Cross posted at Daily Kos
Welcome! Welcome! Good morning! I am glad to see you here! Come, have a seat, and you shall hear a story.
Now normally I tell a story that has some kind of relevance to the world we find ourselves in, but today I just feel like telling a story that’s fun to tell. So here, then, is the story of The King’s Three Questions. Enjoy!
The royal advisor bowed low before the king. “Yes, your majesty?”
“I’m bored,” said the king. “Let’s play a game.”
Uh oh, thought the royal advisor. “Yes, your highness,” he said. “What kind of game?”
“I’ll ask you three questions. If you answer all three of them correctly, I will give you three bags of gold. If you answer two correctly but one incorrectly, I will give you two bags of gold and cut your head off. If you answer only one correctly, I will give you a bag of gold, and cut your head off twice. And if you do not answer any of the questions correctly, I will cut your head off three times. Is that clear?”
“Uh, your majesty,” said the advisor, “you cannot cut off my head three times. I only have one head.”
“Shut up. I am the king. I can do whatever I want.”
Again the royal advisor bowed, and bowed to the inevitable. “Yes, sire,” he said with just a hint of a resigned sigh. “What are the questions?”
“They are very simple questions. The first is, how many stars are there in the sky? The second is, precisely how deep is the ocean? And the third is, what am I thinking? Move along now. Have a nice day. It’ll be your last.”
The royal advisor bowed, backed out of the throne room, and started thinking that maybe he should have become the king’s aquarium cleaner or his accountant or something with a bit less responsibility. And as he was thinking, who should he ran into but the king’s storyteller. Almost literally.
“Good morning, Royal Advisor,” the storyteller said, “How’s it going?”
“Not well, I’m afraid,” the advisor said. “The king wants to play a game with me, and I am afraid I am going to lose.”
“What kind of game is this?” the storyteller asked.
“He has asked me three questions, and I have to answer them all correctly or I lose.”
“Oh, really. What are the questions?”
“The first is, how many stars are there in the sky? The second is, precisely how deep is the ocean? And the third is, what is the king thinking?”
The storyteller thought for a moment, and then said, “I can answer those questions.”
The royal assistant started to feel the weight of the world lift from his shoulders. “Quick! Tell me the answers and I will give you the three bags of gold the king has promised me if I answer them correctly.” He carefully didn’t say anything about getting his head cut off, but the storyteller had been around for a while. He had a pretty good idea what was in store.
“No no no,” said the storyteller. “I didn’t say I could tell you the answer. I said I could /answer. the questions. I’ll tell you what. Give me your cloak and I will go to the king tomorrow in your place.” Now I should tell you here that in those days people wore hooded cloaks indoors as well as out, because castles were drafty cold places.
So the next day the storyteller went in to the king, wearing the royal advisor’s cloak and with the hood pulled up over his head so the king couldn’t see his face.
“Ah, Royal Advisor,” the king said. “Just a moment. Guard? Come here and bring your dullest sword.” Like I said, he was not a very nice king.
“Now. Do you have the answers to my questions?”
The storyteller nodded his head in answer.
“Very well. First, how many stars are there in the sky?”
“Your majesty,” the storyteller said, using his best imitation of the royal advisor’s voice. “There are four hundred fifty-five million, six hundred twenty-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty one stars in the sky, and if you think I am wrong, you can count them yourself.”
Hmmmmmm, the king thought. Well, I’ll get the gold back with the next two questions. “Very well,” he said, placing a bag of gold in the storyteller’s hand. The storyteller put the bag of gold into the folds of his cloak. “Now, for the second question. Precisely how deep is the ocean?”
“Your majesty,” the storyteller said, again using his best Royal Advisor voice, “the ocean is precisely a stones’ throw deep.”
“Aha!” said the king. “That is not correct. I can throw a stone much farther than that!”
“But your majesty,” said the storyteller, “allow me to finish. If you take your royal boat out into the ocean, and then throw a stone over the side, you can measure how far the stone travels, and the distance the stone travels is the precise depth of the ocean.”
Hmmmmmm, the king thought again. Well, I can let that one pass, because he can’t possibly answer the third question and if he gives me an answer I can tell him I’m thinking something different. “Very well,” he said, and placed another bag of gold in the storyteller’s hand, and again the storyteller put the bag into the folds of his cloak. “Now for my third question. What am I thinking?”
The storyteller didn’t hesitate. “Your majesty,” the storyteller said in his Royal Advisor voice, “you think you are talking to your royal advisor, but in reality — ” and he pulled the hood back from his face to show the king — “I am your royal storyteller!”
The king gasped. “What?” he cried. “I thought I was talking to my royal advisor!”
“Told you,” said the storyteller, holding out his hand. “My third bag?”
Last week I threatened to tell a story that was just fun to tell. I actually told such a story last Friday, sort of; but as it was April Fools’ Day, I ended up with a shaggy dog story that I encourage you to read if you haven’t. I found that story in a wonderful work by Leo Rosten entitled The Joy of Yiddish, and I highly recommend the book for language and story buffs if you can still find a copy.
I wish I could tell you who I learned this story from. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have set up something of a personal audio recorder that records some of my favorite radio programs. I then transfer them onto my handheld computer, which has audio player software, a nice big memory card and the best headphones $2 can buy and I listen to them as I commute to work. One of those shows is Global Griot, a community production from the next county north that I can’t recommend highly enough to story fans. They are my direct inspiration for Sunday Griot, and the only reason I would hesitate to publicize them is because then you would know where some of my stories come from (not that I wouldn’t tell you anyway). They announce the names of the storytellers, and I like to give my sources credit, but the source for this one slipped right by me. I just remember the teller saying it was an old Irish story. Google was no help at all on this one. Someday perhaps I’ll find the name.
Enjoy your week! As always, thank you for reading.
I think I’ll use that one…
When things are a little crazy and we want to know how much more there is I’ll just remember that everything is one stone deep.
Now get me out of this boat before I get seasick!
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Must be the brother of Turandot! She, too, asked 3 questions, riddles really, of the panting princes who came to woo her. Any prince who fails to answer all three correctly and. . .off with his head.
#1 What is the ghost, which all the world invokes and is constantly in renewal?
#2 What flickers like a flame when the man dreams of conquest?
#3 What is the frost that burns. . .and makes a king of the one it accepts as a slave?
For the answers (used in a modern and intelligent speech on the American economy by the Governor of the Bank of England in 2002) go here.
Thank you. I always enjoy your stories.
I used to live in Montana, and while many things have gone wrong with it since I moved away (card rooms all over Billings, the state went for Bush, Wal-Mart encroachment), this sounds like the independent-minded Montanans I remember.
Thank you Emma!