- Genre
- Tale of wit
- Source status
- variant tradition
- Motifs
- soldier, king, three questions, wit
The tale: an editorial retelling
A soldier served for twenty-five years and returned home. His neighbours asked about the king, but he had nothing to tell them: throughout his service he had never seen the king. They began to laugh at him.
The soldier could not bear it. He dressed and went to the palace. “Why have you come?” asked the king. “I served you for twenty-five years without seeing your face.” “Then look as long as you like.” The soldier walked round him three times and studied him carefully.
The king decided to question his visitor. “How high is the sky?” The soldier answered, “The beams and ceiling of your hall are high already. How could the sky fail to be high?”
“How wide is the earth?” “The sun rises at one end and sets at the other. It must be very wide.”
“And how deep is the earth?” “My father died and was buried. Ninety years have passed and he has not returned. It must be very deep.”
The king said that the soldier had solved his riddles. He gave him a thousand gold coins and sent him home. The soldier thanked him, returned and lived comfortably afterwards.
About this version
V. Basanavičius recorded this version from Aidukevičius in Ožkabaliai in 1904, archive reference LMD I 133(232). It is tale 30 in volume IV of Lietuvių tautosaka. All three questions and the soldier’s reward are preserved.
The tale’s time scheme has not been corrected: the long service and even longer interval since the father’s death belong to the recorded exaggeration. These are witty evasions, not astronomical or geological measurements.
Telling and discussing the tale
Read the questions separately and invent witty rather than factual answers. Compare them with the soldier’s use of familiar images: the ceiling, the sun’s journey and a father who has not returned.