The old wood-cutter seeing their constancy endeavored to persuade his daughter to change her mind, saying, “Ah dear daughter, though I know quite well that you are a real fairy, -and it may be that fairies never wed, -yet we have brought you up and loved you as if you were our very own daughter, and now that you have grown into a beautiful woman we must treat you like a woman and provide a husband for you; for although you might be very happy here as long as I am alive, still I am now over seventy, and who can tell but that I may die tomorrow, so I beg you to consider well and choose from among these distinguished nobles one who can be your husband and protect you after I am gone.”
The princess laughingly replied, that fairy or no fairy, she loved dear old Taketori as if |
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he were her own father and was only too ready to do all that he wished, but, -men were so fickle! and, -she was afraid these great nobles did not realize that she was brought up as a poor wood-cutter's child and they might tire of her very soon; -and so,- she would like them to do some great thing to shew that they were really as devoted to her as they professed to be.
To this they all agreed; but the pretty princess, hoping to get rid of all her suitors at once and forever, sent one of them to India to find the stone bowl of Buddha; another to seek in the Eastern Ocean a mountain called Horai and bring a branch of a tree which grew there with silver roots, golden trunk and jewels for fruit; a third was to go to China and get a fur robe made of the skins |
