the throat, and once she was served and carved up the queen’s ring was found in her gut. So the servant could easily prove his innocence before the king, and since His Majesty wanted to make amends for his unjust accusation, he bid him request a favor and seek for himself the most respected position at court.
The servant refused all the king’s offers, asking only for a horse and travel money, for he had a hankering to see the world and to spend some time kicking about. As soon as his wish was granted he set out, and one day he rode past a pond in which he noticed three fishes caught in the reeds and panting for water. Although it is said that fish are dumb, he immediately fathomed their lament at having to die in such a miserable way. Since he had a big heart, he promptly dismounted from his horse and released the three captives back into the water. They flounced about for joy, raised their heads, and called to him, “We will remember and repay your kindness at having saved us!”
He rode on and after a little while it seemed to him as if he heard a voice in the sand at his feet. He listened and overheard the complaint of an ant king: “If only people with their clumsy animals would watch where they’re going! That dumb horse with its heavy hooves is mercilessly stomping my subjects to death!” Whereupon the sympathetic rider steered his horse down a side path, and the ant king called out to him, “We will remember and repay your kindness!”
The path led into a forest, and there he saw a raven father and raven mother perched beside their nest, flinging the baby birds out. “Away with you, you good-for-nothing brood,” they cried. “We can’t feed you any longer, and you’re big enough now to fend for yourselves!”
The poor little ones lay on the ground fluttering and flapping their downy wings and crying, “You want us helpless baby birds to fend for ourselves, and we don’t even know how to fly! What else can we do, but die of hunger?”
So the kindhearted youth dismounted, killed his horse with his dagger, and left its carcass to feed the baby ravens. They came hopping over, ate their fill, and cried, “We will remember and repay your kindness!”
Now he had to use his own two legs, and after walking a good long while he came to a big city. There was a hubbub and the streets were thronged with people, when a town crier came riding up and announced that the king’s daughter was seeking a husband, but whoever asks for her hand in marriage must first accomplish a difficult task, and if he does not succeed it will cost him his life. Many had already tried but lost their lives in the process. When the young man saw the princess, he was so bedazzled by her great beauty that he forgot all the perils involved and presented himself before the king as a suitor.
No sooner did he do so than he was ferried out to sea, and before his eyes a golden ring was tossed in. Then the king bid him fetch that ring from the bottom of the sea and added: “If you come back up without the ring you will be tossed in the sea again and again until you drown.”
Everyone pitied the handsome youth and left him alone on the beach. He stood by the shore and pondered what to do, when all of a sudden he saw three fishes come swimming over, and they were none others than the ones whose lives he had saved among the reeds. The middle fish held a mussel in its mouth, which it dropped in the sand at the young man’s feet, and when the young man picked it up and opened it, the golden ring lay there in the shell. Overjoyed, the youth took the ring to the king, expecting to be granted the promised reward.